World Belongs to Us

The World Belongs to Us exceeds the average domestic film production of the time in terms of its quality. The production was financed by the AB company, in whose studios in Barrandov the film was shot during April and May 1937. The premiere took place on 30 July in Prague; it was shown in two biographies simultaneously, where The World Belongs to Us was screened for the next four weeks. According to the capacity of the theatres, approximately 150,000 spectators could see the film at that time.

The release of the new film V+W was accompanied by a massive media campaign for the time, with advertising slogans most often repeating that it was an optimistic film, fighting for democracy. The professional critics clearly welcomed the boldness of the theme and the moral mission of the work; they praised the extraordinary technical level of the film (the construction, the camera work and the acting), but on the other hand, they reproached the filmmakers for the naivety of the plot, the poor dramaturgy and, to some extent, the unoriginality of the comic scenes in V+W (especially the sequence in the engine room, which bears a striking resemblance to a scene from Chaplin's 1936 film Modern Times).

As a loose adaptation of Voskovec and Werich's play Rub a Cheek, which premiered at the Liberated Theatre on 18 December 1936, The World Belongs to Us offers a contemporary theme: the danger of a fascist coup and the threat to the democratic principles of the state. The film's plot develops along two lines that gradually intertwine: the dramatic conflict between workers and political adventurers is permeated by the grotesque peripeties of two “unknown friends” played by V+W.