Known for Acting
Philosophical movie, staged at the least philosophical environment imaginable: A closed scenery of a nudist spot, where some hired Czech stuff is making a plain erotic movie for a rich Russian producer. Nothing in this movie is what it seems to be at the first superficial glance.
Zdeněk Zaoral began filming this film in semi-amateur conditions, but it was eventually completed in a Zlín studio and released in cinemas. At its time, in the second half of the 1980s, it was the first completely open and also unusually raw statement about the course and consequences of drug addiction. The story of an eighteen-year-old girl who tries to escape her habit shows documentary values - both in the staging and in the speech of the individual characters, in the authenticity of the drug-addicted environment.
A psychological drama exploring the notion of the doctor as a moral authority, who within the framework of their everyday work must face questions of life and death. The film is adapted from a novel by Valja Stýblová, in which the author draws upon her personal experiences as a former neurosurgeon. The protagonist of this drama is an ageing professor, based at a Prague neurological clinic, who is haunted by issues concerning his own principles and values, and also by the case of a young patient, Víťa, afflicted with an inoperable tumour.
Sudetenland, May 1945. A group of retreating German soldiers capture a group of young female workers, totally deployed in a chemical factory. He wants to use them as hostages during his advance to the American demarcation line. Together with them, they take refuge in a nearby castle, which soon becomes the site of the last battle that takes place both in the minds and in the backdrop of war-torn Czechoslovakia, shortly before liberation. A psychological probe as well as an intimate drama set within the walls of a small castle, it is a mosaic of mini-stories charting the fates, attitudes and thought processes of individual characters on both sides of the barricade.
The honest and a bit naive director of a variety agency, Jožin Petránek, sits on the qualification committee that judges entertainers and performers of all kinds. The man firmly rejects any favouritism. But at work and at home, he's in for nothing but trouble. The rejected "artists" protest, and Jožin's wife Anna would like to promote her friend's daughter into show business. His new secretary Zuzana starts to seduce him. Petranek finally succumbs to the French chansonnier Madelaine. But Zuzana calls Mrs. Petrankova and she drives her husband away from the table and the bed. Eventually, Jozhin loses his position as director and becomes an ordinary stage recruiter. Now the real showbiz hype is just beginning for him...
