Day for My Love

In the 1970s, even Juraj Herz had to adapt to the requirements for shooting “realist” contemporary films. After the comedy Holky z porcelánu (Girls from a Porcelain Factory, 1974) and the crime movie Holka na zabití (A Girl to Be Killed, 1975), he also made the psychological drama Den pro mou lásku (The Day for My Love, 1976). In 1978, before the similarly conceived, Křehké vztahy (Delicate Relationships, 1979), he had already revisited his penchant for strongly stylised stories thanks to the fairy tales Panna a netvor (The Virgin and the Monster) and Deváté srdce (The Ninth Heart). Day for My love is a low-key tale of a young married couple who lose their little daughter to a horrible disease. The mother – Marie Stašková – struggles with depression. She tries in vain with her husband Petr to conceive another child. Ultimately, however, everything ends happily… The first film screenplay by the successful TV writer Markéta Zinnerová enabled Herz to successfully distance himself from the realities of hard-line socialism that defined the “normalisation” era: he shot a delicate, purely intimate story that was made without the expressionism peculiar to his most famous projects up to that time, such as Spalovače mrtvol (The Cremator, 1968). This timeless film looks at how a death in the family can painfully affect one’s life. An old neighbour becomes a foil to the main heroine. After her husband’s death, she hopes to find a partner in woe in Marie. The active approach to life from the husband, and later from Marie herself, subsequently helps them overcome all their problems… This psychological drama has a slightly lyrical touch, aided by the camerawork of Jiří Macháně, taking account of the heroine’s profession as a photographer, and Marta Vančurová’s delicate acting performance. The director had a greater understanding of Marie and her situation than he did for the character of Petr, who is a rather lacklustre figure (the dancer Vlastimil Harapes who nonetheless made a success of the role of the avian beast in Panna a netvor [The Virgin and the Monster]). The role of the neighbour was played by Jiřina Šejbalová while Herz cast members of the Studio Ypsilon theatre group as wedding guests who perceive a marriage celebration as a kind of happening.