Oldřich Janovský

In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.

Attorney Horic is a specialist for cases connected with motoring. He approaches to his work unconventionally, he does not hesitate to search for evidence right in the terrain and he is willing to take various risks.

Lucie Rýdlová is found dead at a destroyed car after a night accident. The seat position shows that she cannot have been driving, and the dissection proves that she had died about four hours after the accident. It is for sure that a timely medical assistance could have saved her life. A pretty young tennis player Lucie lived at her grandmother, because her parents had been working abroad. Criminalists found out that the girl was going out with the interpreter Valenta (Eduard Cupák), who was twenty years older than her, divorced and a bit egoistic man.

This feature film based on the events of 1938 is a chronicle of the futile efforts of the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes (Jirí Pleskot), politicians and ordinary citizens, to save the independence and the territorial integrity of the state from the advance of Hitler's Germany. On the 29th of March 1938 the leader of the Sudeten Germans Henlein (Werner Ehrlicher) has a meeting with Hitler (Gunnar Möller). Hitler orders him to intensify pressure on the Czechoslovak government. On the 24th of April in Carlsbad, the Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party) decides upon eight demands that are unacceptable to the Czechoslovak President, since they would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Republic. Benes still shows a certain willingness to negotiate, and Henlein resents this. The Germans are determined to make further negotiations impossible through incidents and violence.

Based on a novel by Maria Majerova, this well-photographed but routine romantic drama is directed and co-scripted by Vaclav Krska. Set in a more old-fashioned time, the story centers around Lenka (Suzana Fisarskova), a young woman with a domineering, psychologically abusive father. When Lenka falls in love she suffers the ultimate injustice when her father and her family forbid her to marry the man. They see no advantage in such a union and want her to marry a wealthy local landowner instead, for obvious reasons. But Lenka is not as submissive as they think and she runs away to the city to look for the man she loves -- only to find a serious problem, though a surmountable one, is waiting for her.