The Ronov castle has been changed into a hotel, offering stylish facilities to its guests: weddings in the torture chamber, a Black Lancer kidnapping brides, a night's lodging in a family tomb etc. The reformed petty swindler Felix Pacínek (Bohumil Smída) runs the hotel. The business is far from thriving; the place is half-empty, and the jazz band Skeleton, together with their singer Zuzanka (Jaroslava Obermaierová), decide to leave. Nobody in the hotel has any idea that the band is in fact a gang of thieves who have just robbed the Prague State Bank, taking two million crowns from its vaults.
Pelnár
Juraj, a Slovak artist living in Prague, takes stock in his life, realizing that his days pass without purpose. He lives a carefree life. But now he has to choose between two women, between the city and the country, and between creative work and craftsmanship. He has a passion for art but he also has to make a living. Through his relationships with close people, he grows aware of his position and this knowledge helps him to live a more fulfilling and better life.
Shortish forty-year old Ludvík Podzimek, lute and flute player in a Prague orchestra, is far from being an attractive man. He is nevertheless generally considered a great 'Don Juan'. Women take up with him out of a certain motherly compassion and Ludvík's tender heart does not allow him to split with any of them. His lovers thus accumulate and cause him numerous troubles.
úředník komunálu
This castle has its own ghost - a mysterious White lady. She emerges from the painting on the wall when someone speaks out magic formula. White lady is good ghost, she can make someone's wishes true. Even if it is a new duct. But a miracle is not the thing that Communist leaders want in the town.
hostinský (uncredited)
1625년 체코 중부 모라비아 지방의 겁 많은 주인공은 기나긴 전쟁을 위해 황제의 군대에 강제 징집되고 그곳에서 만난 노인 병사와 친구가 된다. 그들은 우연히 적군의 마차를 발견하고 전쟁에서 집으로 돌아가기 위해 온갖 노력을 기울이지만 다시 잡혀 성안에 갇히게 되고 그들은 서로 목숨을 건 결정을 내려야만 한다. 16세기 뒤러의 목판화를 연상시키는 카렐 제만 특유의 도안, 만화적 기법, 몽타주, 특수효과등과 풍자적인 슬랩스틱적 코미디 요소를 결합하여 제만의 작품들 중에서도 더욱더 특이한 비주얼로 사랑 받는 작품이다. 17세기 독일을 무대로 신교파와 구교파 사이에 벌어진 '30년 전쟁'을 배경으로 주인공 일행이 겪는 모험담을 담아내었으며 체코 지방의 가장 사랑 받는 역사적 모험 영화 중 하나로 손꼽히는 작품이다.
Czech friends help refugees from Nazi Germany escape in 1939.
pub visitor (uncredited)
About the great Czech satirist Jaroslav Hašek, who was captured by the Russians during the First World War. Not wanting to fight for the interests of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Hašek enters the Red Army and, as a commissar of the international brigade, goes the military way from Samara to Irkutsk.
An upholsterer who is preparing a rocket for takeoff accidentally jettisons himself into space and returns to Earth 500 years later with an alien companion who wishes to learn more about the human race.
Lifftboy
“A bored housewife, a husband who married her for show, and a stupid boy who is full of himself because he is dating a Swiss woman.” The words of Inspector Tůma sound like they’re from a European melodrama, but in fact they come from a Czechoslovak crime story. A pair of detectives, counterfeit medicine, the high-society setting of a Karlovy Vary hotel, and Oldřich Nový as the aging hotel manager Kraus.
In a wooden hut used as a canvassing center, members of a children's puppet-theatre group are rehearsing for a production about a journey to the Moon. The goings-on inside the hut and outside are being closely followed by amateur detective Pepik Barnabás. He, however, is the first to be under suspicion when a trunk containing puppets goes missing. The children follow him but, when they catch up with him, they discover he hasn't got it. Pepík offers to help them in their search.
Self (uncredited)