Summary
Director Karel Steklý added this motion picture to the list of retrospective films made in the post-1968 “normalisation” era that criticise “abhorrent” practices of interwar politics. The film’s protagonists are two veterans of the Great War. While Jan (Jiří Krampol) finds a job as an electrician after the conflict, Ríša (Petr Svojtka) becomes an editor of the social democratic newspaper Právo lidu (People’s Rights). That lets him get close to the amorality of party dignitaries. Among them is Senator Koubek (Zdeněk Buchvaldek), who withdraws from public life following the scandal cited in the film title. However, he takes part in a clandestine meeting of social democratic MPs who decide to desert their voters and, following incitement from prime minister Vlastimil Tusar, resign from their posts… The slanted film presents the events of 1920 as a moral victory of the social democratic party’s left wing, which later gave rise to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
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