Summary
Novelist Josef Nesvadba made his mark in Czech film history as the author of terrific source material and as a screenwriter. With the exception of Tajemství zlatého Buddhy (The Secret of the Gold Buddha, 1973), Nesvadba attended to sci-fi themes. He would write screenplays based on his own literary output, and this is what he did for the 1969 sci-fi comedy Zabil jsem Einsteina, pánové..., directed by the experienced Oldřích Lipský. On this occasion, however, the subject matter better suited co-screenwriter Miloš Macourek, who took part in the shooting of several stories based on mind-spinning turns of events with Václav Vorlíček (“Pane, vy jste vdova!” [You Are a Widow, Sir, 1970], Což takhle dát si špenát [How About a Plate of Spinach?, 1977]) and Jindřich Polák (Zítra vstanu a opařím se čajem [I’ll Get Up and Scald Myself with Tea Tomorrow, 1977]). When it comes to Lipský’s involvement in directing Zabil jsem Einsteina, pánové… it’s clear that sci-fi was not his usual ground as he was essentially a writer-director who dramatised comic material (Muž z prvního století [The Man from the First Century, 1961], Srdečný pozdrav ze zeměkoule [Cordially from Earth, 1982]). This plot of this film, which cinema audiences got to see at the start of the 1970s, turns on a well-known hypothesis concerning time travel. If somebody could go back in time and assassinate Albert Einstein, they would prevent the application of outcomes of the theoretical physicist’s work – outcomes which, the film story relates, were essential in the construction of the destructive “G-bomb” at the dawn of the third millennium. One effect of a G-bomb detonation that has taken place is that women have lost the capability to reproduce and have started to grow beards. A scientific expedition from the future, led by Professor Moore (Jiří Sovák), travels to the year 1911. But expedition members Gwen Williams (Jana Brejchová), a historian, and Frank Pech, a mathematician, do not want to kill: they only want to help facilitate a fatal accident. According to attested historical documents on which the mission is based, Einstein (Petr Čepek) almost died in the house of the banker Wertheim when a heavy chandelier plunged from the ceiling. If they could just move him to the right spot, then it would be mission accomplished. But the thoroughly planned mission fails – and a second expedition causes scientific consequences that end up leaving Moore as the only “real man” on Earth… For Lipský, this motion picture followed his experimental Happy End (1967). It is a crazy, over-complicated comedy, but, in the end, it is saved by a great cast. As an aside, it is noteworthy that the extinction of mankind was connected to secret US arms industry activities.
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