Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe

Film Cultures and Histories

Dorota Ostrowska, Francesco Pitassio, Zsuzsanna Varga, Dorota Ostrowska, Francesco Pitassio, Zsuzsanna Varga

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781784533977
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786722393
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

The continued interest in the social and cultural life of the former Warsaw pact countries – looking at but also beyond their socialist pasts – encompasses a desire to know more about their national cinemas. Yet, despite the increasing consumption of films from these countries – via DVD, VOD platforms and other alternative channels – there is a lack of comprehensive information on this key aspect of visual culture. This important book rectifies the glaring gap and provides both a history and a contemporary account of East Central European cinema in the pre-WW2, socialist, and post-socialist periods. Demonstrating how at different historical moments popular cinema fulfilled various roles, for example in the capacity of nation-building, and adapted to the changing markets of a morphing political landscape, chapters bring together experts in the field for the definitive analysis of mainstream cinema in the region. Celebrating the unique contribution of films from Hungary, the Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia and Poland, from the award-winning Cosy Dens to cult favourite Lemonade Joe, and from 1960s Polish Westerns to Hollywood-influenced Hungarian movies, the book addresses the major themes of popular cinema. By looking closely at genre, stardom, cinema exhibition, production strategies and the relationship between the popular and the national, it charts the remarkable evolution and transformation of popular cinema over time.
The continued interest in the social and cultural life of the former Warsaw pact countries – looking at but also beyond their socialist pasts – encompasses a desire to know more about their national cinemas. Yet, despite the increasing consumption of films from these countries – via DVD, VOD platforms and other alternative channels – there is a lack of comprehensive information on this key aspect of visual culture. This important book rectifies the glaring gap and provides both a history and a contemporary account of East Central European cinema in the pre-WW2, socialist, and post-socialist periods. Demonstrating how at different historical moments popular cinema fulfilled various roles, for example in the capacity of nation-building, and adapted to the changing markets of a morphing political landscape, chapters bring together experts in the field for the definitive analysis of mainstream cinema in the region. Celebrating the unique contribution of films from Hungary, the Czech Republic/Czechoslovakia and Poland, from the award-winning Cosy Dens to cult favourite Lemonade Joe, and from 1960s Polish Westerns to Hollywood-influenced Hungarian movies, the book addresses the major themes of popular cinema. By looking closely at genre, stardom, cinema exhibition, production strategies and the relationship between the popular and the national, it charts the remarkable evolution and transformation of popular cinema over time.

Part I

Politics of Popular Cinema in the Interwar Period

1

Czech Historical Film and Historical Traditions

The Merry Wives (1938)

Ivan Klimeš

As soon as the new state of Czechoslovakia emerged after World War I, it was very quick to define one of the main strategies for its film industry: to portray national history’s pivotal moments and characters.¹ The role that the historical and mythical past played during the nineteenth-century national revival, as rendered in novels, on stage, in fine arts or in music, provided Czech and Slovak artists with an impressive set of narrative motifs, emblematic characters and symbolic events which they could draw on in their practice.² Public figures responsible for this patriotic wave themselves became popular subjects, and they came to represent commitment to the national cause and moral virtue in a number of biopics which were made about them. Thus, the novels, tales and plays from the nineteenth century, alongside the biographies of contemporary national heroes, offered suitable material for expressing patriotic feelings in films such as Fidlovačka (1931), Jánošík (1935), Filosofská historie (Philosophical history, 1937), Švanda Dudák (1937), Babička (Granny, 1940) or Karel Havlíček Borovský (1931), Karel Hynek Mácha (1937) and Milan Rastislav Štefaník (1935).

Nation building was an important part of nineteenth-century Czech intellectual life, but there was an important difference with other European countries where similar nation building processes took place: there was no Czech-speaking elite to carry it out, as it disappeared after the loss of Bohemia’s independence to the Habsburgs in 1620. In the nineteenth century, Czech cultural and national revival released much of the country’s creative energies, and nation building was identified with spontaneous popular creation, an outburst of the true soul of the people whose language and culture had been repressed for centuries. Before and after World War II cinema consistently deployed the motives and themes of nineteenth-century culture. Furthermore, the representation and use of the national past on screen, either by rendering it directly or hinting at it allegorically, also fulfilled an important political function. Films were often meant to mirror and depict political concerns, and sometimes even offer solutions to them.

This chapter examines one particular case, Cech panen kutnohorských (The Merry Wives, 1938), where the popular film genre of comedy is used to portray the historical past in order to address broader national issues and contemporary social concerns, such as class conflict, ethnic tensions and the Third Reich’s imperialistic aims. The Merry Wives conflates a biographical portrait, that of writer and nobleman Mikuláš Dačický z Heslova, with a historical reconstruction. The film’s narrative is based on two theatrical plays from the second half of the nineteenth century, a feature that highlights its connection to the period of the national revival.

Historical Narratives Shaping The Merry Wives

The emerging historical consciousness of Czech society in the nineteenth century centered around two stories considered vital to the formation of national identity: the legend of Saint Wenceslas and the Hussite tradition. While their symbolism has undergone significant shifts through different historical periods, they have continued to act as potent key traditions in Czech cultural and political life. The Merry Wives is one particular example of the redeployment of such national historical mythologies in the service of contemporary political agendas.

The life of Duke Wenceslas (907?–35) recalls the beginning of Czech statehood. Wenceslas, then Duke of Bohemia, was responsible for converting the Czech lands to Christianity. He met fierce popular opposition, and even his own mother and brother attempted to murder him. He was finally successful in converting the country and was proclaimed a Christian martyr immediately after his untimely death. Medieval legends soon transformed him into the patron saint of Czech lands. He remains a symbol that is still recognised and used today. Prague’s central square, Wenceslas Square, a venue of several important historical events, including the demonstrations against the Soviet invasion in 1968 and the rallies for democracy in 1989, is adorned with his equestrian statue. The fact that these events took place under the gaze of the saint’s statue signified the binding together of the historical figure, its myth and the nation even one thousand years after the Christian martyr’s death.³ In 2000, the name day of Wenceslas (Václav), 28 September, was officially declared Czech Statehood Day. The government even funded and issued a not-for-sale DVD special edition of the film Svatý Václav (Saint Wenceslas, 1929) to serve as a gift during the prime minister’s international visits.⁴

The Hussite tradition takes its name from Jan Hus, a rector at Charles University and an early Christian reformer and martyr, who was also an outspoken and influential critic of the Catholic Church.⁵ His teachings led to a clash with Church authorities, who eventually put Hus on trial at the Council of Constance, with the participation of Sigismund, King of Germany and Hungary. After Hus refused to recant his views, he was burned at the stake in 1415. The martyrdom of Jan Hus is considered one of the most significant events in Czech history and it occupies a unique place in Czech historical consciousness. After a number of failed papal crusades in the ‘heretical’ Czech lands, the Hussites managed to establish a degree of religious tolerance, and until 1620 Catholics and Protestants coexisted peacefully in the Czech kingdom. In 1620, the so-called Bohemian Revolt culminated in the Battle of White Mountain near Prague and the Protestant army suffered a quick defeat. This was followed by executions, property confiscation, a wave of emigration, general re-Catholicisation and the persecution of Protestants. The glorious history of the Czechs and the Hussite tradition and the Czech language were important elements in the nineteenth-century national revival movement.

The Saint Wenceslas and Hussite traditions are generally viewed as conflicting ones, with one standing for Catholicism and the other for Protestantism. However, there have been several attempts to integrate both traditions into the founding concept of the Czechoslovak state. The first attempt took place after the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, leading to a conflict between the Vatican and the new Czechoslovak state. During this period, there were several public competitions to create art works to commemorate St Wenceslas, including a screenplay competition for a film. The most expensive silent film in Czech film history, the epic Saint Wenceslas, directed by Jan Stanislav Kolár, was made in 1929 but its premiere did not take place until April 1930, when sound films had begun to make their way to Prague. This film was both a critical and a box office failure; despite earlier plans, it was never made into a sound film, and Kolár never shot another film.⁶ The case of Saint Wenceslas is a telling example of the difficulties of rendering remote national myths cinematically; the same difficulty also marked the attempts to get a film project concerning Hussites off the ground in the interwar period – it was never released.⁷ Instead, interwar Czech cinema preferred to refer to nineteenth-century culture, deeply imbued with said myths, by reshaping and downscaling them to contemporary concerns and cultural experience, as was the case with comedies such as Philosophical history, dramas such as Písnickář (The singer, 1932), or adaptations of iconic operas, such as Prodaná nevěsta (The bartered bride, 1933). In this way the nineteenth-century Czech revival bequeathed to Czech cinema a set of powerful narratives, which became important elements of popular culture in the interwar period.

During World War II Czech lands were subjugated and a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established under German rule. Postwar production until the mid-1950s continued to evoke the Czech national plotline by contrasting Czech working class heroes to German capitalist or aristocratic villains. This can be seen in films such as the historical epic Jan Roháč z Dubé (Warriors of Faith, 1947) or the biopic of a labour activist, Vstanou noví bojovníci (New fighters shall arise, 1950). The ideologues of communist Czechoslovakia were also keen on appropriating the legacy of the Hussite movement and made it part of their propaganda by reinforcing an interpretation contrasting popular Czech Hussites with German Catholic rulers.⁸ In contrast, the Catholic and aristocratic Saint Wenceslas tradition was largely silenced.

The development of Czech society after 1989 demonstrates the possibility of co-existence of both traditions. The state has recognised both in public holidays, and in 2015, on the 600th anniversary of Jan Hus’s death, the Czech TV aired a miniseries about the preacher titled Jan Hus. Likewise, the Vatican was looking for ways to mitigate the lasting conflict. In the 1990s, on the initiative of Czech Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the Vatican established an ecumenical commission that set out to redefine Hus’s place among the Church reformers. On 17 December 1999, at an international conference on Hus, Pope John Paul II expressed ‘profound regret over the cruel death of Jan Hus, and the consequent wound, the source of conflicts and divisions, which were opened in the spirits and the hearts of the Czech people’. At the beginning of his speech, he also said: ‘Hus is a notable man for a number of reasons. Yet it is mainly his moral courage that, face to face with adversity and death, made Hus especially significant for the Czech people who suffered much over the centuries.’⁹ It seems that a path opened up for a less conflictual and ideologically biased look at history.

As we can see in the course of Czech history, the two martyrs, Saint Wenceslas and Jan Hus, came to embody the fate of Czech glory and brutal repression at the hand of external forces. Czech intellectuals and artworks, including cinema, were instrumental in keeping their myths alive. Czech films referred allegorically to martyrs from the Middle Ages as Saint Wenceslas, Jan Hus or the Hussites while in fact their ambitions were to portray prominent figures from the national revival. This is the case with Karel Havlíček Borovský, a biopic about a key political figure from the first half of the nineteenth century: the intellectual is prosecuted at the orders of Habsburg Minister Bach, but as Hus did he defends himself before the court; he then experiences symbolic martyrdom when exiled to the Tyrol; meanwhile his wife dies in solitude in Prague, and when he finally returns to the Bohemian city, he is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author Bio
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Graphs
• Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• A Note on Naming Conventions
• Introduction: European Popular Cinema: The Centre and Its Margins
• Part I Politics of Popular Cinema in the Interwar Period
• Part II Towards Socialism: Continuities and Ruptures
• Part III Socialist Film Cultures
• Part IV Out of Socialism: Co-habiting Models of Popular Cinema
• Part V National Cinemas and Globalised Film Cultures
• Bibliography
• Filmography