Summary
The stories of Bohumil Hrabal were a touchstone for director Jiří Menzel. By the time he turned to Skřivánci na niti (Skylarks on the String, 1969) he had already adapted a number of short stories from the writer’s 1965 collection Inzerát na dům, ve kterém už nechci bydlet (An Advertisement for the House I No Longer Wish to Live in). After Smrt pana Baltazara (The Death of Mr Balthazar, 1965) – which served as a short film segment of the anthology feature Perličky na dně (Pearls of the Deep, 1965), a motion picture sometimes described as a manifesto of sorts for the 1960s Czechoslovak New Wave generation of directors – Menzel turned to the wartime tragicomedy Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains, 1966). Its success was underscored by a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Skylarks on the String was another winning collaboration between the highly regarded filmmaker and the much admired writer. The film is set in Kladno steelworks, a place where political offenders against the communist regime were sent for “temporary employment”. These might include insubordinate intellectuals, religious affiliates or small traders. The temporary workers in the film include a former state prosecutor (Leoš Suchařípa), a young Adventist named Pavel (Václav Neckář), his love and fellow inmate Jitka (Jitka Zelenohorská) and the barber Kudla (Ferdinand Krůta). All are watched over by the young guard Anděl (Jaroslav Satoranský) who has also been charged with keeping an eye on the “hill girls” – women who try to cross over the country’s mountainous western borders. Although the main protagonists are all in the same boat, friendship and mutual loyalty have their limitations when there is no chance of justice and no way to appeal for help. A fanatical leader of a communist youth organisation points out the “enemies of the regime” to visiting Pioneers (the socialists’ favoured term for “scouts) as if they are contagious exotic animals. Even though things can always get worse, life never ceases to be both strange and beautiful… Rather than being greeted by popular acclaim, plaudits from critics and awards from international film festivals, the film instead ended up in the infamous “censor’s vault”. There was little appetite for storylines exploring the theme of 1950s’ political persecution in a Czechoslovak film industry that was busy adapting itself to the demands of post-1968 “normalisation”. A scene featuring senile government minister Zdeněk Nejedlý (Vladimír Šmeral) was cut but it was still not enough to placate the censor. The film was only premiered after November 1989 and although it earned its creator a Golden Bear at the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival it was a belated satisfaction. After Skylarks on the String, Menzel was not permitted to make another film for five years. His next offering was a essentially a socialist propaganda piece about the builders of a better future, Kdo hledá zlaté dno (Who Looks for Gold, 1974).
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