Summary
This debut feature film from writer-director Zdeněk Zelenka is a fairytale loosely inspired by a storybook of the same name written by Václav Řezáč. The title inheritance in question is a magic hat, which fulfils every wish of its owner. By chance, the hat ends up in the possession of hat maker’s son Vítek and his band of young friends. But a power-hungry duke, who rules over his subjects in a harsh and unjust manner, is also after the magical item. The children realise that in the wrong hands, the magic hat could become a dangerous weapon, and so they rid the item of its powers. Evil is ultimately punished and ordinary folk realise that they can best govern themselves... Zelenka’s “de-magicked fairytale” is an East German-Czechoslovak co-production released in 1985. Asides from illustrating the strong state of 1980s children’s film fairytales, it offers a fantastic performance from Jiří Kodet in the role of an irascible blue-blooded fiend.
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