Closely Watched Trains - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jiri Menzel, Josef Somr, Libuse Havelkova, Vaclav Neckar, Vladimir ValentaBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Czech (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-09-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Closely Watched Trains - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: A Beautiful Film
Summary: 4 Stars
Note to American viewers: "Closely Watched Trains" (1966) is one of them "fereign films". It has subtitles and is in black and white (actually a strength as it is superb film stock). The setting is German-occupied Czechoslovakia during WWII. The setting and the use of the Czech resistance movement (to the German occupation) as a plot element may confuse Americans; many of who believe that Czechoslovakia was an Axis country or have never given the subject any thought. But just prior to the start of the war, Britain and France sold out Czechoslovakia. They backed out of their treaties and allowed Hitler to break up the country; establishing the German Protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia and annexing the Sudentenland (which had a significant German population). Also useful in understanding the film was a revisionist trend by European countries in the 1960's to rehabilitate their images; suppressing any record of cooperation/assistance to Germany while proclaiming their resistance to the Nazi agenda. The film is a product of this trend which is why the resistance elements seem rather tenuously inserted into the story.
The film revolves around young Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar) who follows his father's example and goes to work for the railroad; becoming an apprentice dispatcher at a rural station. The impressionable Milos becomes fascinated with Hubicka, a veteran train dispatcher who devotes most of his energy to various on-the-job seductions. The second act involves Hubicka's on-going conflict with their superior, the pigeon-raising and feather covered stationmaster.
But "Watched Trains" is really Milos' coming of age story, complete with the requisite line: "you mean this is the first time you have been with a woman". Milos' first time proves a disaster and leads to an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Hubicka has more on his mind than girls. He is a member of this resistance and is planning to destroy a German munitions train when it passes near the station. Unfortunately for Milos, Hubicka's recreational activities are reported to the authorities and he must attend an investigatory hearing inside the station, scheduled for the same time that the ammunition train is expected. Milos, who has finally demonstrated his manhood in bed, must now demonstrate it my climbing the signal tower and dropping an explosive device onto the train as it passes beneath.
The film goes out with a bang and one is left to decide on the relative merits of the two methods young men have of proving their manhood.
I forgot to mention that the film is actually a comedy. And for that matter the whole thing about the resistance movement is pretty much a side story to the coming of age stuff. And the female characters are all a little too good.
As tends to happen with good little movies, the plot has very little to do with what the movie is about, and nothing to do with the effect it had on me. And as tends to happen with them "fereign" films there are allegorical elements. The characters are seen from Milos' innocent point of view, a nontraditional hero who is neither heroic nor particularly intelligent. But he does fall in love and that reshapes his destiny.
All in all a very entertaining production. Especially good is Jitka Zelenohorsk? as a female telegraph operator, who becomes the object of Hubicka's playful attentions.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
Summary of Closely Watched Trains - Criterion Collection
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher's apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Wry and tender, Academy Award?-winning Closely Watched Trains is a masterpiece of human observation and one of the best-loved films of the Czech New Wave.Jiri Menzel's funny, tragic 1966 film, set during the years of Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia, may be admired today more out of nostalgia than anything, but in fact it holds up very well as a wry satire from the years of the Czech New Wave. Vaclav Neckar stars as an unambitious youth whose chief preoccupation is a wish for sex, but who secondarily sees the draw of joining the organized Resistance movement. The latter, however, would require energy and focus, and Neckar's character--who does as little work as possible as an apprentice railway platform guard--prefers the inertia of his small-town depot. Spending his time observing the philandering of an older guard, keeping clear of his wild-eyed boss, and flirting with the female conductor of a passing train, the young hero has his priorities in order but must deal with an increasing responsibility to a larger rebellion. The film has a nice mix of rural lethargy, surreal hints, and comic knowingness about the landscape of teenage ambivalence. Finally, there is something else: the shock of a confrontation between dreams and real-world obligation, particularly in a world gone mad through no fault of one's own. --Tom Keogh
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