NinadeL

I vaguely remember the Ostrava blog as the first significant work of this kind. It’s too bad the film didn't come out sooner, because after 12 years it can't resonate as much. Actually, the film came at the end as a kind of punctuation to television and theater. Fortunately, a few scenes work well as standalone anecdotes, so it's not that much wasted time, but the whole thing is obviously a misstep that didn't have any sort of dramaturgist. The best thing is the cameo by Věra Spinarová and the well-chosen song by Marie Rottrová at the right moment.

Lehár's operetta "The Merry Widow" is such a classic work that you can choose your favorite from a number of film transcriptions. While this epic von Stroheim project rests entirely on the lavish production design and the attractive pairing of Mae Murray and John Gilbert, who was always gorgeous in uniform, I exceptionally prefer the sound version with Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier. Of all the great experiences of 1925, this one seems to be average (it was simply too good a year). On the other hand, von Stroheim's The Merry Widow is certainly one of the most outstanding modern rewritings of a classic of the 1920s, which can be compared with only a minimum of exceptional works such as Anna Karenina from 1927.

A very interesting sequel to the famous war melodrama Mrs. Miniver. I think in the end it's a more important story than the war propaganda in the first film. While in the beginning, even the most ordinary people had to buck up and were celebrated if they found it in themselves to survive the war with all its limitations, after the VE Day celebrations, there seemed to be nothing to worry about anymore. We won the war, so what else do you want to worry about? What do you want to talk about? What do you want to think about? Yet the example of Kay Miniver beautifully shows what the unseen impacts were in peacetime. It's an uncomfortable story, unpleasant without collective appeal. It is not surprising that it was an economic failure in its time, because who would voluntarily want to face something so powerful? But it is unforgivable that even today the gap between the two films is not bridged. On DVD and VOD they should be equal.

It would seem almost unrealistic that a 1950 film about the actions of a resistance group full of interrogations and secret notes could be any good, but it would have to not be directed by Frič. Shortly after the war, it was not yet customary for the universal template for depicting the Gestapo to be awkward caricatures. Everything, including the realities and emotions, was still vivid in memory, and even though The Trap only linearly tells the story of a single, transparent event in which a German confederate is set upon a heroic member of the Czech resistance, the result is a successful suspense film. The characters are not simply black and white, and particularly everything concerning the former actress Herta (played by the great Majka Tomášová) is worth paying attention to. The only thing that sounds disturbing is the choice of non-original music. It is highly unlikely that Friedrich Holländer's "Nimm dich in Acht vor blonden Frau'n" and other songs from the film The Blue Angel (1930), which was already passé during the war, and of course Marlene Dietrich was an enemy of the Reich as an American citizen at the time, would have been played as dance music in a café in the early 1940s.

The name Jiří Slavíček is often associated in Czech cinema with emotionally rich experiences or encounters with beautiful films in general.

The final story in the fantasy series starring Barbie. The original stories of Fairytopia continue thanks to the librarian Mariposa. This time the main topic is the peace negotiations between the two fairy kingdoms, which our well-read fairy handles elegantly and excellently. Despite the overabundance of sweet colors that accompany all Barbie films, most of them are based on clever, compact scripts that would put many films aimed at adult audiences to shame.

A quality war melodrama. The purpose and meaning of such a film are clear. To show the transformation of people in times of war and to give them hope. The question is whether this concept is better (a seemingly ordinary housewife surprisingly holds up in the toughest moments) or whether a star-studded film like Follow the Boys or a story in the style of Holiday Inn has more appeal. Regardless, I'm very much looking forward to the sequel to The Miniver Story.

A practically brilliant film, made as an ideal sound remake of an older silent Lubitsch film. The subject matter was sufficiently researched and the two actors worked well together, which made it a pleasure to spend more than just an hour with them. There is something attractive about clever romances that adore young marriages.

This is Nesvadba and Balík's variation on the fate of the legendary "Tarzan of the Apes." While Edgar Rice Burroughs took his hero into science fiction, especially in books connected to the world of Pellucidar, Nesvadba paraphrased the basic story of Lord Greystoke's lost son as the lost Baron Wolfgang von Hoppe's encounter with human hatred and greed. Problems are personified as a struggle between an English agent and a German Nazi. Unfortunately, the formal mannerism of the 1960s is so aggressive that the core of the interesting subject becomes, in its final form, an etude on situations seen and staged many times. Hrušínský could indeed be an attractive Tarzan, but it would take a different director and different financial possibilities to visit a real jungle. And, of course, it's impossible to believe Jana Štěpánková is a femme fatale, just as it's nonsense to tolerate those endless geometric chases with unacceptable musical accompaniment.

Josef Nesvadba's short story inspired a short film, which was screened as a double bill with The Death of Tarzan. The idea for a micro satire was not a bad one, but the resulting film is full of clichés of the time, both in its portrayal of the Nazis and in its overall view of the wartime realities.