Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Romance for Bugle (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)
Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)
Czech New Wave
Genre: Drama
Director: Otakar Vávra
Starring: Jaromír Hanzlík, Július Vasek, Zuzana Cigánová, Stefan Kvietik
Language: Czech
Duration: 82 min.
Rating: 7.5
Summary:
A young student from Prague on summer holiday in the country, attends a traveling carnival, and falls in love with the carousel girl.
Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)
Romance for Bugle is a film directed by Otakar Vávra, based on an epic poem written by Frantisek Hrubin. It was awarded the Special Silver Prize at the 1967 Moscow International Film Festival.

Regarded as the father of Czech cinema, Otakar Vávra began his filmmaking career in the 1930's, and was one of the original founders of FAMU (The Prague Film Academy) where he personally taught many of the key figures of the Czech New Wave including Vera Chytilová, Jirí Menzel, and Jan Schmidt.

Here he adapts the lyrical epic by renowned poet Frantisek Hrubin, about a young student named Vojta, played by Jaromír Hanzlík, who is home for the summer holidays, where he meets and falls in love with a girl his age, Terina (Zuzana Cigánová) who runs the carousel in a traveling carnival.

In between avoiding his old girlfriend Tonka (Miriam Kantorkóva), and looking after his senile grandfather (Janusz Strachocki), Vojta hangs out at the carnival trying to steal time with Terina, before she has to pack up and move on to the next town, under the watchful and jealous eyes of Viktor, a bugle playing carnival worker who intends to marry her.

It's a relatively simple tale made effective by some excellent camerawork,  utilizing beautifully rendered lyrical images—at times reminding me a little bit of the style of Bela Tarr—to capture this delicate unrequited love story's poetic origins, while exploring its themes of love, lust, life, and the fleeting nature of them all.

Aside from the time period however, this one doesn't really fit in with the rest of the Czech New Wave. Not to say that it's a bad thing, but compared to the spirit of the time, there is a more traditional approach to Vávra's filmmaking, less experimental, less spontaneous, and less natural, and though I'm not at all familiar with Hrubin's poem, the dialog here is very lyrical and appears to be taken directly from the source. On the other hand, it's refreshing to see a complete lack of any overt political message.

A very well directed and poignant story of young romance, but not an important or essential one, except maybe for students of Czech literature or history.
Bonjour Tristesse
Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

Romance for Bugle • Romance pro kridlovku (1967)

2 comments:

Michaël Parent said...

A coming of age story! Looks fantastic!

d_4 said...

If it were common to come across these I'd watch it, but I feel it better off to go out of my way for some of the others out there.

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