White Lady

The director Zdeněk Podskalský began his successful comedy career of the 1960s with an incisive comic satire inspired by a short story from writer Karel Michal, Jak Pupenec ke štěstí přišel (How Pupenec Found Happiness). Michal, who was screenwriter for the film, developed the original anecdotal tale into a complex form, which changed Bilá paní (The White Lady) into a chillingly venomous parable about Czechoslovak society at that time. In Michal’s story, a kindly castle ghost – the noblewoman Perchta – in the socialist milieu becomes a victim of lying and greedy communist bosses, who cannot countenance the existence of miracles, which could highlight their own incompetence. At the same time, they con citizens, who know the truth, but who feel like they should go along with everything that’s required of them in front of their neighbours, including their nearest and dearest. Consequently, because a bridge is missing, they eventually “cross” the river with the motto “Shut up and swim.” The hero of the story, the castellan Jindřich Pupenec (played by Vlastimil Brodský) tries in vain to resist the reigning insanity with reason based on healthy belief. Conversely, Percha’s magic formula, “Believe, but think twice about whom you believe,” takes the indestructible eponymous character to Prague Castle – the notional seat of state power – in a symbolic finale. The censors sent Podskalský’s movie to the so-called vault reserved for films that were not permitted to disrupt the civil ethos of the “normalisation” era of Soviet entrenchment that prevailed after the Warsaw Pact invasion. Nonetheless, this charming film is still one of those ageless movies that represent a genre counterweight to the artistic works of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Irena Kačírková also exhibits plenty of charm in the title role, while Rudolf Hrušínský and Miloš Kopecký play the communist manipulators in the fictional village of Komonice with plenty of élan.