A village shop owner is convinced by his children to move to Prague, where they say he'll be able to enjoy a fine retirement in a modern furnished apartment. Bored by life in Prague with nothing to do, the old man takes to helping a young widow in her stationery shop.
A painting of a girl from another time comes to life for it's buyer in this costume comedy.
Filmed during the Nazi occupation, this panoramic drama set in a Prague department store follows the divergent destinies of four female coworkers, each of whom seeks happiness in a different way.
The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra’s classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood’s Frank Borzage. (BAM/PFA)
Venice Film Festival 1939
"Grandmother" is a highly romanticized autobiographical novel by a Czech 19th century writer, Bozena Nemcova. It's a classical, compulsory reading in Czech schools, about a wise, working-class woman, happier in her simplicity and good heart than the nobles whom she serves.
This romantic story turns on a stirring infatuation that takes hold of three young people under the influence of Simon, a Prague student. After the study year, 18 year-old Julio returns to his parental home, a little chateau on the Otava river. There he converges with his childhood friend Petr and the young boatman's daughter Klárka. Sharing her beguilement with Simon, who has quickly turned a tranquil summer atmosphere into a relationship drama, is Julio's cousin Rosa.
Rudolf Bartoš, the owner of a farm, quarry and factory, is extremely rich, however, he is unapproachable and irritable, and the dread of his employees. One day he falls down a steep slope by a river and hurts himself. The quarryman Fábera finds him groaning in pain and takes him to his cottage.
The smooth narration, corresponding to the requirements of a light comedy, develops the smiling and optimistic story of the "one-armed" beggar Dostál, who earned enough money with his excellent begging skills to buy a nice house, become a respectable master of the house, and save the impoverished lawyer Neprosil from poverty, who he contributed regularly to him when he was still well off. He also wanted to get him together with his pretty ward Zorka, for whom he said he would be an ideal husband, but the young people were able to do that by themselves and without his clumsy help, or rather despite his rather ineffective help... The film was shown at the VI. IFF in Venice in 1938.
