Known for Acting
It would never occur to a confident and proud ruler that someone somewhere is counting his misdeeds and that punishment will soon follow. Only when he becomes an exile and has to live like an ordinary person and work does he find a new approach to life and ultimately become a wise and just ruler.
This comedy starring Miroslav Donutil tells the story of an American of Czech origin who returns to his homeland in the 1990s. At his parents' request, he is supposed to take over the family hotel in Prague and find a Czech bride. However, he has no idea what he will have to endure in the atmosphere of the 1990s, what condition he will find the property in, or what tragicomic situations he will have to go through before someone deprives him of his property. But in the end, he finds a girl who, unbeknownst to her, comes from the same background as him.
Fifteen years after being the cause of an alleged love suicide there, writer Paul Herzog returns to Prague where he meets Clarissa, the sister of the deceased woman. When a couple of mysterious deaths occur amongst people who were close to Clarissa and her sister, Paul becomes the prime suspect...
The heroes of this wacky spectacle are the large Karafiát family, who, in the emerging market conditions, decide to abandon their current way of making a living (stealing funeral wreaths and transforming them into artfully tied bouquets) and start a business. This is how the peculiar travel agency Český ráj, built on the ingenious idea of not taking poor Czech tourists abroad, but on the contrary, rich foreigners to Bohemia, sees the light of day. Thanks to a quirky advertising campaign, a motley mix of French people actually manage to board a bus in Paris and set off. But the Karafiats' entrepreneurial worries are just beginning.
A young man has led his whole life with his grandfather. When he was in school, he was the only one who was refused to join the Youth Brigade, since his father was sentenced to death for spying. When it is time for him to do the compulsory military service, he has to do it in a platoon for "unreliable" persons.
In the film, the creative forces of personalities from three spheres of art collide. The subtitle "The Game of Love and Hate" refers to the motivation of an old Czech medieval satire, the theme belongs to Antonín Přidal, an expert on this subject. His collaboration with Juraj Herz created a collage of past and present, an updated, sharp satire and a parable about the clash of human qualities that could not but end up in the vault. The music of the Prague Selection - Michael Kocáb and Michal Pavlíček - also contributed to the film's offensive provocativeness - the film was one of the reasons for their complete move to the underground. The dancing chorus of medieval citizens resembles more of a jumble of long-haired maniacs, the edge of a contemporary dump intrudes into the space of a medieval marketplace, and the characters oscillate between the past and the present, whether in their appearance, symbolism or behaviour.
At the beginning was the Slovak television series Lekár umierajúceho czasu (Doctor of Dying Time), dedicated to the Rudolphine-era scientist Jan Jesenius. He ended up on the scaffold along with other gentlemen after losing the anti-Habsburg uprising. When director Miloslav Luther conceived the idea of making an abridged version of the footage for cinema, he had to not only rebuild the storyline but also dub it into Czech. However, the result was only an illustrative puzzle, describing the various stages of the hero's turbulent life.
The fairy tale is based on two fairy tales by Božena Němcová, "Righteous Bohumil" and "The Black Princess". It tells the story of a weak king and his wife, whose desire for a child leads her to a conspiracy with the devil. The princess, who grows up under the influence of the "impure" powers, only escapes from their power thanks to her love for the fisherman Radek.
