Even during the toughest times under a communist regime, Czech films always displayed a great deal of restraint when it came to discussing the politics of their country. Though armed with the talent and the forum to challenge the political affairs of their country, with the big screen as the canvas upon which to examine these injustices, Czech moviemakers have opted to use film as a way of exploring the everyday lives of everyday people. Of those films, especially those made during the Czech New Wave in the 1960s, that have questioned the government, they have always done so through allegory, imagery and humor. Questions of politics have always existed as an overtone and have rarely been examined head-on. Though the Czech Republic has been free of communism for more than 10 years now, this disinclination to talk about life behind the Iron Curtain is something that continues today. Czech moviemakers still strive to display truth in their work, but it’s a subjective truth that they are more comfortable with—a truth that reveals the banality of everyday life, but not necessarily the ills.

At the height of the Czech New Wave, Milos Forman (The Firemen’s Ball; Loves of a Blonde), Vera Chytilová (Something Else; Daisies), Ivan Passer (Intimate Lighting) and Jirí Menzel (Closely Watched Trains; My Sweet Little Village) made just a few of the films that changed the face of Czech cinema—and radiated a sense of unease with the communist regime. In later decades, it was these same Czech pioneers who were still drawing audiences. In fact, in 1985, Menzel’s My Sweet Little Village, the story of a truck driver and his foolish delivery man on a small town’s cooperative farm, attracted an audience of five million people to the theaters—half the Czech Republic’s population. An astounding 10 million people saw the film on video. Though the Czech Republic has a large moviegoing public, that kind of drawing power is rare.

The formula for creating such a blockbuster hit has not been repeated in the Czech Republic. Though a few films have found a great deal of success with Czech audiences—like Jan Sverák’s cult hit movie The Ride (1994), about two young men who buy a second-hand car and set out on a free-wheeling journey through Bohemia; or director Sasa Gedeon’s Indian Summer (1995) and The Return of an Idiot (1999), which took a leaf out of the book on the poetics of everyday banality—no film has yet matched the success of Menzel’s My Sweet Little Village. Though there is no surefire formula for success with Czech audiences, it’s common knowledge what Czech directors should avoid—attempting to emulate the action-packed, shoot-em-up films that make Hollywood movies so popular.

Shortly after 1989’s Velvet Revolution, Czech moviemakers took a stab at producing a slew of action films, complete with the requisite car chases and all the staples that make Hollywood films so exciting. They attained little success. Though Czech audiences love watching the same action-packed, uproarious Hollywood movies that draw audiences all over the world, they seem only willing to watch those films produced in the United States.

“As soon as a [Czech director] sets his sights on dazzling his audience and conquering the world with his movie, he is well on his way to a flop,” says the veteran Czech film director Karel Kachysa. Indeed, all the domestic flops over the past few years have either been action movies (usually set in the underworld) or titillating comedies—quality films that would seem to have the ability to fill movie theaters to capacity in other countries. Many contend the reason is that there is not yet a “Quentin Tarantino” in Bohemia—in other words, there has yet to be a homegrown moviemaker skillful enough to change audience perceptions and elevate literary trash to artistic heights.

As a result, Czech feature films remain introverted, slow-moving and unpretentious. The situation is akin to that of traditional European cinema: Czech moviemakers want to offer viewers enough time and space for contemplation of their own problems. Domestic audiences like films with well-worn themes. For Czech audiences, the most exciting kind of hero is the one who could easily be living right next door to them: everyday people in everyday situations tempt the Czech moviegoing public.

Czech films can be said to go against the grain of the mainstream Western cinema, which attempts to dazzle audiences with spectacular effects at almost any cost and as soon as possible. Instead, these films choose to involve the viewer on an emotional level. Yet, in creating such films—ones that will make the Czech audience nod in agreement and familiarity—Czech directors have alienated the global audience. Financing for Czech films is difficult to come by, and Czech moviemakers who find distribution at the international level are few.

Zdensk Troska, a popular Czech director of fairy tale films for children, says that his main target group is the local audience—and that is how he intends to keep it. Even Jan Sverák’s Oscar-winning Kolya, which made its international breakthrough thanks to Miramax, contains wisecracks and entire scenes that were incomprehensible to foreign audiences. And those whose films actually make it as far as international distribution usually refuse to accept the drastic editing that is often demanded of their movies. Juraj Jakubisko refused to follow the wishes of an American distributor when they asked him to edit his symbolist allegory, An Ambiguous Report About the End of the World into an action-thriller. This is not an isolated view. In other European countries, too, moviemakers are increasingly convinced that they should make movies solely for local audiences. “As for their impact, most films never manage to go beyond the borders of their own countries,” says Vojtsch Jasns, the legendary Czech film director who now lives in New York. “There will always be a difference between national and universal movies. The latter are made only very rarely.”

As for those Czech moviemakers who have struck out to make films with international appeal and international concerns such as drugs and crime, they have been largely unsuccessful at pleasing audiences at home. Though Czech moviegoers are interested in seeing what is truthful in life, they do not seem to respond to portrayals of life’s harsh realities; their desire is to see life with a decidedly optimistic point of view. They are still looking to see a “happy reality” in their cinema. Juraj Jakubisko sees the main cause in what he describes as the failure of the older generation.

“For years, my generation did not realize the tremendous cost of the language of filmmaking. The state supplied money and we kept making movies against the establishment, even though we managed to conceal our messages in allegories. In this way, our generation was actually cutting the branch it was sitting on. We gained freedom in 1989, and sponsors began to appear, but the members of the generation realized they had no subjects to make films about. That is why the bulk of current film production is created by newcomers who did not have to adjust their thinking, as my generation did.”

The narrow-mindedness and frailty of the Czech film seems to have corroded the mentality of Czech moviemakers. Nobody in Bohemia would dare to address such major issues as man’s destiny in history the way the Hungarian film director István Szabó did in Sunshine. Unlike in Yugoslavia or Hungary, the present is still an empty concept for Czech film directors. One of the few Czech moviemakers who had the courage to set out to analyze the present is Radim Spacek. In 1996 Spacek made a documentary called Young Men Learn About the World, set in war-damaged Sarajevo. In 1998 he made a semi-autobiographical film, Rapid Eye Movement, about a young drug addict who decides to end his life. But Spacek’s films are too untraditional and unorthodox to play well to local audiences. The same can be said for the Polish film director Wiktor Grodecki, who makes movies in Bohemia. He also had a hard time introducing his story, Madragora, about the abuse of Czech children in pornographic productions, to a domestic audience. This is not the sort of reality that Czech audience are willing to accept.

“The Czech film is riding the crest of a retro wave,” says Ronald Rust, director of a festival in the German town of Cottbus, which shows films from the post-communist countries. “The Czech film seems to be living with comebacks, nostalgia and history. These are nice films that evoke pleasant feelings and show beautiful young people who run around in fields, reminiscing about their childhood. There is only one thing missing in these films: the present. The Czechs have been living in a reality completely different from that under socialism for over 10 years now, but their film stories are still the same as in the past. Poverty, unemployment and other new social ills do not seem to exist for Czech filmmakers.”

For Czech audiences, pleasure in film comes from an even mix of emotions, none overly negative. They want a bit of illusion, a bit of reality, a bit of laughter and a bit of melancholy. For Czech audiences, that is enough. MM