Summary
Director Pavel Hobl made a perhaps unexpected move in adding this sci-fi comedy to his filmography in 1965. Before then, he was usually remarked upon as a creator of children’s features (Máte doma lva? [Do You Keep a Lion at Home?, 1963], Za pět minut sedm [Five Minutes to Seven, 1964]). Ztracená tvář, created with writer and screenwriter Josef Nesvadba, deals with an instance of plastic surgery that symbolises the character and moral metamorphosis of the recipient. In the story, set in the 1920s, the physician Bartoš (Vlastimil Brodský) decides to swap the face of a wanted criminal with the face of murdered priest Hopsasa. A turn of circumstance sees him receive the criminal’s face himself. Eventually, the doctor realises that he has begun to change for the worse. He will renounce the opportunity to use the support of gangsters to apply his revolutionary discoveries... German actor Fred Delmare employs his impressive physiognomy while embodying the criminal nicknamed “Cutter”, while František Filipovský plays the part of Father Hopsasa, a man with a peaceable countenance.
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