Guard

Czech screenwriter and film director Ivan Renč (born in 1937), father of film director Filip Renč, has been largely relegated to oblivion. His only full-length picture is this 1970 psychological drama in which Jiří Hrzán played a very uncharacteristic principal part. In the story – deliberately set in an indeterminate space-time continuum – the popular comic actor portrays Josef Vildomec, an exemplary prison warder who behaves decently towards the prisoners but vents his piled-up anger, brutally tormenting his dog. Gradually, however, the surrounding reality gets the better of him – eventually the same cruelty and callousness besetting those around him take over in his behaviour towards the convicts. The film, a dark depiction of the destruction of human normality that occurs during abnormal times, can be considered one of the final echoes of the free era of the 1960s.