The Ear

kachyna

Dedicated to the memory of Karel Kachyna

Karel Kachyna was born in 1924 in the small Moravian town of Vyskov. As with many teenagers during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, he was forced to work in a German factory; after the end of the war he went to the new Academy of Arts in Prague to study cinematography. His graduation film, The Clouds Will Roll Away (1950), was made together with fellow Moravian student Vojtech Jasny – a semi-documentary set on a farm and with an optimistic message. They continued working together and were later assigned to film a series of reports about soldiers in China; these films, once the Chinese were no longer friendly to Czechoslovakia, were immediately ‘withdrawn from circulation’. Soon after, Kachyna and Jasny went their separate ways.

Kachyna’s first solo film was King of the Sumova (1959), which became extremely popular with a younger generation having been fed an official diet of ‘approved’ dramas and characters. The film clearly marked Kachyna’s preference for visual expressiveness and began to reveal his great strength of storytelling through the use of imagery.

During the early 1960s, Kachyna met the Moravian writer Jan Prochazka and their long collaboration together produced many of the key films in Kachyna’s oeuvre. After years of work in the Communist Youth organisation, Prochazka’s political pedigree was not in doubt; yet he was always outspoken, challenging the establishment with scripts that took unconventional views on the war, liberation and collectivisation. There was also the strange case of his invitation to a reception with President Novotny --- the President’s wife heard someone called Prochazka talk favourably about her husband on the radio, and the wrong Prochazka got invited. However, he impressed the President and thereafter embarked on his project of educating the bureaucracy. He later headed one of the production groups at the Barrandov studios and was responsible for backing Jan Nemec’s The Party and the Guests (1966), a devastating and subversive portrait of the workings of power, which was condemned as “having nothing in common with our republic, socialism or the ideals of communism” and, of course, banned.

Kachyna and Prochazka’s first film together, Hope (1963), was openly critical of Czechoslovakian society, being a story of a prostitute and an alcoholic, conditions which did not officially exist under communism.

Their next film, Long Live the Republic (1965), once again presented a challenge to ideological simplification. This film, a celebration of the liberation of Czechoslovakia in 1945 seen through the eyes of a young boy, mixes reality and dream in a feverish and unremitting flow, using startling imagery and cutting.

Then came Coach to Vienna (1966), with Kachyna and Prochazka producing what could arguably be their most impressive film. It challenged the conventions of the war film in failing to represent partisan fighters in conventional terms. The partisans not only murder the hero but also rape the heroine. This time, the censor banned the script and the Party wanted to stop the film during production. Somehow Prochazka successfully interceded with the President to allow Kachyna to finish the film. It was shown to a shocked and stony silence at the Karlovy Vary festival – and promptly put back on the shelf. A very simple humanist theme –the brutalising effects of war and the tragic pointlessness of revenge - provided a firm basis for a film which made full use of a subjective and mobile camera and whose visual power found its match in the grand and impressive organ music of Jan Novak.

In Night of the Bride (1967), they took on the contentious subject of collectivisation of agriculture. Treated in an often whimsical and poetic manner, it focuses on a young nun who returns home to organise a Christmas midnight mass of the kind that used to be held in pre-communist Czechoslovakia.

Taken together, the three films from 1965 – 67 present a world in which socialist ideals of ‘the people’, partisans and communists are challenged and their opponents portrayed as human.

Funny Old Man (1969) is about a man recovering from serious surgery in hospital – previously a victim of political trials who has now been rehabilitated – becoming obsessed with a girl he sees feeding pigeons on an opposite roof. In a way, the hospital setting, his bed, the staff, all represent a continuation of his imprisonment and a metaphor for the state of society at large. Completed soon after the Soviet invasion, it was shown only briefly.

And then came The Ear (1970), the last in the series of Kachyna and Prochazka’s political parables and the final straw for the “normalisers” who took over after the Soviet invasion. Promptly banned it did not resurface until after the Velvet Revolution twenty years later. Viewed even now, The Ear has not lost any of its sting.

Following the invasion, Kachyna was fired from his teaching post at the Prague Film Academy. Prochazka was accused by the KGB of co-heading an anti-Party group aimed at “the destruction of socialism”. He died in 1971 and, according to one source, it was under the watchful eyes of the security police.

Kachyna continued to make films; but they were mostly children’s films and a variety of middle-of-the-road projects. I’m Jumping Over Puddles Again (1970) was an adaptation of Alan Marshall’s Australian novel – the script, although by Prochazka, had to be credited to Ota Hofman, a friend and colleague.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Kachyna was once again offered a job at the Prague Film Academy and his banned films were finally released.

Then, in 1993, Kachyna returned to one of Prochazka’s unfilmed scripts, The Cow, a drama about the life of simple village people at the turn of the 20th century. With The Cow, the power and conviction of his 1960s work returned and the film garnered several awards.

Although Kachyna continued to make TV dramas until his death, his last feature film was Hanele (1999), a visually striking work about life in a Jewish village in sub-Carthanian Ruthenia.


KAREL KACHYNA 1924-2004


Karel Kachyna’s full filmography can be seen at IMDb

Adapted from an article by Peter Hames

Contents
Essay

Biography of Karel Kachyna, with thanks to Peter Hames

Film Reviews

Philadelphia City News
Hollywood Film Threat

DVD Reviews

DVDBeaver
DVD Times
MovieMail Podcast

Connections

New Czech Cinema Gala Films
Article on Karel Kachyna
Pavel Juráček season at the NFT

Awards

1990 Cannes Film Festival
Nominated Golden Palm
1990 Plzen Film Festival
Won Golden Kingfisher


Disc Info

The Ear Boxshot

Czech Republic 1970
91 minutes
Certificate: 12
Black & White 1.33:1
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
PAL R0
RRP: £12.99
Release Date: 3rd October 2005

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