Cinematographer Jaromír Šofr reflects on Larks on a String

We have been happily re-watching, naïvely reconsidering our film – and found it lasting, durable and retains our original ideas!

A happy generation – Jiří and me and many others. Sad to say that many of our Czech movies were outlawed and were eventually only available as underground, badly transferred copies, but at least it meant that they lived on through these pirate DVD’s. However, it was not technical problems but legal and censorship problem that led to it being outlawed in the first place.

Let‘s look back at its history. The then Barrandov Studio Director was fired by the new Communist leaders and replaced, and a short time before the finished film was banned in 1969 there were some last-minute attempts to save the movie so it could be seen by cinema audiences. Some, desperate ‘corrections’ were made by cutting the most provocative scenes. Unfortunately these corrections were made by cutting the original negative. Luckily both the film negative and the excised footage were carefully hidden - but after twenty years, in 1989, the censored sequences simply could not be found. Just one work print still existed containing those scenes (the scene where the esteemed elderly official visits the cheering crowds of workers in factory yard and some following shots) – so I was forced to substitute the footage from the original negative by a duplicate negative made from this work print. This means damage to the finished work is evident:  the original colour quality of the negative was affected over time so the image result is not entirely comparable to the way the film was intended to look in 1969. Crucially its value remains – the story still remains as a moving document of that gloomy historical ‘experiment’ performed by Communists in our previously democratic country. (And moreover, Jiří and me, we survived the deed without being imprisoned).  

Jaromír Šofr, January 2011

The booklet from which this extracy is taken and which accompanies the DVD also includes a new essay by Peter Hames about the film, Menzel and Hrabal.