Known for Acting
A verger, who likes to dress as a priest, is invited, by one of the villagers, to be the pastor at a vacant church. The atheist teacher resents the pastor, and tries to embarrass him in various ways, including being caught with the local girl, Majka.
This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most perfect embodiment of Nemec’s vision of a film world independent of reality. Mounting a defense of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of Love cemented Nemec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to their ideology.
A picnic is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up.
Songs about eternal love, American vagabonds, cowboys and desperadoes, with the romance of railways and trains speeding into the distance are recorded as film songs, and so, for example, in the well-known standard Franck and Johnny you will see M. Kopecký, J. Jirásková, J. Lír and others singing. In Chajda drnový, W. Matuška and K. Štědrý, K. Gott rides a horse or sails on a boat and R. Cortéz cries (off-screen) over the death of the famous robber Jesse James...
Two families live in a weaver's cottage - the Menecs and the Hroms. The women are pretty from the start. Musicians come, inviting fellow weavers who play in Menec's band to the May Day festival. Wanderers wander through the region, encountering a procession on their way. The police disperse it, so the men, who have various professions, join the wanderers. They wander around the world until they reach a tavern, where they get food and a bed. An old spinning wheeler composes a song at the request of one wanderer, inviting everyone to a "wanderer's convention". And so they get together and play together...
