1929

1929 chiefly serves as director Antonín Kachlík’s historical opus, as well as a testament to the state of Czechoslovak cinema around 1974. Based on a script by pro-regime screenwriter Jaroslav Matějka, this political tale celebrates the election of Klement Gottwald to the head of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1929. Because the rise of this pro-Stalinist figure met with considerable opposition from some quarters (chiefly from certain left-wing intellectual circles), the tale told in the film is subject to much historical revisionism. For example, the role of author Marie Majerová (played in the film by Jiřina Petrovická) is significantly downplayed. The story, filled with the kind of ideological red-meat sought by the regime in the 1970s, also presents the idealised private lives of its protagonists, for example the family life of Antonín Zápotocký (Czechoslovak prime minister from 1948, and later president). The film serves as an insightful document of contemporary filmmaking, so subjugated to state control that viewers would often derive unintended comedic pleasure from the end result.