Chronicle of a Hot Summer

Kronika žhavého léta (Chronicle of a Hot Summer) is adapted from the 1954 novel Bitva (The Battle) by Václav Řezáč, a loose sequel to his 1951 work Nástup (Accession), which tells the story of the removal of German inhabitants from Sudeten Czechoslovakia after World War II. Bitva takes place in the summer of 1947, and relates the battles faced by progressive communists against enemies of the regime. Similarly to Řezáč, experienced director Jiří Sequens also eschews historical realism in favour of an ideologically tailored portrait in this 1973 film adaptation. Thus, the protagonist of the story is Bagár (Petr Haničinec), the honest chairman of the People’s District Committee (ONV – Okresní národní výbor). Together with other fair-minded communists in the border area around the village of Potočná, he is forced to endure various pressures exerted by the greedy evicted German settlers. The plot turns on how the February 1948 communist takeover of Czechoslovakia creates a sense of hope that the efforts of Bagár and his associates will not be in vain: all power will belong to the people and the efforts of saboteurs to take over a local textile plant and estate will not succeed.