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Studies in Eastern European Cinema

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The Golden Sixties: The Czechoslovak

New Wave revisited
a
Peter Hames
a
Staffordshire University
Published online: 03 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Peter Hames (2013) The Golden Sixties: The Czechoslovak New Wave revisited,
Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 4:2, 215-230

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 SEEC 4 (2) pp. 215–230 Intellect Limited 2013

Studies in Eastern European Cinema

Volume 4 Number 2
© 2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/seec.4.2.215_1

Peter Hames
Staffordshire University

The Golden Sixties: The

Czechoslovak New Wave
revisited

ABSTRACT Keywords
This article examines new insights into Czech and Slovak cinema of the 1960s New Wave
and  the role of the Czechoslovak New Wave. It is prompted by Martin Šulík’s Czech cinema
26-part television series Zlatá šedesátá/The Golden Sixties (2009) and his two Slovak cinema
part feature documentary 25 ze šedesatých aneb Československá nova vlna/25 FAMU
from the Sixties or the Czechoslovak New Wave (2011). Together they make up Politics of Culture
what is probably the most systematic account of any national film movement yet
attempted. After a discussion of the initial critical reluctance to address the subject,
I examine the insights offered by the directors, cinematographers, writers, and actors
interviewed in the television series. I consider the role of FAMU (the Prague Film
School), and the literary and theatrical influences of the 1960s that define cinema
as part of a much wider cultural movement. The article also considers the issue of
style, particularly the “poetry” of the image and various manifestations of realism,
concluding with a consideration of the contribution of Slovak cinema, for which the
films provide one of the first detailed accounts.

Most general histories of the cinema limit Czech and Slovak cinema of the
1960s to passing references to Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová and Jiří Menzel.
This is usually in the context of extremely generalized comment, overt inac-
curacy and contextualization within the framework of ‘East European’ or ‘East

215
Peter Hames

1. The series, based Central European’ cinema. However, according to Czech and Slovak critics,
initially on
84 interviews,
the most important films are by František Vláčil (Marketa Lazarová, Vláčil,
consists of individual 1967) and Dušan Hanák (Obrazy starého sveta/Pictures of the Old World, Hanák,
programmes devoted 1972, released 1989), directors who do not even get a name check in the
to the following
24 film-makers: Ivan standard accounts.
Balad’a, Hynek Bočan, Of course, the Czech and Slovak cinemas are by no means alone – film
Věra Chytilová, Meir history is essentially history seen through American, British or French eyes, and
Lubor Dohnal, Miloš
Forman, Eduard highly dependent on what passes the gatekeepers of the major European film
Grečner, Dušan Hanák, festivals. If politics, commerce, ideology (or journalism) stifle the emergence
Ladislav Helge, Juraj
Herz, Juraj Jakubisko,
of a particular cinema, it will remain undiscovered territory.
Vojtěch Jasný, Jan When I wrote my book on the Czechoslovak ‘New Wave’ (Hames 1985,
Kačer, Igor Luther, 2005) during the 1970s, it was in the belief that the films being produced
Zdeněk Mahler, Albert
Marenčin, Jiří Menzel, in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s were at least as important as those being
Stanislav Milota, Jan produced in France. In the late 1960s, there was certainly an international
Němec, Vít Olmer, resonance – Lindsay Anderson, Ken Loach and Krzysztof Kieślowski were
Miroslav Ondříček, Ivan
Passer, Jan Schmidt, all influenced. However, the desire of the post-1968 Czechoslovak regime to
Jan Švankmajer, bring down the curtain on the 1960s in the wake of the Soviet invasion proved
Karel Vachek, Otakar
Vávra and Drahomíra
to be all too effective. Not only were the creative conditions for cinema elimi-
Vihanová. In the nated but over 100 films from the period (many unreleased) were banned for
original television the next twenty years. The result is that it is still a cinema in the process of
screenings, the
programmes were discovery and rediscovery.
complemented by the Given the critical silence that prevailed between 1970 and 1989, Czechs
showing of a related and Slovaks have also been slow to come to terms with its historical and
film. Production
extended over a ten- cultural significance. Czech editions of Josef Škvorecký’s All the Bright Young
year period with the Men and Women (1971) and Antonín J. Liehm’s Closely Watched Films (1974)
first interview (with
Vávra) recorded in 2003
were published, in 1991 and 2001, respectively, together with a number of
and the last (with Jasný) monographs on individual directors. However, the only more general study
in 2008. to appear has been Démanty všednosti: Český a Slovenský film 60. let (Stanislava
2. Part One (100 mins) Přádná et al., 2002), a collection of critical essays by Stanislava Přádná, Zdena
includes consideration Škapová, Jiří Cieslar and Jan Svoboda.
of: Slnko v sieti/
Sunshine in the Net While there was, perhaps, an initial resistance to approaching the area as
(Uher, 1962), Konkurs/ part of the ‘socialist’ past, the creative resonance of the period has remained
Competition (Forman, undeniable. In recent years, many leading figures of the 1960s such as Věra
1963), Křik/The Cry
(Jireš, 1963), Postava Chytilová, Jan Němec, Karel Vachek, Juraj Jakubisko, Drahomíra Vihanová
k podpírání/Josef and Lubor Dohnal are among those who have played important teaching roles
Kilián (Juráček and
Schmidt, 1964), Každý
at Filmová a televizni fakulta Akademie múzických uměni (FAMU, the Prague
den odvahu/Everyday Film School). It is perhaps appropriate that the most systematic exploration
Courage (Schorm, of the 1960s should now come through film itself, and Martin Šulík’s 26-part
1964), Démanty noci/
Diamonds of the Night television series Zlatá šedesátá/The Golden Sixties (Šulík, 2009)1 is something
(Němec, 1964), Intimní of a unique enterprise. This has been supplemented by the two-part feature
osvětlení/Intimate film 25 ze šedesatých aneb Československá nová vlna/25 from the Sixties or the
Lighting (Passer, 1965),
At' žije republika/ Czechoslovak New Wave (Šulík, 2011).2
Long Live the Republic Šulík, the leading Slovak director of the post-1989 era, had previously
(Kachyn̆a, 1965),
Obchod na korze/A
directed an excellent documentary reconstruction based on Pavel Juráček’s
Shop on the High diary (2003), Klíč k určováni trpaslíků aneb Poslední cesta Lemuela Gullivera/The
Street (Kadár and Klos, Key to Determining Dwarfs, or the Last Voyage of Lemuel Gulliver (Šulík, 2002)
1965), Romance pro
křídlovku/Romance for as well as Martin Slivka – Muž ktorý sadil stromy/Martin Slivka – The Man Who
a Trumpet (Vávra, 1966), Planted Trees (Šulík, 2007), a major study of one of the founders of Slovak
Sedmikrásky/Daisies cinema. Like the film on Juráček, The Golden Sixties was a collaboration with
(Chytilová, 1966) and
Ostře sledované vlaky/ producer Čestmír Kopecký and the critic and writer Jan Lukeš.
Closely Observed Trains In format, the series is absolutely straightforward – each programme lasts
(Menzel, 1966). Part
Two (105 mins) includes
57 minutes and is devoted to a single film-maker, with a series of answers to

216
 The Golden Sixties

questions interposed with film extracts. While the questions asked by Lukeš consideration of:
Kristove roky/Crucial
are off-screen, they conform to a similar framework for each interview: early Years (Jakubisko, 1967),
recollections, educational experience at FAMU, the films they made during Stud/Shame (Helge,
the 1960s, and the impact of the Soviet invasion of 1968. The series provides 1967), Svatba jako
řemen/Wedding under
important additional insights into what Škvorecký once described as a unique Supervision (Krejčík,
historical and cultural phenomenon (Škvorecký 1986). 1967), Drak sa vracia/
The Dragon’s Return
(Grečner, 1967), Marketa
Lazarová (Vláčil, 1967),
FAMU Spřízněni volbou/
Elective Affinities
FAMU, the Prague Film School, was established in 1946 and virtually all Czech (Vachek, 1968), Spalovač
and Slovak film-makers have subsequently been educated there. One of the mrtvol/The Cremator
first of the national film schools, its first Dean was Karel Plicka, the Czech (Herz, 1968), Zabitá
neděle/Deadly Sunday
ethnographer, photographer and film-maker, most associated with the birth of (Vihanová, 1969),
Slovak cinema and his feature documentary Zem spieva /The Land Sings (Plicka, Past'ák/The Decoy
1933). He originally started a film-making course in Bratislava in 1937 (which (Bočan, 1969), Případ
pro začínajícího kata/A
was attended by Ján Kadár) but it was closed down in 1939 after the break up Case for the Young
of Czechoslovakia in 1938. FAMU was initially made up of seven departments: Hangman (Juráček,
1969), 322 (Hanák, 1969),
dramaturgy, direction, photography, documentary, reportage, techniques, Slávnost' v botanickej
production and theory. It was very much associated with the name of Otakar záhrade/Celebration in
Vávra, who notes in his interviews, that he wrote the whole curriculum, although the Botanical Garden
(Havetta, 1969) and
acknowledging debts to Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques Všichni dobří rodáci/All
(IDHEC) in Paris. He particularly stressed the need to combine the study of liter- My Good Countrymen
ature and art with theory and practice. This does much to explain the breadth (Jasný, 1968). The film
was awarded best
of reference achieved by the young directors of the 1960s. Important directors documentary in the
from other ‘socialist’ countries also attended: Frank Beyer, Agnieszka Holland Slovak Slnko v sieti
awards in 2012.
and, from Yugoslavia, Aleksandar Petrović, Rajko Grlić, Srdjan Karanović, Emir
Kusturica, Goran Marković, Goran Paskaljević and Lordan Zafranović.
The only graduate from the 1950s interviewed in The Golden Sixties is
Vojtěch Jasný, who made many of his early films in collaboration with fellow
graduate Karel Kachyňa. From the early days, he recalls the influence of Plicka
and classes with the photographer and avant-garde director Jiří Lehovec, as
well as lectures from Vittorio de Sica, Cesare Zavattini and Vsevelod Pudovkin,
who he describes as ‘hiding from Stalin’.
While the directors’ memories of FAMU are various and dependent on
the chemistry of personal relations, they all emphasize the opportunity they
had to see films from almost everywhere, including those that the Communist
authorities chose not to import. Thus Antonioni, Fellini, Godard, Malle,
Buñuel, Dovzhenko, Eisenstein and Pudovkin are all mentioned. Hynek
Bočan mentions seeing as many as 6–7 films in a day.
Miloš Forman noted that there was no distinction between Communists
and non-Communists – there were merely people you could talk to and
people you could not. The name of the then-Dean, A. M. Brousil, is constantly
mentioned as presiding over a free and open regime. Jan Němec, perhaps not
the most tolerant of students, observed that Brousil made it all very liberal
‘despite being a Bolshevik!’
There is also a strong sense that it was the cultural atmosphere at FAMU
that counted above all. Teachers such as directors Václav Wasserman, Václav
Krška, Elmar Klos, Miroslav Hubáček and Miloš Makovec are all mentioned
and, of course, Jiří Menzel’s support for Vávra’s systematic approach is well
known. Forman describes the novelist and screenwriter Miloš Kratochvil’s
teaching as inspiring while Juraj Jakubisko recounts how Milan Kundera
taught them to trust in their own talent.

217
Peter Hames

3. Then living in France, The third factor mentioned by all was the opportunity to work together
Martinů’s cantata
was inspired by the
on each other’s films. Drahomíra Vihanová, who was in the same year as
poems of Miloslav Chytilová, Menzel and Evald Schorm, describes this experience as much
Bureš, a poet from his more important than the theoretical lectures. Slovak director Eduard Grečner
home town of Polička.
It was premiered in describes his experience of FAMU and Prague as like being in Paris. While
Polička and Prague, Slovak directors normally moved back to Bratislava to pursue their careers,
and warmly received their work at FAMU was collaborative. Jakubisko, for instance, mentions
by audiences. Martinů
had planned to revisit working with Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš and Karel Vachek. One ends with the
Czechoslovakia in 1958. distinct impression that, without FAMU, the New Wave may never have
occurred, that it constituted an island of cultural freedom while the world
outside remained frozen. As Slovak cinematographer, Igor Luther, observes,
‘it was fun – I never thought I was at an important college’.

Influences
Film influences are not that surprising and provide connections not dissimilar
from those available to directors elsewhere. Several interviewees refer to the
sudden explosion in the availability of American, British and Soviet films in
the immediate post-war period – not perhaps a combination readily available
elsewhere. Classic French cinema (Marcel Carné, René Clair, Jean Renoir) is
frequently mentioned, as well as Robert Bresson while the Slovak writer and
producer Albert Marenčin had actually been a student at IDHEC between
1945–1948, where he attended lectures by Clair, Jean Cocteau and Roberto
Rossellini. Otherwise the influences – Soviet cinema (especially Dovzhenko
and Pudovkin) and Neo-Realism (de Sica, Zavattini, de Santis) – are fairly
predictable.
While it is clear that FAMU drew attention to the wider culture, litera-
ture and theatre were often important influences quite independently. Vávra,
Vachek, Marenčin, Grečner, Ladislav Helge and Vít Olmer all emphasize
the importance of their reading (from both public and domestic sources).
The influence of contemporary literature and theatre is also clearly apparent.
Jasný mentions the importance of the legendary pre-war avant-garde theatre
director, E. F. Burian, and Forman worked under the supervision of theatre
director Alfréd Radok in the creation of the award winning Czechoslovak
pavilion at Expo 58 in Brussels. Radok, who made the banned film about the
Holocaust, Daleká cesta/The Long Journey aka Distant Journey (Radok, 1949),
was subsequently associated with the multimedia Laterna magika theatre, for
which many of the directors of the 1960s worked at one time or another –
Schorm, Jireš, Jakubisko, Jan Švankmajer and others. Despite his theatrical
success, Radok ran into subsequent difficulties with the banning of Laterna’s
post-Brussels presentation of Bohuslav Martinů’s Utvírání studánek /The
Opening of the Wells (19553), extracts from which are revealingly screened in
two of the episodes of The Golden Sixties. Based on the rhythms of country life
and set in the Bohemian highlands, The Opening of the Wells was focussed on
a birth, a wedding and a funeral. According to Forman, one of the creators of
the programme, the official objection related to the fact that there were no
power plants or dams, but in the words of the deputy prime minister, Václav
Kopecký, it was also condemned as ‘Jewish expressionism’.
Radok’s brother, Emil, who later emigrated to Canada, where he contin-
ued the multi-screen experiments that had begun in Prague through to the
1980s (Voráč 2008), also worked with Laterna and made the important puppet
film Johannes doktor Faust (Radok, 1958). Švankmajer, who worked on the film,

218
 The Golden Sixties

describes Emil Radok as also a painter with a bizarre imagination, close to

Surrealism and Johannes doktor Faust as ‘a truly great film’. Švankmajer himself
was also, of course, influenced by the Russian theatrical avant-garde, which
he describes as somewhat more accessible than the French at that time.
In Slovakia, Albert Marenčin, who had close links with the French avant-
garde, played a key role in the development of a creative cinema. He published
an essay on Apollinaire in the early 1960s, a translation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu
Roi in 1964, and also translated screenplays by Ingmar Bergman and Alain
Robbe-Grillet into Slovak. He speaks of his deliberate involvement of writers
like Alfonz Bednár and Dominik Tatarka in the creation of Slovak film. Both
of them were to work with Štefan Uher. In fact, Grečner describes Bednár,
Tatarka and Marenčin as an elite with whom everything could be discussed
openly, also noting the significance of the Surrealist tradition. Tatarka, had
been a member of the Slovak ‘Nadrealist’ group during the war and it is
worth noting that Uher’s adaptation of his surrealist novel Panna zázračnica/
The Miraculous Virgin (Uher, 1966) appeared as early as 1966. It thus predates
the ‘emergence’ of the reconstituted group in 1968, Jireš’s film of Vítězslav
Nezval’s Valerie a týden divů/Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jireš, 1970) in
1970, and Švankmajer’s and Marenčin’s membership of the group in 1970 and
1971, respectively.
The links between the ‘New Wave’ and the more orthodox theatrical
world was close even in the 1960s. Evald Schorm and Jiří Menzel directed at
the Činoherní klub (Drama Club) as did Jan Kačer, one of the ‘wave’s leading
actors. Productions included Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (Schorm)
and Machiavelli’s The Mandrake (Menzel). Also, the overlap between film and
theatre acting has remained a constant of Czech and Slovak cinema both
before and after the 1960s.
The leading novelists of the 1960s – Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundera, Josef
Škvorecký – also played their role. The commitment to Hrabal was particularly
evident in the collective tribute Perličky na dně /Pearls of the Deep (Chytilová,
Jireš, Menzel, Němec, Schorm, 1965) co-directed by Menzel, Chytilová, Němec,
Schorm and Jireš. The two episodes released separately are also discussed in The
Golden Sixties – Passer’s Fádní odpoledne/A Boring Afternoon (Passer, 1965) and
Juraj Herz’s Sběrné surovosti/Collected Barbarities aka The Junk Shop (Herz, 1965).
Herz describes Hrabal’s stories of Prague as ‘a revelation’ and, of course, they
also provided the basis for Menzel’s Ostře sledované vlaky/Closely Observed Trains
(Menzel, 1966) and Skřivánci na niti/Skylarks on a String (Menzel, 1969, released
1990). Besides providing the basis for three features, including Hynek Bočan’s
Nikdo se nebude smát/No Laughing Matter (Bočan, 1966) and Jireš’s Žert/The
Joke (Jireš, 1969) Kundera was an important influence through his teaching at
FAMU. Škvorecký collaborated on four films, including Farářův konec/The End
of a Priest (Schorm, 1969) and was also closely involved with Miloš Forman in
the unfilmed Eine kleine jazzmusik (and Forman had also hoped to film his novel
Zbabělci/The Cowards). The role of dramaturgists (literary editors) was also
important, and possible film subjects were often identified prior to publication.
Among other leading writers to be adapted were Ladislav Fuks (Spalovač mrtvol/
The Cremator [Herz, 1968]), Arnošt Lustig (Démanty noci/Diamonds of the Night
[Jan Němec, 1964]), and Vladimír Páral (Soukromá vichřice/Private Hurricane,
Bočan, 1967). Bočan also had plans to film Škvorecký’s Tankový prapor/The
Tank Battalion and Ludvík Vaculík’s Sekyra/The Axe.
Among the production groups were the Jiří Šebor-Vladimír Bor group
(who worked with Forman, Passer and Jaroslav Papoušek), the Ladislav

219
Peter Hames

4. Not the Novotný-Bedřich Kubala group (who worked on most of Schorm’s and Vláčil’s
cinematographer
Jaroslav Kučera.
films), the Erich Švabik-Jan Procházka group (who did most of Procházka’s
scripts for Kachyňa, Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová, and two films by Němec), and
5. Jan Procházka
(1929–1971) was also
the Bohumil Šmída-Ladislav Fikar group (who worked with Chytilová and
a leading novelist and Menzel). However, most of the remaining films were spread across all of the
screenwriter and a groups with none more or less progressive than the others. The Pavel Juráček-
candidate member of
the Communist Party Jaroslav Kučera4 group, formed during the Prague Spring, was responsible for
Central Committee. A Juráček’s Případ pro začínajícího kata/A Case for the Young Hangman (Juráček,
supporter of the Prague 1970), Chytilová’s Ovoce stromů rajských jíme/The Fruit of Paradise (Chytilová,
Spring, he was accused
by the KGB in 1968 of 1969), Menzel’s Skylarks on a String, Ivan Balad’a’s Archa bláznů/Ark of Fools
being member of an (Balad’a, 1970, released 1990), the French co-production Le Corps de Diane/The
anti-Party group aimed
at the destruction
Body of Diana/Tělo Diany, Jean-Louis Richard, 1969), and Jiří Suchý’s Nevěsta/
of socialism. He was The Bride (Suchý, 1970), a production slate containing more than its share of
the author of over 30 films maudits.
screenplays, fifteen of
them directed by Karel The name of Procházka5 comes up frequently, not only for his own films
Kachyňa, a number of but for giving the go-ahead for controversial works like Němec’s O slavnosti
which were produced a hostech/The Party and the Guests (Němec, 1966) and Drahomíra Vihanová’s
after his death. His
films Směšný pán/ Zabitá nědele/Deadly Sunday (Vihanová, 1969, released 1990). Before being
Funny Old Man (1969) sacked, he suggested Jaroslav Durych’s Valdstejn /Wallenstein to Bočan and
and Ucho/The Ear (1970,
released 1990) were
Jiří Šotola’s Tovaryšstvo Ježíšovo/The Society of Jesus to Olmer. More established
both banned. The Ear directors were also important in the encouragement of newcomers. Forman
was later remade for mentions Jasný’s role in the approval of Černý Petr/Black Peter (Forman, 1964)
German and Austrian
television by the exiled while Vláčil acted as a guarantor for Diamonds of the Night. Jasný’s Všichni
writer and director, dobří rodáci/All My Good Countrymen (Jasný, 1969) was personally authorized
Pavel Kohout, as Das by Alexander Dubček, the Party leader during the Prague Spring. All of this
Ohr (1983).
suggests that the cinema films grew out of a wider common culture, of which
it was but one – if perhaps the most significant and visible – manifestation.

Style
If we turn to the film antecedents of the 1960s, the most impressive films
are those by directors who studied camera, such as Jasný and Kachyňa,
and those of František Vláčil, a director who never went to FAMU but who
worked his way up via the Army Film Unit. The interest in visual composition
can be linked to pre-war traditions – the work of directors such as Gustav
Machatý, Josef Rovenský, Plicka and Krška and that of cinematographers
such as Jan Stallich and Ferdinand Pečenka. It is also worth recalling that
there were direct links with this tradition through the work of Vávra, Krška
and Frič, who remained active throughout the period. Leading cinematog-
raphers of the 1960s such as Jaroslav Kučera and Jan Čuřík began their work
at this time. Miroslav Ondříček recounts how they all admired the work of
Ferdinand Pečenka and how Jaroslav Tuzar taught him ‘the architecture of
light’, lessons he complimented Ondříček on applying in his later work on
Forman’s Amadeus (Forman, 1984). Ondříček, who worked as an assistant on
Vláčil’s Holubice/The White Dove (Vláčil, 1960) recalls Čuřík describing their
work on the film as ‘a delightful slavery’. The poetry of the image undoubt-
edly allowed an expression reaching beyond a narrative content of necessity
restricted to generalized ‘humanistic’ themes as film-makers sought to tran-
scend the requirements of propaganda.
In Štefan Uher’s Slovak production, Slnko v sieti/The Sun in a Net aka
Sunshine in a Net (Uher, 1963), which preceded the first films of the Czech
‘wave’ by a year, we find a film breaking with existing conventions in a

220
 The Golden Sixties

number of significant ways. First, it promoted what, for its time, might have 6. For a more detailed
account of the film’s
been viewed as ‘negative’ images through its portrait of dysfunctional families stylistic innovation, see
and attempted suicide, a central character whose parents had been discrimi- Ballester (2008).
nated against as members of the intelligentsia, and its critical attitude towards
collective farms (Votruba 2005). But, above all, it was an aesthetic break-
through on a number of levels.
Surprisingly, Grečner, who worked as assistant director on the film, cites
Italian neo-realism as a major influence – to work with the authenticity of
non-actors and to convey the maximum through natural expression and the
use of everyday clothes. To this end, they also compiled an extensive library of
real sounds for use in the film. Yet the film’s poetic resonance also owes much
to the cinematography of Stanislav Szomolányi and Ilja Zeljenka’s electronic
score (based on the antennae of the TV aerials that feature regularly in the
film).6 Marenčin notes how the Secretary of the Slovak Communist Party,
Karol Bacílek, viewed it as anti-Socialist via a somewhat idiosyncratic inter-
pretation of its symbolism.
The rest of the story is fairly familiar – Forman, Chytilová and Jireš were
all influenced by a commitment to realism in their 1963 debuts. While Forman
emphasizes the role of his non-actors, both he and Passer note the precision
of their scripting. Passer observes that Forman’s Lásky jedné plavovlásky/Loves
of a Blonde (Forman, 1965), co-scripted by Forman, Papoušek and Passer, took
eight months to write. Forman comments that only around 10 per cent of
the improvisation was effective (‘a gold mine’) and that improvisation was
based on his verbalization of the script (Ondříček says that the non-actors
were ‘acting Forman’). Chytilová also refers to improvisation but, in her case,
it ultimately extended to the use of film language itself.
The aesthetic nature of Forman’s realism is most obviously revealed in the
programme about Ondříček – the deliberate painting of the sets in specific

Figure 1: The Sun in a Net. Photo courtesy of the Slovak Film Institute. Photo
credit: Margita Skoumalová and Zuzana Mináčová.

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Peter Hames

colours was used to particular effect in both Loves of a Blonde and Hoří má
panenko/The Firemen’s Ball (Forman, 1967) – although Ondříček preferred
tonality and minimal ‘lighting effects’. Similarly, the crisp black and white
photography in Němec’s surrealist-like Mučedníci lásky/Martyrs of Love
(Němec, 1966) resulted from his choice of colour in the sets and costumes.
Igor Luther offers some useful insights into the creative approach of the
Slovaks in the late 1960s. He notes the impression made on him by Chytilová’s
Strop/Ceiling (Chytilová, 1962) and Forman’s Black Peter. Television, he says,
taught him the connection between the eye and the lens and FAMU about
finding a style and how to work in ‘a risky way’. A great admirer of the work
of Raoul Coutard, he worked with both Havetta and Jakubisko whose ideas,
he argues, ‘were pure and personal’. Both were primarily visual artists, with
Havetta the more ‘photographic’ and Jakubisko the more experimental. At
FAMU, Luther worked on Havetta’s Svatá Jana /Saint Joan (Havetta, 1963) and
Předpověd’: nula/Forecast: zero (Havetta, 1966), which provided the ground-
work for his work on Jakubisko’s first feature Kristove roky/Crucial Years
(Jakubisko, 1967).
Luther’s fascination with black and white and with pushing the bounda-
ries was already apparent in his work on Saint Joan (where the ORVO film was
developed twice) and Crucial Years, where he speaks of the desire to make
‘something surprising’. Jakubisko wanted the image to be as crisp as possible,
like painting. Luther’s desire to move to greater extremes, emulating the harsh
grain of Pudovkin, led him towards ‘destructive cinematography’, an explosion
of light in which even the material was affected. Crucial Years was condemned
by established Slovak cinematographers as having the worst cinematography
of the year. Luther’s obsession with the possibilities of black and white is also
apparent in his work with Ivan Balad’a (Dáma/The Lady [Balad’a, 1967] and
Ark of Fools), Alain Robbe-Grillet (L’Homme Qui Ment/Muž, ktorý luže/The Man
Who Lies, Robbe-Grillet, 1968) and Volker Schlöndorff (Der Fangschuss/Coup
de Grâce, Schlöndorff, 1976). Havetta, Jakubisko and Hanák were all attacked
for their innovation, and Jakubisko was criticized for not using a tripod on
Zbehovia a pútnici/The Deserter and the Nomads (Jakubisko, 1968). The audience,
he was told, would feel sick or faint. Despite the support of directors like Uher
and Stanislav Barabáš in Slovakia, Luther comments that the atmosphere in
Prague was much more open.
Finally, one should mention the editing skills of Miroslav Hájek, who
worked with Vláčil, Kachyňa, Forman, Chytilová, Němec, Passer, Jan Schmidt,
Vihanová, Jasný and Juráček to name but a few. Forman and Němec both
describe him as a genius, a key figure, and Schmidt suggests that he some-
times worked on up to fifteen films in a year.

Slovakia
The Slovak films that emerged in the late 1960s received little attention
from major festivals while simultaneously attracting that of the censors.
Unsurprisingly, the six programmes devoted to specifically Slovak material
presents directors and perspectives that remain relatively new to mainstream
film history.
The role of Albert Marenčin has already been mentioned and, together
with Karol Bakoš, he headed the first production group of Slovak film. The
films with which they were associated make a remarkable list: Sunshine in a
Net, Každý týždeň sedem dni/Seven Days Every Week (Grečner, 1964), Organ/

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 The Golden Sixties

The Organ (Uher, 1965), Nylonový mesiac/The Nylon Age (Grečner, 1966),
The Miraculous Virgin, Drak sa vracia/The Dragon’s Return (Grečner, 1968),
Crucial Years, Tri dcéry/Three Daughters (Uher, 1968), The Man Who Lies,
Sladký čas Kalimagdory/The Sweet Time of Kalimagdora (Leopold Lahola, 1968),
The Deserter and the Nomads, Slavnost’ v botanickej záhrade/Celebration in the
Botanical Garden (Havetta, 1969), Vtáčkovia, siroty a blázni/ Birds, Orphans and
Fools (Jakubisko, 1969), L’Eden et après/Eden a potom/Eden and After (Robbe-
Grillet, 1970) and Dovidenia v pekle priatelia!/See You in Hell, Fellows! (Jakubisko,
1970, released 1990) among others. In 1971, he collaborated on the screenplay
of Orestea with Rudolf Sloboda, which was to have been directed by Uher,
but production was stopped and his position terminated in 1972. Although
he had already participated in Surrealist exhibitions from 1965 onward, he
joined the Surrealist group in 1971 and subsequently devoted himself to their
collective activities.
One of the undiscovered directors of the 1960s was Grečner, with his films
Seven Days Every Week, The Nylon Age and The Dragon’s Return. Adapting an
experimental approach that was then unfashionable, Seven Days Every Week
was supervised by Uher but influenced by Grečner’s interest in Surrealism
and also by the Resnais/Robbe Grillet L’Année Dernière a Marienbad/Last Year
in Marienbad (Resnais, 1961). Uher’s The Miraculous Virgin was to follow soon
after. Grečner, although he admired Pal'o Bielík’s work, found established
Slovak cinema to be too theatrical and the acting sometimes ‘grotesque’. The
establishment, in turn, saw the younger directors as unwanted competition.
Grečner was an admirer of Truffaut and Godard and saw Czechs and Slovaks
as taking it in turns to influence each other. His best film, The Dragon’s Return,
has a distinctive Slovak quality, both a ballad-like revenge story and a reveal-
ing portrait of peasant life. Its strong visual qualities recall the work of Vláčil.
He cast the Czech actor Radovan Lukavský in the main role in order to create
the role of the village ‘outsider’ or ‘foreigner’, a decision that met with criti-
cism. Folklore, he felt, revealed ‘the soul of a nation’.
Lubor Dohnal, the Czech (Moravian) screenwriter, worked with both
Havetta and Jakubisko at FAMU and was brought to Bratislava to ‘simplify’
Jakubisko’s script for Crucial Years, subsequently working with Havetta
on Celebration in the Botanical Garden, and with Balad’a on The Ark of Fools
and Herz on Petrolejové lampy/Oil Lamps (Herz, 1971) (the latter two shot in
Prague). Crucial Years, he argues, marked a big change – a transition from
a cinema based on politics to one based on aesthetics. In Celebration in the
Botanical Garden, he and Havetta refused to compromise in their commit-
ment to naïve art and folklore, mystic communication, and improvisation.
Dohnal makes the less frequently made point that Czechs and Slovaks were
also competitors and that rivalry sometimes pushed the Slovak achievement
to one side.
Ark of Fools by Slovak director Ivan Balad’a was, in fact, a Czech produc-
tion and could not be completed until 1990. Balad’a, an admirer of Russian
literature, produced a highly stylized version of Chekhov’s Pavilion No. 6, with
photography by the Slovak cinematographer Juraj Šajmovič and costumes
by Ester Krumbachová. While admiring the film, Dohnal notes that the
style ultimately drowned the meaning. Balad’a saw his style as emulating
that of Havetta and Jakubisko, and as almost becoming a form of national
expression.
Dušan Hanák’s sole completed feature, 322 (Hanák, 1970) only reached
the world via the Mannheim festival and it was fairly rapidly banned. What

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Peter Hames

Figure 2: Celebration in the Botanical Garden. Photo courtesy of the Slovak Film
Institute. Photo credit Vladimír Vavrek.

emerges from Šulík’s programme is the range of Hanák’s earlier short film
production, initially at FAMU, where he notes that all students felt they
should be addressing the problems of society. In Výzva do ticha/Call to Silence
(Hanák, 1965) scripted with Zbyněk Havlíček, he dealt with schizophrenia
through conveying the paintings of patients and the places where they lived.
Hanák argues that the documentary approach brought features back to life
and that, in 322 he became interested in the ‘space’ between feature and
documentary.
Hanák emerges as a director much closer to experimental work than is
conventionally thought. Impresia/Impressions (Hanák, 1966) was about the
spiritual aspect of music. He initially planned an adaptation of Jean-Paul
Sartre’s Le Mur as his first feature, turning instead to Jan Johanides’s Súkromie/
Privacy as the source for 322. A rigorously formal and poetic film, 322 tells the
story of a man thought to be dying of cancer, and the re-evaluation of his life
experience. After Pictures of the Old World, his feature documentary tribute to
the photographer Martin Martinček, a portrait of old people on the edge of
society in which he emphasized their inherent vitality and links to the land
on which they live, he planned a further film about the Hrabalesque, apparent
eccentrics who, he argues, are to be found in all societies. Pictures of the Old
World was banned as an example of ‘the aesthetics of ugliness’. Deň radosti/
Day of Joy (Hanák, 1972) was a homage to conceptual art. Jan Švankmajer

224
 The Golden Sixties

collaborated with him on both 322 and Pictures of the Old World as well as
designing the sets for his planned stage productions of Ionesco and Pinter.

Conclusion
The main achievement of The Golden Sixties lies in the documentation of
fast disappearing testimony, and also in moving outside the role of directors
to include writers (Zdeněk Mahler, Dohnal, Marenčin), cinematographers
(Stanislav Milota, Ondříček, Luther) and actors (Jan Kačer, Vít Olmer). There
are also programmes on directors that were not interviewed in Liehm’s
Closely Watched Films – Balad’a, Grečner, Švankmajer, Vachek and Vihanová.
A number of key figures had, of course, already died – Kachyňa, Schorm,
Juráček, Jireš, Havetta, Antonín Máša and Jaroslav Papoušek together with the
cinematographers Čuřík and Kučera. Some names are also missing, perhaps
most noticeably, Jiří Krečjík and Peter Solan.
There is little direct discussion of political issues other than the absurdities
of Socialist Realism and the collective trauma of the Soviet invasion or, indeed,
much talk on strategies for survival. Vávra explains his much discussed adap-
tations to differing political circumstances in terms of the Czech need to
sidestep situations. Although he does admit that the films he made in collab-
oration with the poet and dramatist František Hrubín in the 1960s (Zláta
reneta/The Golden Rennet [Vávra, 1965] and Romance pro křídlovku/Romance for
a Bugle [Vávra, 1967]) were among his best. He also confirms that Kladivo
na čarodějnice/Witchhammer (Vávra, 1970), shown only on the outskirts of
Prague, was indeed intended as it was taken at the time – a warning against a
return to the political trials of the 1950s. The best films, he notes, were those
produced in opposition to totalitarianism.
A number of film-makers were, of course, active in their response to the
invasion – Schorm, Němec, Balad’a, Milota and others – and were unlikely to
be forgiven. In the worst case scenario this led to exile (Němec, Juráček) and
in others to restriction to theatre (Schorm, Máša, Balad’a, Kačer), frequently
outside of Prague, or manual work. Milota describes his participation in the
human rights group Charta 77 as providing a kind of refuge – and he filmed the
‘unofficial’ front room dramas, Play Macbeth (Pavel Kohout, 1978) and Zpráva
o pohřbivání v Čechách/A Report on Burials in Bohemia (Luboš Pistorius, 1979) at
this time.
The complexities of censorship post-1968 are not much touched on.
Technically abolished during the Prague Spring, censorship of films was largely
indirect and conducted through the decisions of executive producers and
bureaucrats, and film-makers watching their own backs. Jakubisko notes
that everyone became their own censor while Menzel saw the hard regime
at Barrandov as centred on the figure of executive producer Ludvík Toman
rather than the direct result of government policy.
Two of the many films to receive delayed attention in the series are Němec’s
documentary Strahovské události/The Strahov Demonstration (Němec, 1968) and
Bočan’s Past’ák/The Decoy (Bočan, 1969, released 1990). Made in 1968, after the
abolition of censorship, The Strahov Demonstration revisited the scenes of the
1967 student demonstration and confrontation with police brutality combined
with interviews. Described by Němec as more significant than the events of
November 1989, the film was subsequently shown throughout the country.
With The Decoy, which could not be completed until 1990, Bočan told the
compelling story of a teacher’s experience in a prison for young offenders and

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Peter Hames

the confrontation with the morality and power structures of a world normally
hidden from public view.
Šulík’s feature film 25 from the Sixties, the version released to cinemas, is
an essential complement to the series. While it uses a wide range of extracts
from the interviews, it is focused on the films rather than the personalities,
with a selection of 25 films from the 1960s. There are also extracts from inter-
views with other figures (for instance, novelist Arnošt Lustig, production
designer Theodor Pištěk, and director Miloslav Luther). The emphasis on
films allows the representation of directors who could not be interviewed
in the television series via critical accounts of their films: Uher (Sunshine in
a Net), Jireš (Křik/The Cry [1964]), Juráček (Postava k podpírání/Josef Kilián
[Juráček and Schmidt, 1964], A Case for the Young Hangman), Schorm (Každý
den odvahu/Everyday Courage, 1965), Kachyňa (At’ žije republika!/Long Live the
Republic!, 1965), Kadár and Klos (Obchod na korze/The Shop on the High Street,
1965), Vláčil (Marketa Lazarová), and Havetta (Celebration in the Botanical
Garden). There is also a discussion of Krejćík’s Svatba jako řemen/Wedding
under Supervision (1967).
While the film selection contains some obvious titles – The Shop on
the High Street, Closely Observed Trains, Everyday Courage, Diamonds of the
Night, Intimní osvětlení/Intimate Lighting (Passer, 1966), Sedmikrásky/Daisies
(Chytilová, 1966), Marketa Lazarová, The Cremator – it also excludes a number
of familiar titles. Only one director is represented by two films – Pavel
Juráček, described here as the New Wave’s screenwriting star. But perhaps
most innovative, is the inclusion of films such as Vachek’s Spřižněni volbou/
Elective Affinities (Vachek, 1969) his cinéma-vérité style account of the 1968
presidential elections, and a number of films dating from 1968–1969 such as
Vihanová’s Deadly Sunday and Bočan’s The Decoy. Both are unsurprisingly
bleak in tone. Deadly Sunday describes ‘an isolated, strange, and necrotic
world’ while The Decoy – ‘a metaphor on relationships in society in general’
(Bočan) – is infused with scepticism and brutality. Only Celebration in the
Botanical Garden differs, a world of flower children, folklore and youthful
enthusiasm – according to the Slovak film historian, Václav Macek, a world
of absolute freedom.
In 25 from the Sixties, Jan Lukeš appears on-screen, introducing most of
the films, with supplementary comments by critics and historians – Stanislava
Přádná, Zdena Škapová, Jan Bernard, and Ivan Klimeš in the case of the Czech
films, and Jelena Paštéková and Václav Macek in the case of the Slovak. Thus
the feature films offer the additional advantage of critical commentary but,
more importantly, focus on the films themselves allows for longer extracts,
and a greater sense of their visual and thematic impact. The film ends appro-
priately with the final shots from Jasný’s All My Good Countrymen, and the
narrative voice-over ‘Farewell, my good fellow countrymen. What could we
have done, and what not?’
Overall, the consensus seems to be that the 1960s were indeed a charmed
period. Passer describes cinema as creating a sense of national unity, that the
cinema promoted Czechoslovakia to the wider world, and that the profit was
not just financial. Milota says that, while it might seem unfashionable to say
so, it was an ‘amazing’ time (although many note that the unique qualities of
the 1960s were also an international phenomenon). Švankmajer observes that
it was a time when art was seen as a significant activity with a tangible effect
on society while the actor Pavel Landovský notes that while it was a time of
criticism, it was also one of vision and of hope.

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 The Golden Sixties

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Suggested citation
Hames, P. (2013), ‘The Golden Sixties: The Czechoslovak New Wave revisited’,
Studies in Eastern European Cinema 4: 2, pp. 215–230, doi: 10.1386/
seec.4.2.215_1

Contributor details
Peter Hames is Visiting Professor in Film Studies at Staffordshire University
and a programme advisor to the London Film Festival. His books include
The Czechoslovak New Wave (second edition, Wallflower Press, 2005, Czech
translation, 2008, Polish translation 2011), Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme
and Tradition (Edinburgh University Press, 2009, paperback 2010), and as
editor, The Cinema of Central Europe (Wallflower Press, 2004) and The Cinema
of Jan Švankmajer: Dark Alchemy (Wallflower Press, 2008). He contributed to
Marketa Lazarová: Studie a dokumenty, edited by Petr Gajdošík (Prague, 2009)
and Best of Slovak Cinema 1921–91 (Bratislava, Slovak Film Institute, 2013) and
recently co-edited Cinemas in Transition in Central and Eastern Europe after
1989 (with Catherine Portuges, Temple University Press, 2013). His articles
have appeared in Sight and Sound, Vertigo, Studies in Eastern European Cinema,
Kinema, KinoKultura and Kinoeye.
E-mail: peter.hames@ntlworld.com

Peter Hames has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

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