** movie depictions of boys clothing : Czecheslovakia








Movie Depictions of Boys Clothes: Czecheslovakia


Figure 1.--We are not sure what the title of this film wa, but it appears to have been made during the Communist era. perhaps in the late 1970s.

HBC has no information on pre-World War II (1939-45) Czech film. There was, however, an active film industry which developed during the Communist era (1945/48-89). Many of these films have useful information on children's clothes. The post Communist era was very short before Slovakia withdrew from the country, leaving the Czech Republic as the successor state.

Chronolgical Eras

Few European countries have had such a caotic history as Czecheslovakia. The 20th Century saw the birth of Czecheslovakia after the horrors of World War I. Czecheslovakia was the from non-German country invaded by the Germans who dismembered it. A resurected Czecheslovakia suffered ynder 40 years of Communist rule, including a tragic Soviet invasion in 1973. Finally came democracy and the Velvet Revolution in 1989, but soon broke up into to two separate countries.

Austro-Hungarian Empire ( -1918)

Czecheslovakia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the Empire disolved in the aftermath of World War I (1914-18). HBC know nothing about the Czech film making industry during this period.

Czecheslovakia (1918-39)

Czecheslovakia was one of several new countries created from the remains of the great European Empires (Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia) at the Versailles Peace Conference ending World War I. A film making industry did develop in newly independent Czecheslovakia, but HBC has no details at this time.

German occupation (1939-45)

The Germanss incorporated the Seudatenland into the Reich and set up rump administrations in what remained of the country. I know nothing about the film industry during the period.

Czecheslovakia (1945/48-89)

The Soviets were given the responsibolity of administering Czecheslovakia after the defeat of NAZI Germany in 1945. American troops had actually liberated eastern areas of the country. The Soviets allowed the pretense of democracy before enstalling a totalitarian state in 1948. The Soviet action was to lead the United States and the Western European countries to establish NATO. The failure to extend the proletarian revolution to the West and the subsequent degeneration of the Russian revolution has tragically transformed the political system that promised man the widest possible freedom into the world's two most powerful totalitarian regimes. The other of course was NAZI Germany.

In the cinema as elsewhere, the the state's complete control over the means of production and of communication seems effectively to preclude opposition or dissent. Yet the spirit of freedom surreptitiously reemerges, particularly among the young of each new generation. Symptomatically, just because the spirit of freedom is directed towards the extension of democracy and, in the arts, towards the flowering of different aesthetic tendencies, it appears counter-revolutionary to the regime (which thereby unintentionally defines itself in action) and new repressive measures are instituted, to which the new pioneers respond with new tactics. This tendency is also observable in Western democratic countries, but there the repressive arm of the state was less powerful. This constant state of tension between creative artist and government bureaucracy is basic to the eastern societies from Eisenstein in Russia to Schorm in Czechoslovakia, Skolimowski in Poland, and Makavejev in Yugoslavia.

Unable to pose questions head-on, the artist is forced into allegory, subtle metaphor, and indirectness--secret communications to be decoded by the viewer. These courageous film makers are moralists of their society, reminiscent of Diderot and the Encyclopedistes; for where politics is inhibited, art tends to assume its function, and form and style (not merely content) become ideologically charged.

Propaganda films are interestingly asenent from Czech and other Easrtern European films. There was relatively little of the crude propagabda films that the NAZIs had made, like Jud Suiz. While propaganda films are lacking in Eastern Europe, political films are not. Individual works involving lesser or greater dissent can be found at infrequent intervals in each of the national cinemas of the East. But the emergence of the entire 'school' has so far been limited to the short-lived Polish experience of the Gomulka years of the 1950s and the equally brilliant Czech film renaissance, immediately before and under Dubcek. Though now only a glowing moment of history - it was destroyed by the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1973. This latter movement and its works stand as astonishing revelations of the hidden trends within the so-called monolithic ideological structures of the East.

To Western eyes, this movement offered a challenge: the most difficult film to find in Prague was a Communist propaganda film and the easiest, a humanistic work in the idiom of modern cinema. The 'socialist realism' of the past--a sentimentalized falsification of reality--had been superseded by an attempt to confront truth and uncertainty, experience and doubt. These Czech films deal with alienation, with anti-heroes and the corruption, by terror, of victims as well as executioners. Devoid of 'official' ideology, they are filled with unorthodox compassion for people as they are and no longer, as in Stalin's times, as they should be.

This astonishing, tightly knit group of young filmmakers represented the values of the first post-Stalinist generation. It was striking to note how similar their views were to those of the West's rebellious youth, which, from a different starting point, had also become engaged in a search, without illusions, for possible ideals and provisional truths. It seemed that the world was perversely backing into an enforced brotherhood, which would universalize such problems as individual freedom in a bureaucratic society, estrangement between generations, the failure of dogmatic ideologies, and eternal confrontations of imperfect innocence as against the corruption of so-called maturity.

Two complimentary tendencies dominated the young Czech cinema. The realist camp (similar to the Italian neorealists and 'cinema verite') concentrated on the significance of the insignificant, using non-professionals and actual locales for greater authenticity. Unlike he Italians, however, the Czech realists (Forman, Passer, Menzel) seemed less ideological, sentimental, and heroic. In providing a truth and spontaneity too long frowned upon, their films were as radical as the elaborate creations of the allegorical-symbolist wing. This camp (represented by Schorm, Nemec, Masa, Juracek, and Vera Chytilova) was far more cerebral; its scenarios were careful intellectual constructions; its settings and visual styles intentionally artificial; its tone oblique, suffused with existentialism. There was less of the smiling optimism of the neorealist camp; a more sombre, even pessimistic, mood obtained. Stylistically, they tended to be allegorical, symbolist, or even 'absurd'; touches of Bunuel, Fellini, Bergman abounded, and the possibility of an underlying complexity too dense to be unravelled was hinted at.

However, it was the influence of Kafka that loomed largest. This modern prophet of ambiguity, unidentifiable nightmare, and sublime intimations of limited hope had finally become inescapable. The property of the world, he was at last accepted in his own country as well. Following his ideological rehabilitation at the end of the Stalin era, his works instantly sold out and entered the intellectual and conceptual framework of the new generation.

The Dubcek era, by modifying an artificial isolation from abroad of 17 years, recontructed the link with Czechoslovakia's unique past, which predisposes the country toward the most modern cultural tendencies. Situated at the centre of an age-old, warring continent, always a minority within larger empires, this unfortunate country has perhaps been more frequently subjugated or 'liberated' than any other European nation, as well as subjected to the most sophisticated cultural influences. Surrealism, Cubism, Dadaism were at home under Masaryk and Benes. Ironically, Hitler forced into Prague an additional group of outstanding emigre exponents of 'decadent' modern art, and the isolation from the world under Hitler and Stalin led to an advantageous amalgamation of leading Czech elements in theatre, film, painting, and literature into one common milieu, the inevitable nucleus for the forces of cultural liberalization.

Despite the Russian destruction of this movement--all the directors were forced out of the industry or into exile--it has left its mark and, together with the Polish film renaissance under Gomulka (Polanski, Borowczyk, Lenica, Skolimowski, Wajda, Kawalerowicz, Has, and Munk), has set standards of thematic and aesthetic daring that have become prototypes for filmmakers in the other Eastern countries as well. In vain does one now look for 'socialist realism', 'positive heroes', or paeans to tractors; instead, in their best works, there is a painful confrontation of the basic questions of human freedom under a collectivized regime without democratic controls, a positive scepticism and rejection of hypocrisy which reveal a struggle for new values and new life styles. These films are not counter-revolutionary', but rather attempt to clarify what the Czech reform movement used as its slogan; 'socialism with a human face'. They prove that arrogantly exercised power, alienation, and the corruption of both the individual and society are as rife in the East as in the West, and that the aspirations of the most progressive youth in both blocs are identical: a more equitable society, yet one that preserves, indeed extends, the best democratic traditions of the West.


Figure 2.--" Obecná skola " or " Primary School " is a film made in Czecheslovakia and released in 1991. I do not know a great deal about the film. The setting is a small Czechoslovakian village hust after World War II, around 1945-46. The costuming seems realtively accurate, but we don't remember cuffed shorts being worn in the 1940s.

Czecheslovakia (1989-92)

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, freeing the country from Communism, Czecheslovakia remained united for only a few years. This is an unusually short priod to identify asca descrete period. It is probably best seen as an early phase of the Czech Republic, but it did include Slovakia. We assume that most of the film industry was located in the Czech areas, nut have no detailed information at this time. The only film we know of from this period was a Czech film, Obecná skola " or ' Primary School ' . It is seem by many as one of the most important Czech films. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991.

The Czech Republic (1992?- )

After only a few years following the Velvet Revolution (1989), Slovakia decided to withdrawl from Czecheslovakia. The remainder renamed itself ther Czech Republic. We have no information on the film industry in the Czech Republic, but it does appear to be active and we have noted some films.

Slovakia (1992?- )

We have no information on the Slovalia film industry.








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Created: August 24, 2000
Last updated: 12:13 AM 2/6/2020