Tulák Macoun

Macoun the Tramp may be one of my essential black-and-white experiences, and one of the most distinctive roles of Otomar Korbelář, but unfortunately, he also pushes the envelope incredibly hard. The loss of his wife during her first birth, the loss of his job, the trial, the subsequent stay in prison, and the leaving of his daughter in an orphanage are events so fleeting that they lose their significance. A much more solid axis is the mirroring of the end of human tragedy, which begins exactly where Murnau found his epilogue in his film The Last Laugh. And the principle of everything is the border stone with the inscription "Czech Land." If you add the incredibly pathetic performances of Gollová and Kabátová, it is very easy to label the film as a summary of the 1952 State Film: The film Macoun the Tramp was made in 1939, during the occupation. It is one of the few Czech films from those times that do have certain positives. Today we are not interested in the conciliatory ending of the story of a man crushed by capitalist society, but even thirteen years later, the film speaks to us Czechs in a language close to our own where it tells us about the beauty of our country and the love of our homeland. (13.08.2010)