This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most perfect embodiment of Nemec’s vision of a film world independent of reality. Mounting a defense of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of Love cemented Nemec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to their ideology.
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.
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.
По старинному поверью, в ночь под Ивана Купала в непроглядной глубине дремучего леса расцветает волшебный цветок — золотой папоротник. Пастуху Юре удалось сорвать его. Страшные силы леса хотят отнять у него цветок. Но любовь девушки Лесанки сильнее темных сил, она охраняет Юру. Юноша становится солдатом, и на войне помогает ему Лесанкина любовь. Юру за отвагу производят в капитаны. Но он забыл свою Лесанку и влюбился в дочь генерала... Теперь Юра теряет и невесту и ее чудодейственную спасительную любовь.
