TONKA OF THE GALLOWS (CZECH REPUBLIC/1930/KARL ANTON)

Having made the big move to Prague, a young woman named Tonka becomes a prostitute in order to earn her keep, and quickly becomes integrated into the ways of brothel life. She returns to her countryside home with expensive gifts for her mother, but is evasive about how she acquired the money for them. She also rejoins her lover Jan who proposes marriage, an offer which has clearly been hanging over their relationship for a while. Tonka struggles to deal with her duplicitous lifestyle, and when she agrees to spend the night with a murderer who is condemned to be hanged, she is rejected even by her fellow prostitutes.

From the first moment we see Tonka, she is already a tainted woman, her reputation scuppered by her brothel connections, and as such it is difficult to know which part of her story we are to learn from. If anything, the film appears to tell us, as in Mikio Naruse’s later Morning’s Tree-Lined Street, that the bright lights of the city are a misleading augury. The scenes with Tonka in the countryside are beautiful, pleasant, summery – when the story returns to the city however, we are greeted by nocturnal shadows and noxious smoke. Slovenian actress Ita Rina, best known for her role in Erotikon, does a great job of portraying the protagonist trapped in the evil shadows of Prague. Director Karl Anton employs tropes of German Expressionism and French Impressionism in his visual arsenal, creating a melodrama with surprising emotional reach.

PEARLS OF THE DEEP (CZECH REPUBLIC/1966/VARIOUS DIRECTORS)

Writer Bohumil Hrabal was arguably one of the driving forces behind the Czech New Wave, his novel Closely Observed Trains forming the basis of Jiří Menzel’s classic film of the same name. In the omnibus film Pearls of the Deep, five of the best-known Czech directors used Hrabal’s writings as inspiration for their own short films. First is Menzel’s Mr. Baltazar’s Death, in which a family day out at a motorcycle rally goes tragically awry. Jan Němec directs the second installment The Imposters, wherein two dying old men compete to impress the other with life experiences. Evald Schorm’s The House of Happiness features a superstitious insurance salesman who grows paranoid after an encounter with a bizarre artist. Věra Chytilová’s The Snack Bar portrays the aftermath of a woman’s suicide, while the final segment Romance, directed by Jiromil Jireš, charts the brief romance between a young man and a spirited gypsy girl.

What is most immediately noticeable about Pearls of the Deep is the demystification of morbid subjects such as death, a common theme to Czech cinema and literature. Menzel, Němec and Chytilová all make a point of treating death not as an end, but as a beginning of another form of life. Though certainly an interesting concept, the project is unfortunately too unbalanced to be a great representation of the Czech New Wave, with Schorm’s installation being the weakest (his King And Women might have been a better bet). Nonetheless, it is worth a view for Chytilová and Jireš’ films.

THE COUNTRY TEACHER (CZECH REPUBLIC/2008/BOHDAN SLÁMA)

Petr is a young, overqualified science teacher who finds himself working at a school in a small rural village. Although he seems to be coping well in his new environment, some of the local adults are sceptical about his sudden appearance, with the headmaster of the school even raising questions. Petr finds comfort in a kindly woman named Marie, who is grateful for the presence of another man in her life besides her teenage son Lada. After a revelatory visit from his ex-boyfriend Mihi, Petr realises that he has taken this job as a way of running from his identity as a gay man. Worse still, he finds that he has fallen for Lada, who is discovering the joys of love with his girlfriend Bara.

In both content and style, The Country Teacher resembles the Korean feature Bungee Jumping Of Their Own, in which a teacher finds himself drawn to a male student he believes is the incarnation of his departed high school sweetheart. While the latter sounds excessively saccharine, it is the better-handled film of the two. In The Country Teacher, Petr deals with many feelings, including a forbidden attraction, but his stony demeanour means that some of his more surprising actions are hard to believe. In spite of this, the film does handle the dramatic moments realistically, and doesn’t forget the emotions of secondary characters in telling its story. An endearing tale of love and identity, The Country Teacher is no great shakes but definitely deserves a watch.

THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE (CZECH REPUBLIC/1958/KAREL ZEMAN)

Taking its cue primarily from Jules Verne’s Face au Drapeau, but also borrowing from his other novels, this energetic fantasy story follows inventor Thomas Roch as he attempts to get approval for his new invention, an intensely violent explosive called the Fulgarator. Lacking governmental support, he is suddenly kidnapped by the dastardly Artigas who helps him create a working model of the weapon. Of course, Artigas has an ulterior motive as he plans to use it in his conquest of the world, and Roch is brought into a crisis of conscience when Artigas reveals where he plans to use it next.

Karel Zeman’s multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional animation never fails to impress, and here it is absolutely enthralling, even in the absence of colour. Sets are streaked with thick black lines in mimesis of the woodcut illustrations in Verne’s original books. Though the animation of the machinery and the weapons are superb considering the time, the film is at its best during the underwater scenes – jellyfish and seahorses dance alongside the ship, deep sea divers duel for treasure, a basking shark circles the water predatorily. The story is one of Verne’s lesser works, and if you’re not with the film at the beginning, it’s likely you’ll never get into it, as many of the characters are somewhat interchangeable. Nonetheless, there’s entertainment for all ages to be had from this adventure, and few viewers will go wanting. If Méliès were still alive in the fifties, this might just have been his swan song.

DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT (CZECH REPUBLIC/1964/JAN NĚMEC)

Two unnamed boys in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia are seen fleeing from a train on its way to a concentration camp, gunshots heard behind them. Wide-eyed and full of fear, they rush through the woods, where they set up a temporary hut from branches and straw. The boys spend the next few days living purely on rain, air and adrenalin, growing ever closer to nature, until they happen across a farmhouse. One of the boys stumbles into the place without thinking, and we experience his train of thought as he stares into the eyes of the farmhouse’s resident, a timid housewife. In a panic, he reaches forth to steal a few slices of bread, and the boys continue their escape. Their petty crime is not without consequence however, as they soon encounter the stubborn local mercenaries who plan to execute them.

At 63 minutes, it’s quite a short jaunt vis-à-vis the emotional clout of the historical backdrop, and sometimes it feels as if it ought to have been longer (rather like this review). Much of the first two-thirds is wordless, allowing the striking images to tell the story. In fact, one of the bigger selling points of the film is its raw photography. Often handheld, the camera is simply another character, sharing in the urgency of the boys’ situation. An exemplary cinematic symbol – ants crawling over the skin – is used but not justified. Overall, Diamonds Of The Night is an intriguing little slice of post-WWII cinema, hugely ambitious but not entirely successful.

COMING SOON (CZECH REPUBLIC/2006/SIR TIJN PO)

Mixing the naked audacity of underground cinema with the familiar format of the TV documentary, Coming Soon is an unfettered portrait of zoophiles, those whose sexual gratification comes from interaction with animals. Interviewing members of the first bestiality-rights group E.F.A. (Equality For All), the film allows its subjects to speak for themselves, explain their life philosophies and passively put their case forward. Narration is restricted so as not to condescend to the audience.

With such a controversial topic, it’s very difficult to want to hear the ‘other side’ of the story. Some of the arguments used in the film don’t make any effort to appeal to sound logic, and there are some disturbing accounts which do little else except shock. But whether one agrees with the film or dismisses it as contentious hippy bullshit, it is undeniably well made. Director Sir Tijn Po, an outré character who played assistant director on Jan Švankmajer’s film Little Otik, blends his personal advocacy with a great sense of humour to make the piece appeal to most people. Transcending genres and realities, Coming Soon is an exceptional, challenging experience which, for all its meta-referential bombast, never fails to hold interest (the same can’t be said for other films on the same subject). If for no other reason, watch it for the natural comedy of a man contemplating sex with a dinosaur, a selection of inflatable barnyard sex toys, and a jaded shaman sick of other people’s presumptions that zoophiles “fuck spiders in the corner”.

I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND (CZECH REPUBLIC/2006/JIŘÍ MENZEL)

Revered Czech director Jiří Menzel’s most recent picture, I Served The King Of England, tells the story of Jan Dítě, a budding hotel waiter whose one dream in life is to become a millionaire. After rising through the ranks of Hotel Paříž’s auxiliary staff, as well as bedding a few women on the way, Jan grows a taste for observing the lifestyle of the rich. When he meets and falls in love with Líza, a German woman living in Prague during the Nazi invasion under the Third Reich, his former colleagues turn their backs on him. A recommendation from an associate inspires Líza to steal valuable stamps from the houses of displaced Polish-Jewish families for Jan to sell. When she dies, Jan sells them in order to become a hotelier. As communism takes power in Czechoslovakia, Jan decides to flaunt his newfound wealth in order to join the other millionaires in prison, who ostracise him having not forgotten his earlier treason. The core story officially takes place in the present day, the aged Jan recounting the past to his neighbours in between bouts of community service.

Menzel’s work is an exceptional piece, managing to convey the events of the past with a lightly humorous modern slant. Jan, despite his self-absorption and apparent emotional coldness, is a lovable character, and as a result it is a joy to experience the history of Czechoslovakia through his eyes (and his sexual experiences). A witty, and rare, mix of political satire and humanist drama.