When directionless slacker Honza (Bolek Polívka, soon to become a Chytilová regular) drops out of college, he decides to take on a career as a train conductor, to the perplexity of his father and friends. Yet almost nothing goes right for Honza, who must not only navigate the bureaucratic absurdities of the state-controlled railway system but also the romantic advances of three different women (Dagmar Bláhová, Jana Synková, and Jaroslava Kretschmerová), leading up to an uproarious finale set in a snowbound train. Employing endlessly inventive narrative left turns, Chytilová incisively criticizes the regressive intransigence of Czechoslovakia’s “normalization” era with her patented brand of gleeful, anarchic mirth.
Vera Chytilova was a pioneering Czech New Wave filmmaker known for her formally radical, socially defiant cinema. After the international success of Daisies (1966) and The Apple Game (1976), she continued her rebellious spirit through the 1980s with films such as Faun’s Very Late Afternoon (1983), Kopytem sem, kopytem tam (1988), and the bitterly satirical Kalamita (1981). Despite censorship, production challenges, and state pressures, Chytilová remained uncompromising in her critique of authoritarianism, using absurdism, improvisation, and experimental style to expose the fractures of late-socialist Czechoslovakia. She is remembered as one of Europe’s most fearless and inventive women directors, whose work continues to inspire generations of filmmakers.
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