Anna Steimarová

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.

Filmed during the Nazi occupation, this panoramic drama set in a Prague department store follows the divergent destinies of four female coworkers, each of whom seeks happiness in a different way.

Venice Film Festival 1941

"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.

The title refers to the office of records in the basement of a large company... sort of the place where a troublesome employee may be dumped in a dead end job. If fact, the story is a simple romantic comedy, with Burian as the kindly old stick-in-the-mud who helps the young man to sort out his romance with the daughter of the company's owner.

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.

Venice Film Festival 1939

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.

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)

The film begins with shots of the castles of Bezděz, Točník and Karlštejn. In a restaurant at Karlštejn the guests remind Hašler that he is performing at the Varieté club. Hašler misses the train so he starts walking along the main road in the hope of getting a lift. In despair he forces a car to stop and makes the chauffeur to drive backwards to Prague. They stop at the wharf but, because he misses the steamboat , he uses a motorboat. The rest of the journey is spent on a tram. Hašler then quickly changes his clothes in his flat he reaches the Varieté club across the rooftops.