JIRI MENZEL

JIŘÍ MENZEL He was a grandmaster of feathery comedies that eroded every ideology like acid Jiří Menzel, one of the most famous directors of the new wave, died in Prague at the age of 82 By: Jurica PavičićPosted: 08. September 2020. 13:30 Jiri Menzel Jiri Menzel Biljana GaurinThere are film scenes that seem to crystallize an entire era, and even the whole spirit of national culture. And such scenes include the most famous scene in the movie "Strictly Controlled Trains". In it, a female switchman Hubička ( Josef Somr ) seduces a young telegraph operator Zdenička ( Jitka Zelenohorská ) during a night station shift . During the erotic foreplay, the railwayman stamped her buttocks with a German official seal, only to be punished the next day - at a farcical disciplinary hearing - for "violation of the official German language". Jiří Menzel was 28 years old when in the summer of 1966 he shot this most famous scene of the most famous Czech film. He shot a scene and made a film that will mark an entire era. It’s not just that “Strictly Controlled Trains” was a big hit, that they won a bunch of awards, including an Oscar. That film - much more - defined the era. Along with several equally ingenious films by Miloš Forman , Menzel's "Trains" remained as a film monument to the Prague Spring, a promising and libertine era in which everything seemed to be allowed, and socialism without a rigid mask not only possible but achieved. Soviet tanks interrupted that long, romantic spring, but “Strictly Controlled Trains” remained as the ultimate Czech film. As a film-emblem of a culture that is ready to laugh at everything: to laugh at fear, to laugh at death, to laugh at authority. Debut with omnibus The man who made the film - Jiří Menzel - passed away on Saturday at the age of 82. World film has lost one of its most popular classics, and the most famous Eastern European comedian. And Croatian culture has lost a long-time friend, a man who often came to Croatia, gladly and often directed in the theater, and even filmed documentaries about Adriatic tourism. Those who remember Menzel will say that he did not resemble his own works at all: if his films were fluttery, philanthropic and cheerful, he himself often knew how to be misanthropic. But he was a great director, the cornerstone of what is today a brand of "Czech film". Menzel was born in 1938 in Prague, into an intellectual family: his father was a journalist and children's writer. He studied at the famous FAMU Academy. After a couple of school films, he got his first real opportunity in the omnibus "Pearls from the Depths", a collective film by five Czech directors based on stories from the collection of the same name by Bohumil Hrabal . Menzel directed the first story in the omnibus, "The Death of Mr. Balthazar." Menzel's career was intertwined for the first time with the work of a writer to whom he will constantly return, and that is Bohumil Hrabal. There are directors who constantly return to the same writer or collaborate intensively with him: such is the tandem of, say, Béla Tarr and László Krasznohorkai . image My little village Jiri Menzel Hrabal and Menzel were not from the same cultural circle, nor were they their peers: Hrabal was 24 years older than the young director. But Hrabal's willingness to make fun of everything and make fun of everything big and pompous matched the young director's sensibility perfectly. After two directors previously tried to screen Hrabal's "Strictly Controlled Trains" and gave up, he went on to work as the third latio Menzel. He made a film about the Second World War that was strongly opposed by the vast majority. Despite the fact that the protagonist of the film turns out to be a hero, and that he dies, it was a film without martyrdom and pomp. Menzel and Hrabal approach the terrible historical era with mocking humor, and the subject of the most caustic satire are the insignia of the state, ideology and power: uniforms, hats, seals, ossified ideological and bureaucratic language. Here, not for the last time, Menzel satirically reaches for his favorite topics, which are Czech subordination, hesitation and acceptance of any authority. "Fuck" in the bunker "Strictly controlled trains" were an enormous success and turned the 28-year-old debutant into a star. The film also won an Oscar for foreign film in 1968, and due to Menzel's irresistible film, it happened that Yugoslav film was left without a feature Oscar forever. Yu Cinematography's most acclaimed film - Petrovic's "Feather Gatherers" - competed the same year, but the end of "Strictly Controlled Trains" didn't stand a chance. RELATED NEWS Jiri Menzel THE GIANT'S DEPARTURE The late Oscar winner Jiri Menzel was an important participant in the Czech new wave MOTOVUNA PROPELLER The main prize of this year's Motovun Film Festival was won by the film 'My Morning Laughter' In the mid-1960s, Prague's spring was at its peak, and Menzel produced films of unequal quality on the assembly line. The most famous and peppery of them will be completed in the winter of 1969, when Soviet tanks were already in Prague. It is "Sheva at the end", a film about a group of intellectuals who were sent to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in the 1950s to do manual work at a metal waste dump. It was the darkest, most sarcastic and most political of Menzel's comedies. Had it been completed ten months earlier, it would not have been a problem - but, in an environment of Soviet "normalization", the film was quickly bunkered and not shown in Czechoslovakia until the fall of the Wall. image Strictly controlled trains Jiri Menzel The Czechoslovak authors of that era were faced with a difficult choice: whether to escape censorship and emigrate, or to stay and work in new, far more difficult conditions. Foreman emigrated and became in many ways another and different, American director. Menzel stayed. He estimated - probably correctly - that he could not transplant his creativity into another climate, outside of his language, culture, humor, literary sources. During the years of normalization, he regularly worked, screened his favorite Hrabal (Postrižiny / Prečice, 1980), but his films were not noticed. Until 1985, when he returned to the big stage with the rural comedy "My Little Village". This cheerful, apolitical comedy about the fat master and his dumb apprentice will become - at least in Yugoslavia - the ultimate "Czech film". Today - with a fairly colonized multiplex repertoire - it sounds unreal that a Czech film was a huge hit and dominated the cinema repertoire in Zagreb for weeks. Menzel proved to be a great, outstanding entertainer. Directing in theaters This is the time when he began to direct intensively in the theater, among others in Croatia. At the Zagreb Comedy Theater, he directs "The Powerless in the Mind" and the French burlesque "Fool for Dinner". He staged "Hamlet" at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival in the 1980s, and in 1990 he directed Boban Machiavelli's "Mandragol" with Ivica at the ITD Theater . At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Menzel is 51 years old and has the status of a national film icon. For many Eastern European authors, the 1990s fell hard. It was hard for them to wake up in a new world where there are no more censors, they are no longer dissidents, but in the new capitalist economy they cannot replace state money and close the budget. Menzel has adapted - he makes less frequent, but bigger and more luxurious films. At a time when everything Russian and Soviet was "puj-pik!", He was screening the novel "Life and Incredible Adventures of Ivan Chonkin's Recruits" by Vladimir Vojnović in an international co-production and in Russian . The most expensive project Menzel will conclude his unbreakable connection with Hrabal with his last film adaptation and last important film: "I Served the King of England" from 2006. The novel about a waiter who serves occupying officers in a posh country villa during the German occupation was written in the 70's and published in 1983. It had long been the subject of Menzel's wish, but the rights were occupied, and the bearer refused to relinquish them. Menzel - who was not the easiest in nature - went so far as to whip up the rights-keeping producer on the red carpet in Karlovy Vary. In the end, he made a film, the most ambitious and most expensive to date. The reviews were moderately praiseworthy, but it was hard to shake off the impression that we had seen it all once before, but fresher, livelier and at the right historical moment. By the end of his career, Menzel will record only one more comedy - "Don Juan" (2013), which was mediocre. Menzel's long and productive career has had its ups and downs and is largely based on three ingenious films. But - those three films are really both great and important. With them, Menzel became a true Eastern European classic, but at the same time different from the typical image of Eastern European classics. Instead of gloomy and presumptuous films about the collective, suffering and national destiny, he made entertaining and light-hearted films that, like acids, gnawed at every pomp, every ideology and all national pride. 'We all saw him as a man of Schweik's spirit' Rajko Grlić director - Jiří Menzel was a director who flew brilliantly on the wings of Hrabal's literature. He was a synonym for a real Czech, whom we all perceive as a man of the Schweik spirit - our director Rajko Grlić tells us about his colleague, who, it is said, met Menzela at various film festivals where they both competed. - He made films based on Hrabal's literature. These were deeds that entered the souls of small people, those who lived in small towns, hamlets, accurately representing their habits and spirit. Through his films, archaeologists will get to know the Czech best - says Grlić. As he studied film in Prague, he was well acquainted with Menzel’s work and work even before the two of them met in person. - He was three generations ahead of me at the faculty. And before we started moving in the same circles, I went to one small theater where he staged plays. I will also remember him as a great theater director - he recalls. He was, he says, a very witty and wiggly man. - And it is interesting that he enjoyed acting. There aren’t a lot of directors who have that passion. But when it exists, then it is usually very large and strong - says Grlić. - We were always joking when we saw each other. We robbed each other of festivals. So it was when I last saw him, at a festival in the Netherlands. We talked all day about who would get the award. In the end, I succeeded. He was angry for a few minutes. And then we celebrated. It was a real friendly game - says Grlić. Dagmar Ruljančić translator Dagmar Ruljančić, as a Czech who moved to Croatia, has become one of the most important and most active protagonists of cultural cooperation between the two countries in the past four decades. She remembers director Menzel as a student, she recalls. - I studied at the Film Academy and at Charles University in Prague, and I made money by writing mostly film magazines, so I interviewed Menzel as well. As a girl, I moved to Zagreb where I met Nenad Patu, the editor of the film program at Television Zagreb. I suggested that we bring Menzel to the show "3, 2, 1 ... go!", Which he had just started with a team of young filmmakers. We have been trying to bring him to Croatia for a long time. Menzel then worked for the Czechoslovak Film Company, and when he finally got approval to come, it was his first outing behind the Iron Curtain. He fell in love with Croatia, because, you know, he loved the sea, like all Czechs. But still, he liked our actors the most. Little is known, but Menzel has directed plays all over Europe, and in Croatia as many as 10 of them. My function was to be with him as a translator in the theater. It would be intense socializing for eight hours a day during acting rehearsals and staging the play - Dagmar Ruljančić told us. Over time, she and Menzel became friends, so it’s hard for her to objectively tell what her impression is of that great director. - He was witty, gentle and persistent, very talented, especially for comedy. He made two documentaries for Croatian Television in which I collaborated as a screenwriter and collected materials for the film. It was wonderful to work with him, he always listened to our ideas and the film was made in parallel with our revisions - explains the translator. In the fall of 2017, at the initiative of the Croatian-Czech Society and translator Dagmar Ruljančić, with whom Menzel had collaborated for years, he agreed to make a documentary about Zagreb, but was prevented from doing so by a serious illness that killed him. - At the moment when we agreed on the financial construction, we were informed from the Czech Republic that he fell ill, so the whole project stopped - the translator points out. Her husband Dragan Ruljančić was a cameraman on Menzel's documentaries about Croatia. - My husband was Menzel's schoolboy, although a little later, they studied at the same Academy and therefore had a good time - he adds. The news of Menzel's death shook her because they were good friends. - It is difficult to imagine a Czech film without him. He was the representative of the Czech new wave and he commissioned the Czech film - emphasizes Dagmar Ruljančić. Marijan Lipovac, President of the Croatian-Czech Society - I met Menzel and communicated with him only once in 2001 in the premises of the Zagreb Fair at the traditional Christmas Fair organized by the International Women's Club Zagreb. I was a journalist in Vjesnik at the time and while walking I noticed him at a stand, so I decided to approach him and speak to him in Czech. I asked him how he liked the beer being served, and he replied that he didn’t like beer at all, but preferred to watch women. I conveyed this to my fellow journalists, so the next day all the newspapers wrote that Menzel said that women are better than beer - said Marijan Lipovac. (pp, tš)