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Reviews SCREEN INTERNATIONAL
DARK BLUE WORLD (TMAVOMODRY SVET)
SCREEN INTERNATIONAL 27.07.01
Reviewed by Anna Franklin
Dir: Jan Sverak. Czech Rep-UK. 2001. ll5mins.
With World War II aerial drama Dark Blue World, Czech director Jan Sverak proves he is able to manage comedy and tragedy on a large scale, without losing the warmth and emotional depth seen in his 1996 Oscar-wInner Kolya. Much of the credit deserves to go to his father Zdenek, who wrote the scripts for both films. This summer's bigger-budget action features such as Pearl Harbor seem one-dimensional in comparison. Character development and the use of action as an integral part of the plot are key to the output from this father-and-son team. Under Sverak's masterful direction, Dark Blue World - a story that could easily have slipped into melodrama - becomes an intimate drama capable of expressing universal values. With its impressive aerial battles, fine performances from a strong cast and gentle humour, this feature, which has already topped the Czech box office for 10 weeks notching up $1.5m (ckr57,342,000), should break out of the arthouse ghetto and achieve respectable theatrical audiences, especially in Europe.
A rich human tale of Czech pilots who flee their homeland during WWII to join the British Royal Air Force, only to be imprisoned on their return home after the war, the film tells its story through a series of flashbacks. The narrative shifts back and forth from the greyness of a 1950s communist prison, where former pilot Franta (Vetchy) is detained, to sunny memories of Franta's life before and during the war, and delivers its anti-totalitarian political message without being heavy-handed or overwhelming the central story of friendship and love.
In the opening scene, Franta is caught with his pants down (literally) while making love to his girlfriend when the Germans invade the airbase where he has been training young pilots. The Czechs surrender without firing a shot and the pilots are forced to serve under their foreign commanders or flee.
Vetchy brings intelligence and sensitivity to the role, portraying Czech humiliation at the hands of the Nazis while still managing to reveal the proud passive resistance that lies within. Together with Karel (Hadek), one of the pilots under his command, Franta heads for England where they join other Czechs in the fight against the Germans.
On their arrival, the hotheaded young Karel is frustrated by the British training he must undergo when he knows he can already fly, while Franta tries to help his friend to be patient and overcome his homesickness. Here Sverak exhibits a fine sense of the absurd - in one scene, Czech and British pilots attack each other on bicycles equipped with wings in a useless training exercise. The warmth of the camaraderie between the Czech pilots is expressed through singing and their good-natured joking about the eccentricities of their British hosts. And Clark Gable lookalike Oldrich Kaiser deserves a special mention as Machaty, the womanising pilot with a talent for drinking and playing the piano.
But the Czech pilots are soon airborne and the dogfights between the small British and German planes are given added impact by Soukup's soaring score. Karel and Franta back each other up in the battles in the skies, but the comrades' friendship is put to the test when they both fall in love with the same woman, Susan (Fitzgerald). Hadek gets the chance to demonstrate his range, running through a gamut of emotions in a matter of seconds as tragedy mingles with comedy in a scene where, peeking through a window, he discovers Franta in bed with his girl - and promptly falls into a cabbage patch.
Throughout the action, Franta's recollections of friendship, loyalty and love are intercut with the daily life of the grim prison where the pilots have been sent because the totalitarian regime must suppress the ideas of democracy and freedom that they represent. But with typical Czech humanism, even the German Nazi doctor who shares their imprisonment is shown some sympathy. There are no black-and-white characters or easy answers on offer here.
Prod cos. . . . . ... . Biograf Jan Sverak,
. . . . . . . . . . . . .... . .Portobello Pictures
Czech dist. . . . . . . . . . . . . ….Cinemart
Int'l sales. . . . . .. . . .TF1 International
Prods . .. . .Eric Abraham, Jan Sverak
Scr. . . . . . . . . . . … . . ..Zdenek Sverak
Cinematography . . . Vladimir Smutny
Prod des . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Jan Ylasak
Ed. . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . Alois Fisarek
Music. . . . . . . .. . . . . . Ondrej Soukup
Main cast . . . … . . . . ..Ondrej Vetchy,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . Krystof Hadek,
. . . .. Tara Fitzgerald, Oldrich Kaiser,
Hans-Jorg Assmann, Charles Dance,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . … . . . .Anna Massey
NEW STATESMAN o 18 JUNE 2001
The reel facts
FILM AND HISTORY
ROBERT FOX on how
Hollywood takes cinematic liberties with the truth
At a lumbering three hours, Jerry Bruckheimer's blockbuster Pearl Harbor takes twice as long as the real Japanese action on the morning of 7 December 1941 - and probably cost twice as much as it did to equip the entire Japanese battle fleet that day. The big loser in this version of the battle that brought Franklin D Roosevelt and the United States into the Second World War is a sense of history. Indeed, history is on the retreat throughout blockbuster-land, and Pearl Harbor is a prize example. The sharp edges and ironies of what really went on are flattened, or simply airbrushed. The intrigues and plots in both the US and Japanese commands are quietly and commercially censored, for fear of giving offence.
The great historical figures such as Roosevelt and the Japanese Navy's commander-in-chief, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, are reduced to cardboard cut-outs who speak in soundbites - more CNN than cinema. Yamamoto - one of only three Japanese figures named in the cast list - is a fascinating figure who holds the clue as to why the battle was the right tactic in the wrong place, a pyrrhic victory that forecast ultimate defeat for Japan.
Small masterpiece Dark Blue World Harvard-educated, a compulsive gambler who enjoyed his time in London and Washington, Yamamoto did not want to go to war with America. But, once the decision to fight the US was taken, he understood that the Pacific Fleet must be destroyed - but not in Pearl Harbor. He wanted to lure the full fleet into the vast wastes of the northern Pacific, where he knew the superior Japanese torpedoes had the advantage. There, he knew he could destroy the fleet, including the aircraft carriers (which were absent on the day in Pearl Harbor), and leave it no line of retreat.
His warning that Japan had "awakened a sleeping giant" is hidden under the schmaltzy and wholly inaccurate epilogue, claiming that this experience led to a new America and a new victory. Yamamoto knew that the US would win more by industrial than by tactical muscle. In fact, the huge industrial strength concealed poor planning and coordination between land and sea forces. The mistrust between the land and sea commanders, Lieutenant-General Short and Admiral Kimmel, which compounded the chaos at Pearl Harbor (skimmed over in the film), continued under their successors, General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz - a dysfunctional tradition that was to continue through Vietnam to Kosovo.
It is hard to think of a really good recent Hollywood movie about the Second World War. Even George C Scott in Patton seemed a dated neo-fascist ranter, on a recent TV rerun. History and irony are just not box office, it seems, so bring on the lip gloss and the airbrush to keep Disney and Tinseltown happy.
And yet a raft of European films shows that recent history can be the stuff of good movies. The Italian Mediterraneo, directed by Gabnele Salvatores, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1991, touched on a similar theme to this summer's big turkey, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. The story of Italian sailors escaping the war on an Aegean island is told with a pathos and irony that the Hollywood epic wholly lacks. And a new film that shouldn't be missed (although probably few will see it because it is still without a distributor) is the Anglo-Czech-German production Dark Blue World, a tale of Czech pilots fighting for the RAF. Directed by Jan Sverák, it's a little masterpiece from the team that made Kolya, also an Oscar-winner in 1997. The action shots were built around out-takes from The Battle of Britain, and the entire production cost $8m, little more than the budget for the promotion of Pearl Harbor. From the grainy effects for scenes in the mess, down to the slightly scruffy appearance of the WAAFs, the sense of period is flawless. The makers of Pearl Harbor and Corelli should see this gem of a movie, and blush.
THE HOLLOYWOOD REPORTER.COM, 13/06/01
INTER NATIONAL
June 13, 2001
Sverak's WWII film gets hero's welcome at home
June 13, 2001
By Nick Hodsworth
PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- "Tmavomodry svet' (Deep Blue World), the new film by Oscar-winning Czech director Jan Sverak, has become a massive hit with local audiences, taking in more than $650,000 at the boxoffice since it opened four weeks ago
The $6 million film about Czech fighter pilots in Britain's warhme Royal Air Force, written by the director's father, Zdenek Sverak --who also wrote the 1996 Oscar-winning "Kolya" -- is a sellout in theaters throughout Prague and around the country
One cinema in Prague is screening the film simultaneously in three halls with an advertising campaign that promises a seat for every customer.
The film, which tells the story of the Czech pilots who fled Nazi occupation of their country in 1939 to fight under British colors in the Battle of Britain, stars Charles Dance, Tara Fitzgerald and Czech actor Ondrej Vetchy.
It premiered May 17 in Prague before Czech president Vaclav Havel and his wife, Dagmar, and a handful of the surviving veterans -- all at least 80 years old.
Since then it has outperformed such films as the Anthony Hopkins starrer "Hannibal," with 10 times as many admissions.
"We had 250,000 admissions in the first two weeks alone," Jan Sverak said. "Usually a Czech film does that in six months"
London-based producer Eric Abraham -- who persuaded Sverak to make the Anglo-Czech language film after the success of "Kolya" -- said distribution deals were already in place for Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, Asia and some South American countries. He hoped to secure distribution soon for a U S opening this year and a U.K. bow early in 2002.
The movie, made with German, Czech and British backing, is the first post-Communist retelling of a heroic episode in the country's history, little known today by the younger generation.
More than 2,400 Czechs flew for Britain's RAF, and many thousands more made their way to Britain to fight in its army during World War II.
Sverak does not flinch from showing how the Communist regime that took power in 1948 treated the men not as heroes but as traitors tainted by capitalism, with many of them imprisoned, beaten or executed.
"These Czechs were our last heroes" Sverak said. "The film is rooted in our history."
Czechs who have seen the film say the romanticized battle scenes -- using genuine wartime Spitfires as well as models and outtakes from the classic 1969 British war film "The Battle of Britain" -- are a key draw.
Old flyers praise its accuracy and enjoy the homage it pays them Former Spitfire pilot Frantisek Fajtl said he felt as if he was "back in the cockpit" when he saw the film.
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REGUS LONDON FILM FESTIVAL, NOVEMBER 2001
Morgan Stanley
Credit Card Gala
Dark Blue World (Tmavomodry svet)
Tue 13 Nov 20.30 and Wed 14 Nov 13.00 OWE2
Franta (Ondrel Vetchy) is a pilot who, along with his young friend Karel (Krystot Hadek), flee Czechoslovakia as the Germans invade in 1939. Reaching England, they then join a number of their fellow countrymen by enlisting in the RAF to fly and fight in the Battle of Britain. In order to do their bit the men first have to overcome a variety of cultural difficulties and gain the respect of the local RAF Wing Commander (Charles Dance). They are then pitched into the midst of aerial warfare, where life expectancy is incredibly low. When not on dangerous duty, the men try to date the local English women but Franta and Karel's friendship is strained to breaking point because of their shared attraction to Susan (Tara Fitzgorald), a young widow. From Jan Sverak, the Oscar winning director of Kolya, comes this magnificently made romantic drama of heroism and self-sacrifice. Scripted by the director's father, Zdenek Sverak, Dark Blue World is closely based on the real-life experience of Czech fighter pilots who survived the conflict, only to be persecuted in the post-war Communist regime in control when they returned home. On a technical level, Dark Blue World is stunning with frighteningly realistic flying sequences, a convincing evocation of the period's pleasures and privations, with utterly believable performances from the attractive Czech cast. Adnan Wootton
Dir Jan Sverak / Scr Zdenek Sverak / with Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek, Charles Dance, Tara Fitzgerald, Hans-Jorg Assmarnn Anna Massey / Czech Republic-UK-Germany 2001 / 114mins / Columbia TriStar
Morgan Stanley
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.COM 5/10/01
FILM
October 5, 2001
AFI fest to open with Czech 'Dark Blue World'
Oct 04, 2001
By Chris Gardner
The American Film Institute has packaged its opening, closing and centerpiece screenings for the 15th annual film festival, set to unspool Nov. 1-11 in Los Angeles.
Included on the roster for AFt Fest 2001 is an opening-night premiere of the Czech war drama "Dark Blue World," directed by Jan Sverak; a centerpiece screening of Ray Lawrence's Australian thriller "Lantana"; and the closing-night gala with Marc Forster's prison drama "Monster's Ball"
Sony Pictures Classics' "World," opening the fest at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, stars Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek and Tara Fitzgerald in the story of Czech pilots who flee their homeland during WWII to join the British Royal Air Force. The screening marks the film's stateside premiere, following a showing at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.
"Lantana," a Lions Gate Films release set to screen at Hollywood's Pacific Theatre, stars Anthony LaPaglia, Barbara Hershey, Geoffrey Rush and Rachael Blake The film, which follows the lives of four married couples, centers around a two-timing police detective who becomes embroiled in a missing persons investigation.
AFI Fest 2001 wraps Nov 11 at Grauman's with the world premiere of "Monster's Ball," also from Lions Gate The drama stars Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry and Heath Ledger in the tale of an embittered prison guard working on Death Row who begins an unlikely affair with the wife of a man he has just executed.
"We are extremely honored to be hosting these three remarkable films as part of AFI Fest 2001 ." said festival director Christian Gaines. "Although hailing from far-flung corners of the earth, these films each share a common message in that love and friendship are precious gifts not to be squandered In the world we live in right now, this theme resonated with us here at AFI Fest."
The Festival is headquartered at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre, with other screenings scheduled for theatres along Hollywood Boulevard.
Into the Blue
A new Czech film pays
tribute to wartime flyers
IN THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED THE 1939 Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, thousands of Czechs and Slovaks fled to continue the fight from abroad. More than 2,000 of them joined Britain's Royal Air Force (R.A.F.), and nearly 500 died in the line of duty. Yet when the survivors returned home, their heroes' welcome was short-lived. After the communists took over in 1948, many of those who had fought with the Western allies were arrested, tried and imprisoned as traitors; others were dismissed from their jobs and victimized. For the next 40 years, their story was virtually unknown in their own country.
Czech director Jan Sverák is now attempting to vindicate these brave airmen. His new Czech-and-English-language feature Dark Blue World is a World War II epic about two Czech pilots who join the R.A.F. and fall in love with the same Englishwoman (Tara Fitzgerald from Brassed Off). "It's a story about heroes whom the Czechs locked up when they returned and who were never told they were heroes," says Sverák, 36. It's also about whether love for the same woman can destroy friendship. Sverák's conclusion? "It cannot. Friends will be friends even if they may never speak again."
The most expensive Czech movie ever made, Dark Blue World cost $6.5 million to produce and opens in the Czech Republic this week. Its release in North America is expected before Christmas. Like Kolja, Sverák's 1996 foreign-language-Oscar winner about an aging bachelor who must take care of a five-year-old Russian boy on the eve of the Velvet Revolution, Dark Blue World was penned by his actor-scriptwriter father Zdenek, 65, who interviewed 30 surviving pilots for the production. "They were such great guys and still are even though they are in their 80s," says the elder Sverák. "So we decided we had to do a beautiful film about them." The glowing reviews the movie has received suggest the Sveráks have succeeded. -By Jan Stojaspal
VARIETY THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2001
DARK BLUE WORLD
(TRMAVOMODRY SVET)
(CZECH REP.-U.K)
A Biograf Jan Sverak (Czech Rep/Portobello Pictures (UK) production, in association with Helkon Media (Germany), Phoenix Film Investments, Fandango, Czech Television (International sales: TF1 Intl., Boulogne, France.) Produced by Eric Abraham, Jan Sverak Co-producers, Werner Koenig, Domenico Procacci.
FLYING HIGH: Jan Sverak's WWII drama-comedy follows Czech
Directed by Jan Sverak. Screenplay, Zdenek Sverak. Camera (color, widescreen), Vladimir Smutny; editor, Alois Fisarek; music, Ondrej Soukup; production designer, Jan Vlasak; art director, Vaclav Novak; costume designer, Veia Mirova; sound (Dolby Digital), Pavel Rejholec; sound designer, Zbynek Mikulik; second unit camera, Ramunas Greicius; special effects supervisor, Jaruslav Kolman; stunt co-ordinator; Ladislav Lahoda; associate producer, Ed Whitmore, assistant director, David Rauch. Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (market), May 11, 2001. Running time: 115 MIN
Franta Slama ………..Omliej Velchy
Karel Vojtisek …………Krystof Hadek
Susan Whitmore………Tara Fitzgerald
Machaty………………..Oldrich Kaiser
Doctor……………Hans-Jorg Assmann
Wing Commander Bentley…………….Charles Dance
English teacher…………Anna Massey
(Czech, English & German dialogue)
By DEREK ELLEY
Young Czech helmer Jan Sverak's distinctive gift, already shown in "Kolya", for juggling
Bohemian charm with deep-rooted emotion succeeds on the much larger stage of "Dark Blue World," thanks to another well-textured script by his father, Zdenek Sverak, and performances that play to the front row rather than the gallery. Essentially an intimate dramedy of two Czech pilots in Britain's Royal Air Force who fall for the same woman during WWII, pic is full of engaging characters and an overall big-heartedness beneath the aerial dogfights and the more serious message of what Communism later did to these overseas war heroes.
Strikingly shot in widescreen, this quality mainstream entertainment lacks the simplicity and cuteness that made the Academy Award-winning "Kolya" such an international success, but with the right positioning and marketing could fly reasonably high beyond home turf, especially in Europe. Pic opened in Prague May 16 and is being touted for a North American preem at the Toronto fest this fall.
From "Wings" to "The Right Stuff" the Deep Blue Yonder has provided a favorite arena in the movies for characters to work out their terrestrial con-flicts and personal aspirations. "Dark Blue World" takes the idea one step further by framing the wartime drama as a series of memory flashbacks from the dark, early days of Czech communism in 1950. As Lt. Franta Slama (Ondrej Vetchy) recuperates in the grim hospital of Mirov Prison, packed with political prisoners, he recalls the heady, final days of freedom just prior to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in '39.
Franta was then a carefree flyer at Olomouc Airfield, with a rookie pilot, Karel (Krystof Hadek), assigned to his care. As German troops march into the country, Franta is more interested in getting it on with a cute blonde who's promised to the local stationmaster.
When German troops commandeer the airfield, Franta quietly knuckles
pilots fighting for the Allies.
down to working under his new over-
lords, but soon he and Karel set about escaping to freedom. Pic rapidly switches to a rural training center in England, 1940, where the duo and other Czechs stumble through language lessons, partake in strategy exercises on bicycles equipped with wings, and generally hang out together as they await the call to action. Among their group are a piano-playing lothario, Machaty (Oldrich Kaiser), a gross Moravian, Sysel, and a kid with a perpetual stammer.
Played in a naturalistic manner by the main cast, with dialogue realistically sliding between Czech and English, these scenes establish an easy friendship born of a common background that's been uprooted and planted in a foreign land. The elder Sverak's strong script is very even-handed here, with the Czechs as well as the Brits coming in for good-natured ribbing.
A half-hour into the pic, the action gets under way, with a dogfight vs some German planes that leads to an immediate casualty in the group. (Pic isn't soft-centered in suddenly dispatching its characters.) In tandem with Ondrej Soukup's broad, aspirational score, these aerial sequences pack as big a punch as anything in larger-budgeted productions. Helmer never allows the f/x to take precedence over the personalities involved
- even finding time for shafts of humor between the drama - and, more than in any other movie, conveys the visceral feel of being peppered with gunfire while cooped up in a claustrophobic cockpit.
After such lengthy preparation, the human conflict clicks into gear when Karel, shot down over England, stumbles onto the rural home of Susan (Tara Fitzgerald), wife of an absent sailor. Their brief encounter, and her much longer one with the older Franta, tests the friendship between the lovestruck kid and his superior officer, as the pair's fates become entwined in later missions.
Sverak's sheer technical finesse, and ability to spin on a dime between comedy and tragedy, the personal and the historical, makes "Deep Blue World" succeed where other similarly themed movies, from "Battle of Britain" to "The Blue Max" seem heavy-handed by comparison. Although the script further ups the stakes by moving backwards and forwards between the '5Os and '40s, the movie has a seamless emotional line that doesn't make the time shifts annoying.
Taking a typically Czech approach in which all characters are shown to be complicit in each other's fates, and made up of equal parts good and bad, even supporting roles - such as a former Nazi doctor (Hans-Jorg Assmann) in the Czech prison - emerge as damaged but essentially sympathetic goods. In a good example of the script's pungent economy, the doc inspects one prisoner's wounds after an interrogation and murmurs, "Nazis, Commu
nists…the blows are the same"
Pic's neatly worked out final reels, which go for a prolonged shrug of the shoulders rather than physical confrontations, are extremely moving.
The heart and soul of the movie resides in the perf of the experienced Vetchy (the gravedigger in "Kolya"), whose easygoing, twinkly-eyed charm avoids any one-dimensional macho posturing. In a relatively small role, Fitzgerald radiates a mature, no-nonsense presence as the lonesome wife, meshing easily with her Czech co-stars, and newcomer Hadek is restrained in the potentially sulky part of Karel. Among the strong supports, Kaiser shines as Machaty, a cynical, seen-it-all womanizer with a melancholic center.
Almost entirely shot in the Czech Republic, apart from some sea scenes done in South Africa and some pickup shots of the White Cliffs of Dover, the movie features a couple of rather un-English landscapes but is generally well fabricated, with a lived-in look to Jan Vlasak's production design and Vera Mirova's costumes. Though much is packed into the running time, there's little sense of dramatic overcrowding, thanks to Sverak's skill at transitions.
A final historical note says all the pilots were finally released from prison in '51, but were only fully rehabilitated 40 years later.
CANNES
TIME - FAST FORWARD EUROPE: SUMMER 2000/01
FIRST PERSON
Jan Sverak, a 35-year-old Czech director with two Oscars under his belt, came of age during the Czech Republic's transition to democracy. He writes about making movies, life under the communists and the freedom of the imagination
HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE AN ARTIST, to do something visual. I was very interested in the art of illusion, making
fiction look like reality. As a kid, I tried to imitate different handwriting I was very stimulated by the idea that everything was possible, that you can make anything happen. My favorite cartoon of that time was Potkali se u Kolina (They Met Near Kolin), about two bears who played together by changing their bodies into a tram, car, anything they wanted. I was building my own worlds on paper.
"Making a film is like creating a new world. In a film you are always trying to make fiction look like reality. The master of this is Ridley Scott, He always fills his sets with garbage and dirt. The spaceship in Alien has rusty chains and water is dripping from them. It makes it look real.
After the fall of communism, I was able to fulfill my dream of becoming a filmmaker. Before we were like rabbits in a hutch. It didn't rain on us, they gave us food and made sure we were healthy. But we couldn't go outside.
After the fall of communism, they took the hutch away, let us all out on the lawn and said, "You have freedom, fend for yourself:' Few people had the courage. After all, it rained outside, the sun was hot, and one could get preyed on by a bigger animal. But I found the possibilities fascinating.
I am still a bit of a child. I don't want to accept that things are given once and for all. I want to believe that everything can be different, everything can be changed 1 tell a story from a different angle. It's the view of a mouse. I play with detail. When somebody is saying something, I show what he is doing with his hand on a glass of beer.
These are things a child notices while the adults look each other in the eye when they interact. A child would notice that an uncle scratched his butt or that an aunt's necklace is about to break. You learn a lot less about a character if you are just looking at talking heads.
I use several things to make fiction look like reality I don't think the focus should be too sharp in a film. If it is, you can see the clothes are just costumes, that the sidewalk curbs are not authentic or that there are power lines in the background even though they aren't supposed to be there. Then there is smoke. When you send
JAN SVERAK:
A FILMOGRAPHY
1988: Ropaci (Oilgobblers),
winner of the 1989 Honorary
Foreign Student Film Award of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences
1991: Obecna skola
(Elementary School)
1994: Akumulator 1
(Accumulator 1)
1994: Jizda (The Ride)
1996: Kolja (Kolya), winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
IN PRODUCTION: Tmavomodry Svet (Dark Blue World)
smoke across the screen or there is smoke in the background, it makes the scene look real because smoke is real. It's not made up. Rain is real, too. When an actor acts in an environment that is real, the reality kind of projects onto his character. Mistakes are another good tool, you leave an error in, let coincidence play a role, an unexpected move, an actor forgets his line and is trying to remember it.
Despite being a filmmaker, I think that there is nothing better than literature. In literature you imagine the story your own way. Your imagination is in top gear. You are the one to build the sets, picture the faces and you project your own experience onto the characters' deeds. It's a very creative process. A radio play is similar but you already have a voice that tells you a little how to read things. It's no longer entirely up to you. Film serves it to you on a plate, there is little room for imagination.
But I am not putting film down. By making a film, I show people this is what's happening in my head when I read this book. I am interested in stories which somehow relate to my life, that deal with issues that I am dealing with. In Kolya [an Academy Award-winning tale about the relationship between an aging Czech cellist and a five-year-old Russian boy left behind by his mother on her flight to the West] I was trying to solve my problem of marrying very young, having children shortly [thereafter] and losing freedom. All of a sudden, I found myself thinking, "I am getting old and haven't had any fun. What are the children giving me for feeding them and taking care of them?" There is an answer in Kolya: one is richer if he is giving rather than acting selfish."
First Prague, Then the World
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY JUNE 10, 2001
By PETER S. GREEN
PRAGUE FOR a moment, the Czech director Jan Hrebejk thought he might actually be about to win the Academy Award for the best foreign film of 2000. On Oscar night, as the envelope was opened, a cameraman came running up and aimed his lens right at Mr Hrebejk. 'Then they announced a different result, he panicked, ran away, and I realized the red light on his camera was not on, and he was not shooting," he told a Czech reporter afterward.
"Never mind," Mr Hrebejk, 34, added, "The red light will hopefully light up some other time."
If not for him, then perhaps another Czech filmmaker. Mr Hrebejk's Oscar-nominated film, "Divided We Fall," which opened in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, is but the latest in a string of successful films by young Czech directors. And Mr Hrebejk's sweetly self-deprecating description of his night at the Oscars is emblematic of the winning Czech film style that has grabbed audiences both at home and abroad.
Peter S Green, who is based in Prague, writes about Central and Eastern European affairs and culture.
Four years ago, the director Jan Sverak, now 36, won the foreign film Oscar for "Kolya," his tale of an aging Czech who finds himself caring for a small Russian boy in the final days of Communist Czechoslovakia. There was a dearth of good films in the first years after Communism's fall, in 1989, but since then a group of younger directors has emerged, including David Ondricek, Sasa Gedeon, Filip Renc, Alice Nellis, Petr Zelenka, Vladimir Michalek and Petr Vaclav.
Mr Sverak is already generating Oscar talk for his newest film, released last month in Prague, called "Dark Blue World," an epic about Czech fighter pilots who flew with Britain's Royal Air Force during World War II. Filmed at the same time as Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor," it has a similar plotline. Two Czech pilots who barely speak English (the popular Czech star Ondrej Vetchy and a teenage newcomer, Krystof Hadek) escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and fall in love with the same beautiful British war widow, played by the Irish actress Tara Fitzgerald, against the backdrop of spectacularly staged dogfights in the skies above Britain.
Other recent hits here include "Ene Bene" ("Eeny Meeny") by Ms Nellis, a tale about vote counters at a local election, Mr Vaclav's "Parallel Worlds," a depressing love triangle set in Prague and Paris, Mr Zelenka's "Buttoners," five interlocking stories set in modern day Prague, Mr Gedeon's "Return of the Idiot," a contemporary retelling of Dostoevsky's "Idiot," and Mr Michalek's
With an eye for profits and a nod to Hollywood, a new generation of Czechs seeks a wider market.
"Sekal Has to Die," a violent saga of love and betrayal in the Czech countryside.
Czech film is returning to the spotlight it held when an earlier generation of Czech filmmakers created a New Wave. Today, the sheer quantity of films has audiences and critics asking whether they are seeing the birth of a new Czech "new wave". Some 17 feature films were released last year, an impressive figure in a country of only 105 million people where average salaries are about $350 a month.
During the Communist thaw of the mid-1960's and into the early 70's, the Czechoslovak filmmakers who formed the Czech New Wave rode their distinctive blend of fantasy and fight for artistic freedom to a pair of Oscars, Jan Kadar and Elmar KIos's "Shop on Main Street" (1965) and Jiri Menzel's "Closely Watched Trains" (1967). Now the new generation of Czech filmmakers is mining the country's recent past to make crowd-pleasing and award-winning films, learning English and setting their sights on ever bigger productions, hoping soon to make English language films that can challenge Hollywood's own productions.
Most of these filmmakers are in their mid-30's and all are graduates of the same Czech film school known as FAMU, the Film Academy of Theatrical Arts, which produced Mr Menzel, Vera Chytilova and Milos Forman. All came of age just before the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when Communism and Soviet domination were peacefully overthrown, and all began their careers in its immediate aftermath, when the comfortable, if cumbersome, structures of state-financed filmmaking had fallen apart.
Their films distance themselves from the country's Communist-era classics by their sophisticated production values and fast pacing. But they also treat subjects that were either politically or socially taboo under the Communist regime or simply uncool for the rebellious New Wave filmmakers and their Communist-era successors.
Recent films touch on the Czechs' less than glorious behavior during World War II. Mr Hrebejk's "Divided We Fall" is about an ordinary Czech couple who hide a young Jewish man during the Nazi occupation, and Milan Cieslar's "Springs of Life" is about love bet- ween a Czech girl, a gay Nazi and an escaped Jew. Others examine the way people behaved during the Soviet occupation and Communist rule, like Mr Orebejk's earlier film "Cozy Dens" ("Pelisky") and Mr Renc's "Rebelove" (a "Grease-like 60's musical).
Still others, like Mr Ondricek's 'Samotari" ("Loners"), talk about money and materialism, subjects that many New Wave filmmakers considered too vulgar, or about sex and drugs, subjects that Communist censors preferred not to see on film.
So is there really a so-called Velvet Generation of filmmakers? On the surface, it would appear not.
It's nonsense, there is no connection" among the younger Czech filmmakers, said Mr Sverak, who is considered the country's most successful director.
"We are making our films after a revolution, so there's the same social climate, but that's it," he said "Chytilova and Menzel had a world movement to follow, the French New Wave, and we don't".
Mr Ondricek said "In the 60's, they had a common purpose - anti-Communism kept them together. Today there's nothing to fight. Today it's more about entertainment than a struggle for art". His "Samotari" was last summer's smash hit, a Czech "Sex in the City" about a group of alienated Generation X-ers and their tangled lives in contemporary, commercialized Prague.
"There is no other link than their youth - there's no program, no Dogma," said Mirka Spacrlova, the film critic for the country's leading daily newspaper, Mlada Fronta Dnes.
Eager to please, young directors are learning English and dreaming of blockbusters
Ms Spacilova divides the younger Czech filmmakers into two groups. Mr Ondrscek, Mr Zelenka, Mr Vaclay and Mr Gedeon are among those who belong to what she calls the European generation, whose films are about the ups and downs of modern life. "They don't want to make cute Czech films, but want to make films that will sell abroad," she said.
The other group is the makers of the so-called "cute" Czech film, a slightly kitschy escape from reality. The phrase, she said, was first used by Czech critics to disparage Mr Sverak's "Kolya". "These are films where the Czechs are nice, kind people who love each other," Ms Spacilova said "They often use scenes from the past. They are sweet, soothing films that any generation can watch."
Even in the most serious recent films, however, there is a recognizably Czech blend of humor, sex and silly gags. "If we have something special, it is the skill to combine humor with emotion," Mr Sverak said.
The most successful cute Czech films seem to be those with a moral. Mr Hrebejk's last two movies could be called parables of the two most controversial moments in recent Czech history: World War II ("Divided We Fall") and 'the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that put down the Prague Spring reform movement ("Cozy Dens").
MR. HREBEJK said he was "quite happy that we don't have lobe missionaries" anymore, like the filmmakers of the 60's and 70's, and rather can be left alone to con-centrate on tales well told. Yet "Cozy Dens" ends with a screenful of text dedicating the film to those who had the courage to stay behind in Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia and not flee to Western Europe.
His next project also has a moral. It is an adaptation of the modern Czech classic "I Served the King of England" by Bohumil Hrabal, a sweetly funny yet devastating novel about a Czech opportunist who manages to survive World War II, liberation and the 1948 Communist putsch.
For all their success with critics and at the box office, the new generation of filmmakers face a big problem - money. During Communism, when films were commissioned by the state-owned studios, directors had few worries. Within the limited technical means available in Czechoslovakia. Today, the directors have to assemble their own financing. The country still has very few producers and no serious film studios on a Western model; the people who are making most of the films today are those who know how to gather money and how to make a product that will make money.
Any ambitious project must be salable abroad. "The biggest problem is how do you recoup your money from the box office in a country with only 10 million people," said Eric Abraham, the English producer of Mr Sverak's last two films.
During Communism, box-office receipts, television sales, foreign rights and sequels didn't matter. Actors were salaried, too, holding down costs further.
The point was driven home over lunch at a Prague spaghetti parlor this summer during a heat wave. Over his mobile telephone, Mr Ondricek, the young director of "Loners," fretted, "Sunday we had only 98 admissions at Svetozor," a major Prague movie theater. Since most Czech theaters are not air-conditioned, people go swimming or pack up for the countryside when temperatures rise.
To help sell their film, Mr Ondricek, the screenwriter Petr Zelenka and some of the film's stars, including the heartthrob Jiri Machacek, toured the country, holding question-and-answer sessions with the audience.
The emphasis on making a profit doesn't please everyone. Ms Chytilove says it has driven art completely. Out of filmmaking. She misses the old system.
"It's difficult to get money, and if you do, the producers want to make sure they'll get it back," said Ms Chytilova, echoing generations of Hollywood moviemakers. "Creativity is a risk, and no one wants to finance a risky film." Others say the reason her fellow filmmakers have been eclipsed has little to do with money and a lot to do with a failure to understand that times have changed. Ms Chytilova's latest film, "Expulsion From Paradise," a look at life in a Czech nudist colony, has been a total flop.
Even Jiri Menzel, who won an Oscar in 1968, dropped out of filmmaking and turned to theater after the 1994 box-office failure of his critically acclaimed film "The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin".
As Ms Chytilova sees it, the problem with current Czech cinema is that it is swayed by Hollywood, emulating what she calls the "amoral" American approach to filmmaking in which crime and apathy are glorified. But in truth, the most successful Czech films today are quite the opposite.
"What's Interesting is that the young directors are looking in their own backyard, not to Hollywood for story lines," said Mr Abraham, the producer. "Look at 'Pelisky,'" he said, referring to Mr Hrebejk's earlier film, one of the country's most successful. "Czech people like their own stories, and these stories can travel."
AND that's a problem. Even a decade after the end of Communism and censorship, say many Czech film insiders, the country has only a handful of capable scriptwriters, chiefly Mr Sverak's father, Zdenek, who wrote "Dark Blue World" and wrote and starred in "Kolya", Mr Hrebejk's partner, Petr Jarchovsky; and Mr Zelenka, who also wrote "Loners" and has several other projects in development
"I wasn't expecting that when freedom comes, everyone will take out 100 excellent screenplays from their desk drawers," said Ms Spacilova, the critic. "Now, we have two to three good films a year, and that's already a lot."
The Czechs may in fact be able to look beyond their own borders for stories to film.
With the Oscar nomination for Mr. Hrebejk and the box-office success of Mr. Sverak's "Dark Blue World" -it out-grossed both "Gladiator" and "Titanic" when they opened in Czech cinemas, with 130,000 tickets sold at 25 screens in the first week - Czech cinema is feeling a new wave of confidence.
After the Oscars, Mr. Hrebejk went off for a five-week English-language course in Ireland, and Mr. Sverak has his eye on a blockbuster science-fiction film. That the Czechs can produce a Hollywood-caliber action movie like "Dark Blue World" on a shoestring only gives them added conviction that they can find the necessary money.
"I think our entire budget was twice what 'Pearl Harbor' spent on their launch party," Mr Abraham said.
To Tomas Baldynsky, editor-in-chief of the Czech edition of Premiere magazine, Mr Sverak's new film means that Czech filmmakers have shown that they can finally compete with the rest of the world and are no longer locked in their cute Czech box.
"Most Czech films are small:
small cinematography, small plots and stories with no big emotion, no scope," Mr. Baldynsky said. "Everything is in the kitchen, the bedroom, the lobby of your house, even if some of them are really great movies and I love them. 'Dark Blue World' is not just a film; it proves that we can do things everyone else is able to do -digital tricks, world-class cinematography, big budgets. We have proved to the world that we can not only make great Czech films but we can make great world films."
FILMFOUR.COM 02/12/01
DARK BLUE WORLD
Starring Charles Dance Tara Fitzgerald, KrystofHádek, Oldrich Kaiser, Lukas Kantor, AnnaMassey, David Novotny, Linda Rybova, OndrejVetchy
written by Zdenek Sverak
directed by Jan Sverak
produced by Eric Abraham, Jan Sverak
music Ondrej Soukup
cinematography Vladimir Smutny
duration 119 minutes
country Czech Republic
year 2001
A beautifully written and acted film from Czech director Jan Sverak exploring love, friendship and the hypocrisy of war. Czech pilots join the Allies only to be imprisoned on returning to their country
Film Quote
I've deserted the Navy and joined the Airforce
Susan (Tara Fitzgerald) swaps romantic allegiances from her MIA husband to her lover
FILM FACT
Director Jan Sverak appears as the pilot, navigator and gunner in a 8-25 bomber in one scene thanks to
CGI. In 1950, Franta (Vetchy) is a prisoner of the Czech Communist regime. Hospitalised, he recalls his days as a pilot in the British airforce during the war. Through flashbacks his story is told. Refusing to give in to the Nazis when they arrive to commandeer Czech airfields (and the country in 1939), Franta and his young trainee Karol (Hadek) escape to England to join the RAF. After some frankly ridiculous (although historically accurate) fighter training on bikes, the duo join the Battle of Britain and enjoy the louche lifestyle of the grounded pilots. Karol soon falls for Susan (Fitzgerald), an Englishwoman awaiting news of her missing husband. But when she meets the older and wiser Franta there is instant chemistry, prompting an epic falling out between the two friends as war rages on.
Although it may sound similar to the World War II behemoth that was Pearl Harbor, Dark Blue World couldn't be more different or superior. Made on a relative shoe-string of $7m Dark Blue World offers a moving and subtle tale of courage, romance and little-known wartime history, steeped in cinematic grandeur and scope without sacrificing dialogue or credibility.
Though the thrust of the film is the relationships formed and broken during war, the reality of aerial combat is superbly illustrated with a handful of breathtaking visceral dog-fights over the Channel. Sweaty, blind-sighted and uncomfortable with the certainty of death for a least one of the squadron, these scenes heighten the fragility of life, making the love triangle all the more poignant and moving.
The screenplay by Zdenek Sverak, father of director Jan Sverak (the same partnership was responsible for the Oscar-winning 1996 Czech film Kolya), cleverly combines the issues of war with the themes of love and comradeship, while the quality of the film is enhanced further by the filmmaker's sensitive direction and beautiful cinematography from Vladimir Smutny (who also shot Kolya). The characters themselves are amenable and well-rounded - each is sympathetic, fallible and ultimately human whether they are Nazis, pilots, cowards or civilians.
Extract from the NY OBSERVER, September 24, 2001 - Rex Reed
"…..Dark Blue World, an epic by Jan Sverak, the celebrated Czech director of the Oscar-winning film KOLYA, is about the bravery of two fighter pilots who escape to England when Czechoslovakia is invaded by the Nazis, join the RAF, fall in love with he same British war widow and test the boundaries of friendship and patriotism in the sky and on the ground as World War II builds to a sweeping climax. Only one survives but when he returns after the war to Czech soil under Russian rule it is not a hero's welcome. Brilliantly directed and sublimely acted with a respect for complex characters and a refreshing lack of sentimentality, Dark Blue World blends action, romance and tragedy in a work that has both intensity and entertainment value."
EVENING STANDARD 01/11/01 - Hot Tickets
TUESDAY 13
MORGAN STANLEY
CREDIT CARD GALA
DARK BLUE WORLD
Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek, Charles Dance, Dir; Jan Sverak, Cz/UK/ger.
114 min.
As much a tribute to the Czech fighter pilots who fought in the RAF during the Battle of Britain as a portrait of wartime conditions, this stunning movie captures the situations behind the scenes experienced by two young pilots who flee Czechoslovakia in 1939 and attempt to integrate into the British social system during the war. When a young English widow comes between the two friends, their friendship on the ground as well as their lives in the air are at risk. Great aerial combat scenes, plus an enhanced period mood, make this film from Jan Sverak (the director of Kolya) an unmissable treat.
8.30pm, Odeon West End 2 (also Wed 14 Nov, Odeon West End 2).
SCREENDAILY.COM 30/07/01
Sony Classics grabs Sverak's Dark Blue World
Anna Franklin in Prague
Sony Pictures Classics has picked up Jan Sverak's Czech language release in North America, Australia and the UK. The deal brings the total number of territories to which the film has been sold all rights to 23, including Japan, Italy (Medusa) and Germany (Buena Vista)
According to the film's producer Eric Abraham, of the UK's Portobello Pictures, sales are on target to surpass the 40-territory release achieved by Sverak's Oscar-winning Kolya.
Dark Blue World was released in the Czech Republic on 17 May and has already held the number one position there for 10 weeks amassing a phenomenal 675,000 admissions. The film's cast includes Charles Dance, Tara Fitzgerald (pictured) and Czech heartthrob Ondrej Vetchy.
The film will have its international premiere at a special gala at the Toronto Film Festival on Sept 9, which Abraham says will be an important launch pad for the film's North American release. "We are thrilled about the Sony Classics sale. They were our first choice. So far we are only selling all rights and with a guarantee of theatrical release."
VARIETY.COM 03/10/01 - TEN TALENT TO WATCH
Krystof Hadek
'Blue' period worthy of Czech-ing out
By CATHY MEILS
HOMETOWN: Prague, Czech Republic
FAVORITE ACTOR: Paul Newman
NEXT PROJECT: "Autumn Night Story", directed by Milan Cieslar
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN 10 YEARS?: "I hope I will be acting."
WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO BECOME AN ACTOR?: "I joined a drama program when I was 10 and I liked it."
Krystof Hadek has a dilemma. He hasn't finished high school and doesn't have time to begin classes this year. Since landing a co-starring role in Oscar winner Jan Sverak's new film, "Dark Blue World," the 19-year-old actor hasn't had much time for anything.
Hadek turned up at a casting call for the pic with his school buddy and about a thousand other young hopefuls - including his look-alike older brother, an actor with the prestigious Vinohrady Theatre company. Walking in shortly after his sibling's audition, Krystof was nearly turned away by Sverak, who wondered why he was seeing the same actor twice.
After the director realized that this was somebody new, Sverak told Hadek he was too young to play the role of a Czech pilot in the Royal Air Force.
"He said I was a boy and he needed a man for the role," Hadek recalls. But when the project was delayed by a few months, Hadek was called back by Sverak. The helmer told him he didn't like the screen test done with (eventual co-star) Ondrej Vetchy and was giving him another chance.
Finally, Sverak called the young thesp and said he hadn't anyone that impressed him as much and that Hadek had won the role. Filming began just as thesp was celebrating his 18th birthday.
The youngest of three boys, Hadek is hardly a naif when it comes to show business. His mother is a documentarian with Kratky Film in Prague, and Hadek had already completed five years in the acting program at the Prague Conservatory.
In "Dark Blue World", which is being released in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Classics, Hadek runs the emotional gamut (in Czech and English) from cocky young recruit to jilted lover and closes the film with a heroic finale. His onscreen poise and sensitivity have many viewers comparing him to Matt Damon and Ethan Hawke.
Hadek continues brushing up on his English (which he learned from "Dark Blue World" producer Eric Abraham) in preparation for the film's jaunt around the world.
"Dark Blue World" was spooled at the just-completed Toronto Intl. Film Festival and is scheduled for a Stateside release on Dec. 28.
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