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An opera troupe in a small town decides to perform Mozart's Don Giovanni. The view behind the scenes uncovers the world of opera without the glitter. A tale of love and disappointment, about music and passionate love-making and about people that live their lives in spite of the opera.
The movie's main storyline follows the life of Otík, a young man, in a tight-knit village community. The sweet-tempered Otík works as an assistant truck driver with Mr. Pávek, his older colleague and practical-minded neighbor. Pávek's family takes care of Otík, whose parents are dead. However, the two coworkers become at odds over Otík's inability to perform even the simplest tasks. Pávek demands that Otík be transferred to assist another driver, who happens to be a choleric and suspicious man named Turek (Turk in Czech). Rather than work with Turek, Otík decides to accept an offer of employment in Prague, but finds he does not fit in to the city life. After discovering that the transfer of Otík to Prague was a trick by a crooked politician to get a deal on Otík's large inherited house, Pávek agrees to give Otík a second chance and retrieves him from the city to resume their work together.
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.
Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the inter-war period. Jan Dítě, a young and clever waiter who wants to become a millionaire, comes to the conclusion that to achieve his ambitious goal he must be diligent, listen and observe as much as he can, be always discreet and use what he learns to his own advantage; but the turbulent tides of history will continually stand in his way.
A crime comedy directed by Jirí Menzel, based on a story by Edgar Wallace.
Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest skill, but with a slim and beautiful assistant, Anna. Antonin speaks to her. The two spend the night in the change room by the river, Antonin massaging her feet all night long. Katherine decides to move into the caravan with Ernie. But now the major and even the canon sense Anna's attractiveness...
In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.
Francin, manager of a small-town brewery, has a charming wife whose abundant blonde locks are an adornment to the town. Maryska looks ethereal but loves meat and beer, while Francin is an ascetic. The strict members of the brewery board of directors come to audit the accounts, but are diverted from concentrating on Francin's detailed reports by Maryska, who has organized a pig-killing feast and is ably assisting the butcher. When she invites the old curmudgeons on the board to enjoy the fresh pork, they are too happy to agree. Francin doesn't know whether he is going to get a permanent contract. To make things worse his brother Pepin - eccentric, noisy and garrulous - turns up on an indefinite visit.
An episodic film about the inhabitants of Kersko, their hardships and their joys, most prominently hunting. A lyrical and humorous adaptation of writings by Bohumil Hrabal.
Unlike any other opera, the so-called Beggar's Opera is not just one composition, but a lineage of adapted compositions, beginning with the original hugely successful 1728 political satire written by Englishman John Gay. Composers and writers have penned variations on it ever since. The most famous of these was A Threepenny Opera by Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Some things these compositions share in common is their setting among the poor and criminal classes, and the roguish character Macheath. This production is based on an adaptation of Gay's original by Vaclav Havel the freedom-fighter, writer and philosopher who became the first (and only) president of the united post-communist country of Czechoslovakia, and it retains many traces of its theatrical origins. Film reviewers were not too tolerant of what they called "slavish adherence" to the noted Czech writer's stage production, but theater, philosophy and history buffs may feel otherwise.