Films & Filming

Reviewed by Gordon Gow, March 1969

A leaning towards allegory has been evident in the work of several Czech directors. Before that liberal breathing-space in the first half of 1968, they probably felt that their urge to make a political protest could stand a chance if it were expressed indirectly. Jan Nemec, however, had no such luck with his courageous Report on the Parry and the Guests. From its enigmatic incidents, the message emerged so clearly that it was banned until the short-lived phase of freedom under Dubcek, at which time it was made available for purchase abroad and fortunately for us it was grasped very smartly by film distributors of the west. It turns out to be both a frightening allegory and a major contribution to the art of cinema. There is a Kafka touch to it, more subtle but accumulatively quite as alarming as that wry little film by Juracek and Schmidt, Josef Kilian.

In style. the film is a contrast to the powerful and often hallucinatory effect of Nemec's Diamonds of the :'Night and also to the straight irony of his episode The Impostors in Pearls of the Deep. He has taken now the middle course between ironic-poetic realism and fantasy, and his footing is sure. The natural grace of the setting is maintained throughout: a quiet and peaceful forest. Yet, in the light of events, the trees become confinding, enclosing the characters. prohibiting escape.

At the beginning we see the principal victims: a small group of men and women enjoying a picnic. They chat of minor-seeming problems which are dismissed in the somnolent ease that follows good food in the sunshine. They are ordinary people, moderately well dressed. intelligent enough, waxing just a bit vulgar after the meal because they have no need to keep up appearances at the moment. While the men doze, the women strip to their underwear and wash at a stream and share some perfume.

Presently they begin to stroll, remarking upon the pleasant weather and the healthy air promoted by the trees. They catch sight of a wedding group, romping by. Then, as their stroll continues, a number of men emerge abruptly from the trees, taking hold of them, requiring them to go in a certain direction. These are smiling men, yet their smiles are less than congenial and their persuasion is emphatic. The picnic group is led to a clearing. where the men form a wide circle around them. Now another man appears, youngish, smiling, quirky. He takes up a position of authority at a table, making reference occasionally to a large book. He constrains the picnic group to observe certain rules: they must stand in given positions. The women are disposed to oblige, to submit to 'rules' and to orderliness. trying to persuade themselves that this is a kind of party game. One of the men is inclined to protest, conscious of a need to affirm his dignity. Another mutters succinctly that, in circumstances such as these, the less said the better: this man especially is to be noted, and he is played with understated apprehension by Evald Schorm (himself a director of Czech films, including Everyday Courage). The man having trouble with his sense of dignity, aware that he is a source of amusement to the young figure of authority (Jan Klusak), makes a break from his position and is set upon immediately by the henchmen.

Before terror can gain the upper hand, however, another man enters the clearing, bland and mature and full of apologies for his underlings. He especially chides their eccentric young leader, whom he calls Rudolph and describes as his adopted son. This serene newcomer (Ivan Vyskocil) is the host of a party being held in the forest to celebrate his birthday. He asks the picnic group to join the gathering. The invitation is friendly. indeed paternal, but extremely firm.

Beside a lake, and still thickly flanked by trees, many guests have assembled. Tables have been set for a banquet. Among those present are the wedding revellers who were glimpsed earlier. The bride will speak in warm praise of the host, while the groom holds his tongue: again the implication that women tend to approve of order and regulation.

At one point the host draws attention to the fact that each of the many chairs at the tables can be distinguished by a different shape and design, if you trouble to look, but they have been so arranged as to blend together. This intimation that unity can be imposed upon disparate elements is at once benign in tone and ominous within the increasingly apparent context.

While the host remains urbane, despite certain irritations at table, his adopted son Rudolph is restless, and waspish as well. This, and two disturbing circumstances, will presently crack the host's veneer of benevolence.

One woman from the picnic group has discovered, by glancing rather late at the place card before her, that she is sitting in the wrong chair. One of the henchmen declares that he noticed her mistake and took her rightful place himself: but this gesture towards preserving the semblance of order will not appease the woman. who is determined to do the proper thing. She moves, and somehow her move sets off a chain reaction. The elegant and peaceful setting is disturbed as all the guests arise and seek other places at the tables.

Also. it has been disclosed that one of the picnic group is missing. The man who advised his companions to say little has himself departed unobserved. Now the host is thoroughly affronted. In paternal wrath. voiced without emotion and all the more formidable for that, he commands that a search be made for the missing guest. Rudolph is delighted. A large dog with sharp teeth is to join the chase. As the guests go hunting, then, the host decrees that the candles burning on the tables will be extinguished: they will be needed again later. The final image is of an elaborate candelabrum, the blackened wicks still smoking. At the same time, from a distance but growing louder, we hear the dog . . . barking . . . salivating.

Nemec's film is cerebral and precise : an impression of humanity, half-aware, half-willing to acquiesce, in the grip of an obsessive authority which seduces with a promise of the good life, and with a guile that barely masks the lust to dominate.


Monthly Film Bulletin

Reviewed by David Wilson, April 1969

A group of picnickers, high-spirited and quarrelsome, see what they take to be a party of revellers and decide to join them. As they walk through the woods, they are stopped by Rudolf, a wheedling bully who orders them to stand in a circle which he has scratched out in the gravel. One of the group steps out of the circle and is promptly set upon by Rudolf's sinister henchmen. Then another, older man arrives, apologises for Rudolf's behaviour, and explains that the whole thing has been a joke. After admonishing Rudolf, whom he acknowledges as his adopted son, he invites the group to a party to celebrate his birthday. The party is a splendid affair, with long, candle-lit tables laid out by a lake and scores of guests eagerly awaiting the arrival of the host. The picnickers take their places, Rudolf proposes a toast, and the host insists that everyone is to have a good time. But one of the picnickers slips away from the party, and when his absence is noticed, Rudolf persuades Josef, another of the picnickers, to suggest that they should all leave the party and look for him. The host agrees, and the guests set off into the woods with a dog and a gun. Left behind, Josef snuffs out the candles.

Seen in its immediate historical context, The Party and the Guests looks like a devastatingly accurate piece of political prophecy. An urbane, outwardly genial father figure invites a group of happy innocents to his party; he has put on a big show and he wants everything to go according to plan; and when one of the guests slips away, the whole party slavishly comes to heel and sets off to bring him back. The film ends with an image charged with foreboding: the candles are snuffed out, and out of the darkness comes the distant baying of a hound. This is one party you don't leave without paying for it. The ramifications are obvious, but misleading. Nemec made the film in Novotny's Czechoslovakia (where it not surprisingly ran into trouble with the authorities), and as a true son of Kafka he clearly intended it as a general parable rather than a particular statement about things to come. On this level, as a political allegory about indifference and its consequences, the film is constructed with effortless economy, sharp-edged and riveting in the way it moves from the carefree summer confidence of the opening to the black despair of the end. The functionalism which is the basis of Nemec's style is here employed with much greater authority than in the earlier Diamonds of the Night or the later Martyrs of Love. The camera observes dispassionately from a distance, the images speak for themselves: their significance is self-contained and self-evident. The opening sequence, for instance, is a masterfully engineered piece of veiled menace. First the picnickers, indolently guzzling their food in a summer forest, the scene idyllic, the conversation inconsequential but carrying with it just a hint of unreality ("Improvised things are the best"). And as the picnickers are drawn towards the party of revellers passing in the distance. we sense already a suggestion of danger, as though their decision to join the party is more than just a momentary whim. Once they meet the blandly imbecilic Rudolf and his sinister thugs, there is no turning back; but the implication is that their imprisonment in the circle is almost an act of self-will, or at least an act of complicity in their own betrayal. Easy enough to step outside the circle, as Rudolf shows them; but to do so means an encounter with Rudolf's henchmen, so why bother? The arrival of the host, with his fulsome apologies and his convincing concern for their maltreatment, promises relief but only entangles them further. "I'm a democrat", he says, and they sheepishly nod approval. Then the party itself, with the host peevishly insisting that since he's taken a lot of trouble over the arrangements no one is to spoil the fun; the idiotic shuffling of places when one of the guests announces that she's sitting in the wrong seat and Rudolf dutifully takes the roll-call; and the final act of submission when one of the picnickers rises to suggest that the party can't proceed until the missing guest is found. All this works perfectly as an allegory about conformity and the awful grip of entrenched authority. But one's reservation about the film, and it's a major one, is that the substance of the allegory is neither original nor particularly striking. Strip off the hard, polished surface, and the core looks riddled with holes. And there is surely a confusion of intention in the caricaturing of the host as Lenin (might not Novotny or even Gottwald have been more appropriate, and in any case wasn't this supposed to be a universal parable?). Again, Nemec has modelled the party on the banquet given for Nobel prize-winners. But why exactly? One could go on asking questions about this confusion between the general and the particular. But then that's the trouble with allegories; it doesn't do to ask too many questions.