Summary
The comedy film Náš dědek Josef (Old Man Joe, 1976) saw our elderly wine-grower protagonist happily embracing the idea of collectivisation. In this 1977 film, director Antonín Kachlík returns to the setting of a 1950s Moravian village. Even more so than his previous film, O moravské zemi (The Moravian Land) serves as a polemical counter-argument to the banned Všichni dobří rodáci (All Good Countrymen, 1968) from director Vojtěch Jasný. Kachlík counters the drama about forced collectivisation with a “building a better future” optimism, also going against the more critical downbeat ending of the book on which this film is based – the never published novel Hesla na vratech (Mottos on the Gates) by Slovak writer Fanek Jilík. Consequently, the Moravian village of Kunovice becomes an environment in which former farmer Joza Jagoš overcomes stubbornness and wrong-thinking and instead works towards a happy, socialistic future. The star of Jasný’s classic, Radoslav Brzobohatý, was forced to “atone” through his starring role in this ideologically “correct” film.
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