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Director · Actor · Screenwriter · Voice actor · 1938–2020

Jiří Menzel

6: briefs
13:00: average
78 min: in total

On film.briefs6

Capricious Summer

Jiří Menzel · 1968

Jiří Menzel’s 1968 Czechoslovak comedy follows three middle-aged men — a bathhouse owner, a retired artillery major and a local canon — over three rainy summer days at an abandoned resort. Their routines are disrupted by the arrival of a touring tightrope walker and his assistant, prompting a series of small, overlapping seductions, humiliations and quiet reconciliations. Shot in soft colour by Jaromír Šofr and performed with understated precision, the film treats desire, ageing and social ritual as weather systems — persistent, unpredictable, ultimately indifferent to individual will.

Pearls of the Deep

Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, Jiří Menzel, Jaromil Jireš · 1966

Pearls of the Deep (1966) is a Czechoslovak anthology film comprising five short segments, each directed by a different filmmaker — Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, Jiří Menzel, Jaromil Jireš and Evald Schorm — and all adapted from short stories by Bohumil Hrabal. Shot in naturalistic style by Jaroslav Kučera, with sparse scores by Jan Klusák and Jiří Šust, the film resists thematic or tonal unity in favour of fidelity to Hrabal’s voice: his fascination with minor lives, unremarkable epiphanies, and the comic gravity of everyday speech. Though uneven in execution, its collective stance — against grand narrative, against didacticism, against the idea that meaning must be earned — makes it a defining work of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

The Cremator

Juraj Herz · 1969

Juraj Herz’s 1969 film follows Karel Kopfrkingl, a Prague cremator whose devotion to ritual, Tibetan Buddhism, and Nazi ideology converges into murderous certainty. Shot in stark black and white by Stanislav Milota, edited with jarring precision by Jaromír Janáček, and anchored by Rudolf Hrušínský’s unnervingly calm performance, it charts the banal mechanics of moral collapse. Banned after release, it resurfaced as a landmark of the Czechoslovak New Wave — less a thriller than a forensic study of how language, architecture, and routine conspire to normalise atrocity.

The Return of the Prodigal Son

Evald Schorm · 1966

Evald Schorm’s 1966 drama follows a young doctor’s return to his provincial hometown, where professional duty, personal history, and unspoken ethical compromises converge. Shot with restrained precision by František Uldrich and performed with understated intensity by Jan Kačer and Jana Brejchová, the film builds its force through accumulation rather than climax — in glances, pauses, and the physical texture of everyday institutions. It belongs to the Czech New Wave not through formal experiment but through its unwavering commitment to moral ambiguity as atmosphere.

Daisies

Věra Chytilová, Rudolf Jaroš · 1966

A 1966 Czechoslovak avant-garde landmark, Daisies follows two young women named Marie as they enact escalating acts of sabotage — against men, meals, manners, and meaning. Co-directed by Věra Chytilová and Rudolf Jaroš, it deploys rapid-fire editing, shifting colour palettes, and deliberately artificial performances to dismantle patriarchal and socialist realist conventions. Banned upon release for its 'nihilism', it remains a fiercely intelligent, formally audacious assault on well-mannered spectatorship — less a film to follow than one to withstand and reassemble.

Closely Watched Trains

Jiří Menzel · 1966

Jiří Menzel’s 1966 debut follows Miloš Hrma, a teenage train dispatcher in German-occupied Bohemia, as he navigates sexual anxiety, bureaucratic absurdity and a small act of resistance. Adapted from Bohumil Hrabal’s novella, it treats war as ambient pressure rather than spectacle, finding gravity in hesitation, humour in proportion, and dignity in failure. Shot by Jaromír Šofr at Barrandov Studios and released the same year, it won the 1968 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.