Wartime comedy drama starring Vaclav Neckar. In occupied Czechoslovakia during the Second World War, a young apprentice railway guard leads a quiet uneventful life in a small country station. Only the amorous exploits of the chief guard and his dreams of his own romantic conquests relieve his boredom.
This superb piece of cinema is one of the key pictures of the Czech New Wave of the mid-1960s and fully deserved its Oscar for best foreign language film. Set during the Nazi occupation, the film follows the bungled efforts of a bashful young apprentice railway guard to lose his virginity, seduce the stationmaster's wife and then kill himself. After a variety of misadventures, he meets a beautiful resistance fighter who finally offers him the chance to prove himself. Employing a complex, episodic structure, Jirí Menzel - making his feature debut - seamlessly dovetails satire, romance, heroism and the horror of war to devastating tragicomic effect.
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Milos Hrma | Vaclav Neckar |
| Masa | Jitka Bendova |
| Stationmaster | Vladimir Valenta |
| Hubicka | Josef Sommer |
| Stationmaster's wife | Libuse Havelkova |
| Station assistant | Alois Vachek |
| Telegraphist Zdenicka Svata | Jitka Zelenohorska |
| Councillor Zednicek | Vlastimil Brodsky |
| Uncle Noneman | Ferdinand Kruta |
| Circus performer Viktoria Freie | Nada Urbankova |
| role | name |
|---|---|
| Director | Jirí Menzel |
