Girls from a Porcelain Factory

Dagmar Veškrnová’s first film role was as one of the heroines of Juraj Herz’s comedy Holky z porcelánu (Girls from a Porcelain Factory). In this movie made in 1974, the then 21-year-old student from Brno’s JAMU academy played Dana, a zany girl who romantically hopes to find a suitable partner – just like her colleagues from the uninspiring warehouse of a large porcelain factory. Whereas 15-year-old Maruška (Lenka Kořínková) only timidly dreams of love, Dana finally lands a shy plumber played by Jan Hartl. The more experienced Věra (Eva Čeřovská) is due to be married, while Jířa (Jelena Šebestová) already has a child by an unknown father. And Helena (Marta Rašlová) only belatedly finds out that the attractive guitarist, Petr, is actually a milling-machine operator and the son of her boss (Míla Myslíková) to boot… A woman’s view of the world predominates in the story, which is ensured by the debutante screenwriter Jaromíra Kolárová (who also wrote a biopic for Juraj Herz in 1985 about the communist journalist Jožka Jabůrková Zastihla mě noc (Caught by Night)). In the warehouse, where an inventory is underway before the arrival of a new boss, men are in a minority – whether it be the new manager Jarolím (Josef Langmiler) or the pedantic head of the inventory committee Mr Rybička (Mnislav Hofmann, who – like Veškrnová – also appeared in Herz’s detective story Holka na zabití (A Girl to Be Killed) a year later). For Juraj Herz, Girls from a Porcelain Factory was the first film he shot under the restrictive conditions for cinema that prevailed during the “normalisation” era of Soviet entrenchment that followed the Warsaw Pact invasion. For the first time, this leading auteur of the Czechoslovak New Wave tried – with immediate success – to shoot a light, low-key story complemented by none too functional song numbers, which was in direct contrast to his previous highly stylised, mostly dramatic material. The power of the acting performances is helped by the combination of young, virtual unknowns and experienced acting legends. One of the members of the inventory committee was also played by the actor and future director Jiří Smyczek.