LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Karel Kachyna
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Karel Kachyna's 1970 The Ear is a harrowing tale that interweaves marital discord and surveillance paranoia. With its portrait of a government functionary who spends a sleepless night wondering if he'll be arrested before daybreak, it's no wonder that The Ear had to wait until 1989 for its Czech premiere; the wonder is that it was made at all. The latter, at least, can be explained by the fact that Kachyna's long-time collaborator, scenarist Jan Procházka, was a government official of some standing - which accounts, no doubt, for The Ear's insider perspective, playing as it does with the couple's knowledge of which rooms in their comfortable house are likely bugged and which aren't. As they discuss the arrest of his superior, the couple moves from room to room, opening and closing doors depending on which conversations they want heard and which they don't. (After a long night of drinking and recriminations about their infrequent sex life, he pulls a bear rug from a kitchen cabinet and lays it on the floor, their bedroom assumed to be bugged.) With its escalating marital tensions, The Ear is as much Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as 1984, with a helping of Seconds for the flashbacks to the official party they've just come from, replaying idle chat that seems menacing in retrospect.
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Exactly a year ago, Karel Kachyna, who has died aged 79, was at the Riverside Studios in London to introduce a season of his films. It was a long overdue tribute to one of the predominant Czech directors, comparatively unknown to British audiences. This was partly due to the fact that four of Kachyna's major films were banned for over twenty years, and only re-released after the "Velvet Revolution" brought down the Communist regime in 1989.
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"The Last Butterfly," a 1991 English-language film by Czech director Karel Kachyna, has elements in common with "Schindler's List" beyond merely its Holocaust theme. Primarily, there's a life-saving list of Jewish names that serves as a dramatic fulcrum.
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Karel Kachyna, who was one of the first graduates from the Prague film school, began directing in the fifties, at first in partnership with his contemporary Vojtech Jasny. In "The Night of the Bride" (1967), Kachyna turns to the sort of socio-political issue that is the concern of many of the modern Hungarian film-makers. More lyrical, more intimate, more amusing than its Hungarian counterparts, this film is set in a small Moravian village and deals with the problems involved in collectivism. The dramatic tension in "The Night of the Bride" is created by the return from a convent of a novice who leads the villagers in a revolt on Christmas Eve. This character, with her underlying sensuality, her masochistic delight in walking barefoot through the snow, her puritanical treatment of her idiot servant that borders on sadism, is portrayed by Jana Brejchova, the leading young Czech actress. Her chief opponent, the tiny communist official of the village, well acted by Minislav Hofman, is for much of the film a figure of fun, but he does ultimately appear as courageous and sympathetic.
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Karel Kachyna has made more than 50 features and is still working today. He didn't hit his stride until he began a 10-year collaboration with Jan Procházka; this writer-director team embarked on a remarkable group of lyrical, psychologically astute films about children and adolescents. The finest, Long Live the Republic! (1965)—made as part of the 20th-anniversary celebration of the Czechoslovakian republic's emancipation by the Red Army—is no servile propaganda piece; in demythologizing the heroics of victory (the title is bitterly ironic), it tested the limits of official censorship. Combining past, present, and fantasy to form a vast visionary fresco, the film recounts the liberation of Moravia during the last days of the Second World War through the eyes of an abused 12-year-old boy. Kachyna's last film with Procházka, The Ear (1969), a ferocious black comedy, deals with a high-ranking bureaucrat and his wife, who return home from a reception to learn that his boss has been purged and their home bugged.
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Karel Kachyna’s film was based on the autobiographical book of the same name, written by Ota Pavel in 1986. Forbidden Dreams is Kachyna’s second film based on Ota Pavel’s childhood and the fate of a Jewish family during the Second World War. The first such film as Golden Eels from 1979. Creator: Ota Pavel. Screenwriter: Karel Kachyňa, Music: Luboš Fišer. Cameraman: Vladimír Smutný.
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Karel Kachyna