NinadeL

This exceptional Czech adaptation of Erich Kästner's came just in time to offer an ideal subject for a classic Slavín-style comedy. Kästner's novel "Drei Männer im Schnee" from 1934 can easily be imagined on paper as the ideal material for a film starring Hugo Haas. It has so much in common with the main motifs of the socially critical comedies that were among the most frequent themes of Czech cinema in the 1930s. The endearing troubles of factory worker Bárta, who poses as a penniless winner of a competition for a luxury stay in a mountain hotel, provide the perfect platform for a series of affectionate humor and witty dialogue.

This was a missed opportunity. The adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's bestselling novel was expected to be the hit of the season, yet the result did not impress anyone. While the social novel followed the interesting 1945-1965 time arc and the transformation of show business at that time, the film limited itself to a boring show of young faces in a purely contemporary setting. The film was a disappointment, among other things, for Sharon Tate and her agent, who had hoped to finally see her break through. Unfortunately, none of the six feature films she managed to make during her lifetime became convincing proof of her supposed talent, which so many people believed in.

Of the series of films by Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight is explicitly weak. At the time, it didn't seem that the French-speaking Chevalier had exhausted his charm, but to base half the film on a mechanical repetition of what Lubitsch had already managed to do several times is inappropriate. Once again we get Chevalier, in his turtleneck, adoring Paris, we get MacDonald again, like porcelain, and again it all takes place in a luxurious chateau as if in a fairy tale. And he is poor again and she is rich again. The only change is a tiny role for the sassy Myrna Loy. What's really worth mentioning is only the dramatic ending, in which MacDonald throws down a horse for love and stops a train with her own body.

The life story of Jim Braddock is, of course, an excellent subject for a film. This famous boxer was from the interwar generation that shaped the dreams of ordinary people in the boxing ring, inspired them and gave them hope. After all, all of the names in the heavyweight champion category are well-known names: Jess Willard, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Max Schmeling, Jack Sharkey, Primo Carnera, Max Baer, James J. Braddock, and Joe Louis. They are all heroes of the modern age. Yet Braddock was a miracle, an ordinary guy who toiled through poverty and hardship during the Depression and rose to the top by beating two-foot giant Max Baer, a victory no one was expecting. The movie basically wrote itself. Russell Crowe outdid himself once again, and there were no dry eyes in the movie theater. I could imagine a dozen better actresses in Renée Zellweger's place, but never mind that. Cinderella Man will definitely be in the hall of fame as one of the best boxing movies. Right up there with the drama portrayed in the Schmeling vs. Louis match.

The edited film is one of the extinct formats of a bygone era. And this is one of the better ones. Nowadays, however, a similar trip through older films would look archaic even on television. Interesting facts include repeated visits to the Ponrepo movie theater and the fact that this is the last film subject of Josef Nesvadba.

While Herz's encounter with Josef Nesvadba can be considered provocatively inspiring, other Czech encounters with the genres of horror or science fiction need to be tolerated only as experiments or trials. Even though the final form of Ferat Vampire is described by Herz as a mere fragment of the film he intended, it remains an interesting testimony to the Czech homage to the classic expressionist masterpiece. It's no coincidence, by the way, that Herzog's German remake Nosferatu the Vampyre was created just two years earlier. However, Herz was working in under the conditions of a state film, and he was dependent on the Mladá Boleslav car factory and had a very unbalanced cast at his disposal. Herz himself longed to be one of the actors united by the role of the vampire Nosferatu, and therefore cast himself in fragments of the silent film commented on by the unmistakably ironic Y-like diction of the gifted Schmid (here in a role paraphrasing Van Helsing). He entrusted the leading female role to his favorite Dagmar Havlová, for whom he had always had a soft spot and repeatedly managed to awaken in her a different level of her young talent. He worked interestingly with both Menzel and Čepek, he shrouded the old Blanka Waleská in strange mystery, but he couldn't get much out of Jana Břežková, who could perhaps be trusted to be a racing driver, but anything else was a problem for her. A separate chapter remains the lively sapphic Madame Ferat entrusted to Zdenka Procházková, who was by that time already a Czech-Austrian actress. Not much remains of Švankmajer's ideas, but the reference to him is at least confirmed by the cut to his film The Coffin House. It could have had great gore comparable to Western films of the time, but at least this way we get a more interesting psychological drama with elements unprecedented in Czech cinema.

The inconsistent form of the individual films in the Grapes trilogy is brought to near perfection by the third film made by the man responsible for one of the most notable duds of 2017, Martin Knopp. Just the fact that someone who worked on Bikers is filming something again is your first clue. However, the people got what they wanted. Another uninteresting summer affair that is so pretty and so Czech. I could go on and on about how the films build on each other in a nonsensical way, and how the quality of the performances changes depending on how much the actors are left to their own devices, because there can be no question of acting direction, etc. However, that would just make me go crazy.

I'm sorry to say that the second film is a parody of the first. Everything is wrong here. The storyline with Krampol and Švandová reminds us that even Waterloo in Czech was a better film than this opus by Lanné.

Grapes is an absolutely typical example of the fact that a relatively decent film, one that is nothing special, but still functional, is considered a great success in the Czech Republic. Which is absolutely tragic. Instead of everyone being happy that one quite acceptable summer film has been made, we have to watch miserably as the original modest idea turns into a not-very-successful trilogy full of nonsense and kitsch. That’s too bad, because the first film from Bařina was interesting at least in its individual aspects. But the attempt to continue the new tradition of post-revolutionary summer hits in the style of The Ride seems to be a bit beyond the capabilities of the current creators.

A superb drama from a literary milieu. Editor Maxwell Perkins is responsible for such greats as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and now faces a new challenge in the form of Thomas Wolfe's magnificent novel. This eventually became Look Homeward, Angel, and its loose sequel Of Time and the River. It's a great meeting of acting concerts over spirit-lifting substance. The likable Colin Firth at a crossroads, Kidman (different and wonderful again, this time as the emotionally-tested lover of a selfish literary artist), and of course the unhinged wildcat Jude Law.