Marie Kaplanová

Esta balada em três partes, que muitas vezes usa a música para substituir o diálogo, continua a ser a forma de realização mais perfeita da visão de Nemec de um mundo de filmes independentes da realidade. Montando uma defesa de indivíduos tímidos, inibidos, desajeitadas, e mal sucedidas, os três protagonistas são uma antítese completa dos heróis industriosos de estética socialista. Os Mártires do Amor consolidou a reputação de Nemec como o tipo desenfreado não-conformista do estabelecimento Comunista considerado o mais perigoso para a sua ideologia.

A young man tries to enter the building of the Mammoth Cybernetic Supermachines Research Institute again and again but each time the doorkeeper spots him and kicks him out. The youth finally arrives with all his friends and a huge live bear from the circus where he works as an accountant. He is finally allowed in where he explains to the members of the directorate that he wants to work at the Institute, since he graduated in cybernetics and, besides, he has invented a machine for forecasting time of death. When the conniving research manager learns that their director is going to die in two days, he hopes to rise to his position.

Seven days, or rather evenings and nights, in the life of Jenka (Stanislava Bartosová), a young good-looking nurse. Jenka is attractive to men and enjoys their company, but there is a limit beyond which she won't go, since she is faithful to her Filip, who is doing his military service. On Sunday the girl awaits Filip to arrive on a short period of leave, but instead his friend Míla (Frantisek Nemec) turns up and apologizes for Filip, who has to stay in the barracks.

In a remote Slovak village in the closing days of World War II, a schoolteacher and his young wife find a wounded Russian parachutist in their front yard just as the Germans are coming in to occupy their village. As his wife readily becomes involved with anti-Nazi partisans, the schoolteacher collaborates with the Germans in fear.

A poignant overview of how short life can be, this interesting drama from Czech director Vojetch Jasny is divided into four separate segments. In the first skit, a young child's impressions are observed as his newborn baby sister becomes a part of the family. In the second, a young woman falls in love for the first time one summer, and in the third, a tough, older peasant woman battles against the farming cooperatives. Finally, in the last segment, everything comes full circle as a woman who is about to become a grandmother dies while her daughter-in-law has not yet given birth.