Summary
Thirty five years had passed before theatre director Alfréd Radok added stand-alone film directing to his career. The expressive approach to this story about the World War II fate of the Jewish Kaufmann family is enriched by innovative methods combining acted as well as documentary scenes. The chief protagonist is a doctor, Hana (Blanka Waleská), who due to her origins is dismissed by her clinic after the Nazis seize power. As a Jew living in a mixed marriage with her colleague Bureš (Otomar Krejča), she does for a time escape deportation to the Terezín ghetto. But in the end, even the doctor has to face the same fate as her family... In 1949, this ground-breaking film – both notable for its form and the topics it addressed – received a very cool reception from the approval bureaus. It was for a short time played in cinemas outside of Prague, but eventually it was excluded from distribution altogether. In the end, Radok had to content himself with directing titles that were thematically clearly “innocent”.
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