nosič
Vrátný v portheimce / mistr tiskar
Year of the Revolution 1848
This is a romantic story about a brave, self-made girl, despised daughter of a shepherd. She is not afraid of anything - neither night nor swimming. But the superstitious villagers are telling weird stories about her and about all sorts of strange things, even her conjunction with the powers of hell.
Joe Pelíšek
Czechoslovak drama film about soldiers returning from World War II
People are afraid of the usurer Chazaj and are convinced that he is the bearer of evil. One day Chazaj pays a visit to the poor artist Simon Jordán and asks him to paint his portrait. Simon agrees but as he progresses with the work his mind conjures up terrible thoughts and in the end he commits suicide. The portrait looks lifelike and Chazaj is content with the results. After Chazaj's death the picture changes hands and brings misfortune to all who own it. The last victim is the young painter Roman who buys Chazaj's portrait in a bazaar. He finds a treasure in the frame and begins to live well off it. The comfortable life suits him so well that he rejects his original artistic aims and becomes a painter of fashionable kitsch.
Five crime stories connected by the narration of police superintendent Bartosek.
A drama about Slovaks who emigrated before WW I. It is focused on the life of Ondrej Muranica. He emigrates to America because of the hard life that is partly caused by Hungarian landowners. His dreams and hopes for a happier life are destroyed by a disaster in the mines where he works. Ondrej is declared missing.Years later he returns to his home country and finds out his wife married his best friend.
At the end of the First World War, Nikola Shuhai and his friend from the army desert. On the way home, to the village of Kolochava, they both find refuge with baby Jaga. Jaga mixes them a drink to protect them from the deadly bullets. The bachelors must promise to marry her daughters in exchange for a drink, or they will be punished. Nikola finds his home village in poverty. He stands against the powerful and the rich, and they turn the gendarmes against him. Nikola hides from them in the woods, where he will remain even after the end of the war, because nothing has changed for the villagers. Out of poverty and hopelessness, other men join Nikola and together they raid the wealthy. Nikola distributes the obtained booty to the poor and needy, who see him as their protector and hero.
Vondra
After an attack against the guard of the Third Reich, Nazi repression intensifies, and the Czechoslovakian resistance's organized sabotage in an aircraft factory leads to Gestapo shootings.
Shown in Cannes 1946.
kasař Kočka
Inspector Cadek from the 13th police station should keep an eye on the released safe-cracker nicknamed The Cat. He rightly suspects that Cat will go and pick up his last loot which the police didn't manage to find and that he will want revenge on Karta who helped get him behind bars. At the hospital, Cat's ex-lover Fróny hopelessly falls for doctor Chrudimský and decides to start a new life. She still refuses to help the inspector in his search for The Cat and Karta.
Leopold Kohák married a rich widow a long time ago and now has nothing to do compared to his energetic wife. He's growing old and troubled by the fact that he betrayed his first love Emča and his beloved river Sázava where he spent his childhood and youth. A visit from an old friend Lebeda brings it all back to him. After a nervous breakdown Leopold secretly visits his home instead of going to the spa. A wandering tramp suggest Leopold should bathe in the magical waters of the Sázava, and slowly his youth returns to him.
Prague, the beginning of the 17th century. Rozina falls in love with Italian glass worker Nikolo, but after returning home, she gets a message that will never come to Prague. She falls for the promise of an older man to marry her, but when Nikolo does return, the tragic fate of Rozina is sealed.
Jura
Mist on the Moors examines fates of just about a few people. Their stories are outlined in a short space of time and are a symbolic representation of the drama of life, struggle for justice, human cognizance and the healing power of love. One of the most important components of the film is the nature, which ceases to be a mere stage for its plot—it serves almost as an autonomous plot agent. The movie landscape is a precisely defined and localized one. Only the South Bohemian ponds can serve as the right environment for development of such earthy and typically human stories as we encounter in the Mist on the Moors.
četnický strážmistr
Peterka
Valenta
host s dětmi
zahradník Příhoda
inspektor
A writer of pulp crime novels is drawn into a series of real crimes. This film was one of the first Czech attempts on a genre parody.
Venice Film Festival 1941
Prokeš
Komorník Leopold
"Grandmother" is a highly romanticized autobiographical novel by a Czech 19th century writer, Bozena Nemcova. It's a classical, compulsory reading in Czech schools, about a wise, working-class woman, happier in her simplicity and good heart than the nobles whom she serves.
Fifty years old Baron von Fibberg lives at The Fibberg Castle with his wife Olga and daughter Charley. Besides the delight in hunting, Baron is very enthusiastic about truth. Although he can't withstand any falsehood of others, he keeps his own intimate secrets from his wife. Charley seems to be an innocent girl at first glance, but she has a little secret too. She fell in love with a young fop Ernest Benda and married him in secret. Her only concern is the way, how to let her strict father know about the marriage. Together with her husband they prepare a plan how to do it, but it turns out to be a catastrophe for the whole family.
Václav
A painting of a girl from another time comes to life for it's buyer in this costume comedy.
Venice Film Festival 1940
This romantic story turns on a stirring infatuation that takes hold of three young people under the influence of Simon, a Prague student. After the study year, 18 year-old Julio returns to his parental home, a little chateau on the Otava river. There he converges with his childhood friend Petr and the young boatman's daughter Klárka. Sharing her beguilement with Simon, who has quickly turned a tranquil summer atmosphere into a relationship drama, is Julio's cousin Rosa.
Alois Novák (Oldrich Nový), a minor clerk in a travel agency and the husband of a dowdy housewife Marenka (Natasa Gollová), lives a run-of-the-mill, dull life. In his soul, however, there resides an inextinguishable desire for adventure. And so once a month he poses as a playboy. As the mysterious and wealthy Mr. Kristian he goes to the exclusive Orient Bar where he does not skimp on generous tips and where he platonic-ally seduces beautiful and elegant women. In the salon he speaks of love and the magnificence of exotic lands, which he has supposedly come to know on his wanderings abroad. In reality he has read all of this in the travel agency's brochures.
montér
Drama directed by Miroslav Cikán.
kočí
Josef
taxikář
Petr
opilý zákazník
nezaměstnaný
A morally questionable lord comes to the aid of a working class man who is to be executed for speaking out about thieving rich scoundrels sticking it to the poor.
Jakub Sesle
Zedník
Venice Film Festival 1938
Joe Cheat
Kouba
Tomášek
Jírovec
A dashing but mysterious man saves a gambler from suicide, crashes the posh party of a prominent industrialist, falls in love with his daughter, and finds himself in a web of intrigue revolving around her blackmailing fiance and a gang of counterfeiters.
lesník
Venice Film Festival 1938
Director
Drahovzal
A student rebellion precedes revolutionary events in Prague.
The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra’s classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood’s Frank Borzage. (BAM/PFA)
Tonda
Venice Film Festival 1937
Marek
Břetislav
Mother-Hen
Film about famous poet Karel Hynek Mácha
Karel Prejza
One of the few European films of the 30s to criticize the Nazis, even if they couldn't be directly named due to censorship: Gangsters with gray hats stir up trouble in what is obviously the Sudetenland.
Štěpán
tajný
Slightly ironic comedy of wretches, who come to understand the rich and are able to accept charity, and also about how love and work prevail over the factory owner's son.
Tailor Speaking to Jan
profesor přírodopisu
četnický strážmistr
Kraus
Jánošík has been topic of many Slovak and Polish legends, books and films. According to the legend, he robbed nobles and gave the loot to the poor. The legend were also known in neighboring Silesia, the Margraviate of Moravia and later spread to the Kingdom of Bohemia. The actual robber had little to do with the modern legend, whose content partly reflects the ubiquitous folk myths of a hero taking from the rich and giving to the poor. However, the legend was also shaped in important ways by the activists and writers in the 19th century when Jánošík became the key highwayman character in stories that spread in the north counties of the Kingdom of Hungary (present Slovakia) and among the local Gorals and Polish tourists in the Podhale region north of the Tatras.
Lojza Reban
Kubašta
povaleč
Butler
Wealthy and ill Petr Kornel (Karel Hasler) is not pleased with the carousing lifestyle of his nephew. He stops supporting him financially and demands that he change his name. Out of gratitude Kornel bequeaths a substantial sum of money to his nurse Alice (Adina Mandlová) with the condition that she marries. Petr Suk (Hugo Haas), as the nephew is now named, visits the doctor. In the waiting room his X-ray is mistakenly switched with one of another patient's. On the basis of this he presently learns that he is seriously ill and has only one day of life left to him.
Hrdina
Francek
A Milk-Cannery baron, Jakub Simonides, is broken by the Canned Milk-Trust and, in his wanderings with a worker, Filip Kornet, he discovers he still owns a half-finished apartment-house. They rally the workers and complete the building for use as a collectivist dairy. The cooperative flourishes and after a chase/pursuit with the police, pratfalls, slapstick and various crashes, the workers buy out the Milk-Trust.
strážník
Hotel Porter
Woman concert star seeks to connect with her adult daughter, by her former marriage to a staid industrialist who has kept the two apart since the girl was very small, and receives inadvertent help from the industrialist's just-fired employee who has fallen in love with the girl.
dozorce
tatínek
Šimbera
A story of two story of two children tossed between their indifferent parents and a progressive boarding school.
Police officer
The story of love, between a sturdy village boy and a gentle country girl, filmed with a movingly genuine charm.
Vlasta Burian appears in a town of Czarist Russia impersonating an Inspector General, and he is entertained lavishly by the local political-hacks and peasants seeking his favor for whatever they are advocating or need fixed. Burain is involved in a series of comical situations as he takes everything he can gets his hands on while the peasants, who must plead for the betterment of their conditions, are left on the outside-looking-in. He makes his escape just as the real Inspector General is set to appear, but those-in-need will be no better off when the real McCoy shows up then they were with Burian.
komorník Antonín
Toník
apač Lojza
Max
ostrostřelec
Anton Špelec (Vlasta Burin) is a producer of musical instruments by trade but a sharp-shooter at heart. He expects to be awarded a medal at a large parade in town where veteran sharp-shooters will be honored. When the town council is one medal short, Anton must wait another year for his prized possession. He drowns his disappointment in drink at the local pub and becomes so drunk that he insults the emperor who sentences him to jail. Instead of fulfilling the emperor’s orders himself, Anton sends his employee in his stead.
Karla, a bar dancer, shoots her lover Mayer during a break-up. She hides from the police in pianist Pavel Ryant's apartment and promises to return when she leaves. The next day, however, Karla is arrested and convicted. In the penitentiary she meets the warden, Angelika, a nun who is very much like her. She begs Angelika to lend her clothes for a few days and leaves the prison as a nun.
A czech film that focuses on an unfaithful husband who married in to money, as well as an impoverished man who is turns to theft.
Arsen Křídlo
Professor
This light-hearted comedy operetta tells the story of a newly appointed high school professor who becomes an ideal target for pranks and jokes.
karbaník
Lender / Anarchist with a Bomb
The Portorican prime minister asks British detective Sherlock Holmes to find a twin for King Fernando XXIII, a weak and frightened man who fears anarchists and does not want to show himself in public. Holmes finds in the Czech newspapers a photo of the perfect double, František Lelíček, a daring bon vivant drowned in debt, so when Holmes offers him money, Lelíček decides to travel to Portorico and play the role.
Mimi lives with her parents and the maid Fanka in a villa near the forest. One day, a gamekeeper comes to court Mimi when her parents are away.
Finnicky efficiency expert is sent to straighten out business management problems at a jazz club, and finds self being drawn into the swingin' scene.
Wurm
Postman Brabec is a welcome guest of the revue theatre for his sense of humor, and he brings his director Holt letters from female admirers every day. Holt's fans include Brabec's sister Anny. The girl would like to join the theatre, but for the time being works as a maid for the actress Velden. A new revue is being rehearsed, the name of the author is secret. Veldenová will return the role just before the premiere because she doesn't like it. The quick-witted Brabec introduces the director to his sister, who knows all the parts by heart.
Disillusioned with his marriage which has ended in divorce, Petr Leroy goes off to the Riviera to the place where he first met his wife and where he hopes to be spiritually revived. Here he meets his friend Jan and together they enjoy the joys the Riviera has to offer. Jan meets a charming girl at the casino and he takes her off into the mountains. On his return he speaks of the beautiful Olga with whom he has spent a wonderful three days. Olga, however, does not appear for a meeting they had arranged, so Jan goes to look for her in the mountains. Then he sees her in a village and tries to catch up with her in his car. He has an accident. Olga takes him to the nearest sanatorium where everyone behaves very strangely to the newly-arrived patient.
Two young people, during a hike on the C te d'Azur, meet a woman of great beauty whose driver has a sinister appearance. They find her in a castle. In reality it is a lunatic asylum whose head doctor has lost his mind. notes: Lilian Constantini protested after the presentation of the film, on the way it had been sounded. Indeed, the voice that had been lent to him had had the gift of bringing joy to the public.
MUDr. Jiří Palm
Life and drama in a gypsy camp with the groups young lady falling in love with an outsider.
vojenský sluha Sepl
Comedy film directed by Karel Lamač.
Matej Krópal and his wife farm on a Haná farm. Their niece Vera is coming to stay with them for the holidays. In a small traffic accident, Vera meets her acquaintance, the engineer Peters, who is engaged to the emancipated Olga. However, he is so tempted by Vera's wealth that he begins to court her.
St. Wenceslas (Czech: Svatý Václav) is a 1930 Czechoslovak historical film about Saint Wenceslas.[2] It was the most expensive Czech film to date,[3] with the largest set constructed in Europe to accommodate an all-star cast of over a hundred, together with 1,000 extras for the lavish battle scenes.
The illegitimate child, Marie Růžová, grows up in the family of the Bořický miller. Childhood and youth spend with the son of Bořice, Klement. Klement asserts the rights, becomes a lawyer, and marries Jirina. In order not to cause further contradictions, Mary will go to Prague secretly at night. There he is living heavily as a waitress. He resists the insults of architect Jansky until he ultimately decides to commit suicide in despair.
Nick Houlton
An unknown gang has again broken into a van containing money from the European bank. Banker Sam Hamilton decides to use an armoured car for the next money transport. He hires racing driver Charly Allan as the driver. Allan is invited to Hamilton's house for a party. During a dance with the banker's daughter Bessy he is attacked by bandits, pushed to the ground and Bessy is kidnapped.
Bedřich Piskáček
Factory owner Pardon, meets Olga, daughter of clairvoyant Stefanie Lesczynska at a ball. Their brief acquaintance is interrupted when Olga and her mother have to leave. Fifi Hrazánková has her sights set on the elligible Pardon. Pardon asks his Uncle Cyril Ponděliček if the girl could take over his position at work so that she may be dissuaded of her amorous intentions. Fifi seduces Pondělíček. In the meantime, Pardon meets Olga and Stefanie again by chance and offers them a place to stay at Ponděliček’s while Pondělíček passes himself off as Pardon.
Directed by Svatopluk Innemann.
Director
Teacher
A Carl Lamac directed movie based on a novel by Karel Václav Rais.
Pesta
Directed by Carl Lamac.
Karel Havlícek Borovský
A biographical story about significant Czech dramatist, writer and actor Josef Kajetán Tyl.
Pozdnysev
We have a liberal, modern Czech flapper bound to a serious and bored husband and don't forget the important fact that the wife has a lover so soon the widening gulf between husband and wife leads to stress and resentment and we get a tormented psychological study of irreconcilable differences that will lead to tragedy.
Franc
A Czechoslovakian comedy directed by Carl Lamac and starring himself Theodor Pistek & Anny Ondra.
The Czech Film Archive and Filmarchiv Austria both hold the film in their collections.
Painter Johnny Miller bets his friends he can find his house blindfolded. But he stumbles into a bandits' camp, and being mistaken for one of them, is sent to rob the villa of Frank Sellins, a banker, and his niece Lilly.
After a young man is arrested for a crime he didn't commit, the daughter of the local tavern owners must spring to the rescue.
Counterfeiter
A brave young woman falls in love with a mysterious stranger.
Guest
The tale of the Venetian gondolier whose desire for revenge following a thwarted love affair leads him to Bohemia. The intricate plot also deals with destinies of other characters, who finally come together in a dramatic encounter at one time and in one place. In his role as screenwriter and director, Anton produced a highly accomplished version of Mácha’s work. He respected the original but was also able, along with the DoP Karel Kopřiva, to capitalise on the possibilities that the film medium offered. For the Venice prologue, the filmmakers exploited the photogenic qualities of the city – the narrow streets, the lagoons, gondolas and the sea – and they moved the set to the enigmatic Czech landscape around the castle of Kokořín.
Director
Janosík, a friar retrained as a bandit, becomes the farmers' symbol of resistance and fight against the feudal conditions.
Knight of Drazický's Suite
Shot in the early 1920s, this classic film about the elixir of life and the secret of the Black Tower has finally been restored to its original version.
