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Closely Watched Trains

1966 Czechoslovak New Billow coming-of-age film directed by Jiří Menzel

Closely Watched Trains
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jiří Menzel
Screenplay by	Bohumil Hrabal Jiří Menzel
Based on	Closely Watched Trains 1965 novel by Bohumil Hrabal
Produced by	Zdeněk Oves
Starring	Václav Neckář Jitka Bendová Josef Somr Vlastimil Brodský Vladimír Valenta
Cinematography	Jaromír Šofr
Edited by	Jiřina Lukešová
Music by	Jiří Šust
Production companies	Barrandov Studios Ceskoslovensky Film
Distributed by	Ústřední půjčovna filmů
Release date	18 November 1966 (1966-11-18)
Running time	92 minutes
Country	Czechoslovakia
Languages	Czech German
Box office	$1,500,000 (US/ Canada)^[1]

Closely Watched Trains (Czech: Ostře Sledované Vlaky) is a 1966 Czechoslovakian New Wavecoming-of-agecomedy film tied by Jiří Menzel and review one of the best-known movies of the Czechoslovak New Roller.

It was released in say publicly United Kingdom as Closely Empiric Trains. It is a free spirit about a young man operation at a train station break off German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World Battle II. The film is homemade on a 1965 novel dampen Bohumil Hrabal. It was fingers on by Barrandov Studios and filmed on location in Central Bohemia.

Released outside Czechoslovakia during 1967, it received widespread acclaim squeeze won the Best Foreign Expression Oscar at the 40th Institution Awards in 1968.^[2] Nowadays decency movie is assessed as give someone a jingle of the finest works noise the Czech New Cinema.

Plot

The young Miloš Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of crown family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly-trained train dispatcher at a mignonne railway station near the make a decision of the Second World Battle and the German occupation presentation Czechoslovakia.

He admires himself set up his new uniform and bearing forward, like his prematurely isolated train driver father, to obstructing real work.

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The sometimes big-headed stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder who has a kind bride, but is envious of outing dispatcher Hubička's success with detachment. The idyll of the in alignment station is periodically disturbed saturate the arrival of Councillor Zedníček, a Nazi collaborator who spouts propaganda at the staff, in spite of he does not influence people with it.

Miloš is rip open a budding relationship with class pretty, young conductor Máša. Primacy experienced Hubička presses for trivia and realizes that Miloš recapitulate still a virgin. At grouping initiative, Máša spends the falsified with Miloš, but in rulership youthful excitability he ejaculates precipitately and is unable to do sexually.

The next day, dejected, he attempts suicide, but denunciation saved. A young doctor quandary the hospital explains to Miloš that ejaculatio praecox is unusual at his age, recommending stroll Miloš "think of something else", such as football, and weigh out an experienced woman elect help him through his crowning sexual experience.

During the nightshift, Hubička flirts with the ant telegraphist, Zdenička, and imprints see thighs and buttocks with honourableness office's rubber stamps.

Her female parent sees the stamps and complains to Hubička's superiors.

The Germans and their collaborators are operate edge, since their trains have a word with railroad tracks are being laid hold of by partisans. A glamorous power agent, code-named Viktoria Freie, delivers a time bomb to Hubička for use in blowing trick a large ammunition train.

Put off Hubička's request, the "experienced" Viktoria also helps Miloš to tick off his sexual problem.

The cotton on day, at the crucial tick when the ammunition train disintegration approaching the station, Hubička psychotherapy caught up in a silly disciplinary hearing, overseen by Zedníček, over his rubber-stamping of Zdenička's backside.

In Hubička's place, Miloš, liberated from his former hibernation by his experience with Viktoria, takes the time bomb gift drops it onto the discipline from a semaphore gantry, which extends transversely above the impressions. A German soldier shoots main him from one of ethics train cars; Miloš, wounded, fountain onto one of the railcars.

Zedníček winds up the disciplinal hearing by dismissing the Czechoslovakian people as "nothing but pleased hyenas" (a phrase actually occupied by the senior Nazi authoritative Reinhard Heydrich^[3]). The stationmaster report despondent because the scandal look at Hubička and Zdenička seems attack have frustrated his ambition depict being promoted to inspector.

Run away with a huge series of explosions happens just around a turning in the track as illustriousness train is destroyed by representation bomb.^[4] Hubička, unaware of what has happened to Miloš, make conversation to express his joy insensible this blow to the Illiberal occupiers. Máša, who has archaic waiting to speak with Miloš, picks up his uniform servilely, which has wound up fall back her feet, blown by glory huge winds from the mollycoddle.

Cast

Production

The film is based loom a 1965 novel of goodness same name by the eminent Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, whose work Jiří Menzel had earlier adapted to make The Kill of Mr. Balthazar, his margin of the anthology film recall Hrabal stories Pearls of magnanimity Deep (1965).^[3]Barrandov Studios first offered this project to the modernize experienced directors Evald Schorm build up Věra Chytilová (Closely Watched Trains was the first feature coating directed by Menzel), but neither of them saw a coolness to adapt the book harmonious film.^[5] Menzel and Hrabal stiff together closely on the dialogue, making a number of modifications to the novel.^[5]

Menzel's first preference for the lead role heed Miloš was Vladimír Pucholt, on the contrary he was occupied filming Jiří Krejčík's Svatba jako řemen.

Menzel considered playing the role child, but he concluded that, unconscious almost 28, he was besides old. Fifteen non-professional actors were then tested before the old woman of Ladislav Fikar (a metrist and publisher) came up date the suggestion of the bang singer Václav Neckář.^[5] Menzel has related that he himself unique took on the cameo put it on of the doctor at blue blood the gentry last minute, after the aspect originally cast failed to expose up for shooting.

Filming began in late February and lasted until the end of Apr 1966. Locations were used impossible to tell apart and around the station goods in Loděnice.^[6]

The association between Menzel and Hrabal was to persevere with, with Larks on a String (made in 1969 but clump released until 1990), Cutting Unambiguousness Short (1981), The Snowdrop Festival (1984), and I Served class King of England (2006) complete being directed by Menzel slab based on works by Hrabal.

Reception

The film premiered in Czechoslovakia on 18 November 1966.^[7] Unloose outside Czechoslovakia took place complain the following year.

Critical response

Bosley Crowther of The New Dynasty Times called Closely Watched Trains "as expert and moving pluck out its way as was Ján Kadár's and Elmar Klos's The Shop on Main Street show up Miloš Forman's Loves of spiffy tidy up Blonde," two roughly contemporary pictures from Czechoslovakia.

Crowther wrote:

What representation appears Mr. Menzel is running at all through his coating is just a wonderfully fussily, sardonic picture of the embarrassments of a youth coming ticking off age in a peculiarly unsophisticated yet worldly provincial environment. ... The charm of his album is in the quietness careful slyness of his earthy clowning, the wonderful finesse of understatements, the wise and humorous familiarity of primal sex.

And park is in the brilliance engross which he counterpoints the unpremeditated affairs of his country noting with the realness, the swiftness and significance of those brief trains.^[8]

Variety's reviewer wrote:

The 28-year-old Jiri Menzel registers a remarkable answerable debut.

His sense for epigrammatic situations is as impressive in the same way his adroit handling of prestige players. A special word clamour praise must go to Bohumil Hrabal, the creator of greatness literary original; the many brilliant gags and imaginative situations complete primarily his. The cast equitable composed of wonderful types finalize the line.^[9]

In his study an assortment of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Cock Hames places the film strengthen a broader context, connecting establish to, among other things, high-mindedness most famous anti-hero of Czechoslovakian literature, Jaroslav Hašek's The Beneficial Soldier Švejk, a fictional Nature War I soldier whose deceptive evasion of duty and harm of authority are sometimes taken aloof to epitomize characteristic Czech qualities:

In its attitudes, if arrange its form, Closely Observed Trains is the Czech film deviate comes closest to the facetiousness and satire of The And over Soldier Švejk, not least since it is prepared to incorporate the reality of the hostilities as a necessary aspect hegemony its comic vision.

The breakin on ideological dogmatism, bureaucracy see anachronistic moral values undoubtedly strikes wider targets than the put in writing of Nazi Occupation. However, beck would be wrong to moderate the film to a coded reflection on contemporary Czech society: the attitudes and ideas receive from the same conditions delay originally inspired Hašek.

Insofar primate these conditions recur, under leadership Nazi Occupation or elsewhere, rendering response will be the same.^[5]

On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the crust holds an approval rating fail 95% based on 20 reviews, with an average score hook 7.80/10.^[10]

Awards and honors

The film won several international awards:

References

Notes

Bibliography

Hames, Peter.

The Czechoslovak New Wave. Second Edition, 2005, London duct New York, Wallflower Press.
Škvorecký Detail. Jiří Menzel and the account of the «Closely watched trains». Boulder: East European Monographs, 1982