Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 27/11/2016)

Having won a competition at UFA to star in Gerhard Lamprechts Barcarole (1935), Baarová proved so popular with the Nazi hierarchy that she was forced to turn down offers from Hollywood to make pictures like Paul Martin's A Prussian Love Story (1938), which was banned after the public learned of her romance with propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Barred from performing in German films on the express orders of Adolf Hitler, she found work in Italy. But, while she was arrested after the war and both her mother and sister died while under interrogation for collaborating with the enemy, Baarová survived and married puppeteer Jan Kopecky. Their marriage failed to survive spells in Argentina and Italy, but Baarová managed to rebuild her career after Federico Fellini cast her in I vitelloni (1953).

Emília Vášáryová plays another actress facing a crisis in documentarist Marko Škop's debut feature, Eva Nová, which follows the sixtysomething out of rehab and back to her Bratislava home in order to try and patch things up with Milan Ondrik, the son she entrusted to sister Žofia Martišová in order to pursue her career. But neither Ondrik nor his wife, Anikó Vargová, are pleased to see her and Vášáryová is forced to take a shelf-stacking job while entertaining the residents of an old people's home. Liberal parents Karel Roden and Vanda Hybnerová also put themselves before their offspring in Olmo Omerzu's dark comedy, Family Film, as they go missing while sailing in the Indian Ocean with their dog Otto, while Roden's brother, Martin Pechlát, has to intervene when 15 year-old Daniel Kadlec incurs the wrath of older sister Jenovéfa Boková after becoming obsessed with her flirtatious friend, Eliska Krenková.

Roden also features in Petr Václav We Are Never Alone, which is set in a small provincial town and follows the interaction between some disparate characters. Roden plays a hypochondriac who has formed an unlikely friendship with xenophobic prison guard Miroslav Hanuš while neglecting wife Lenka Vlasákova, who seeks sanctuary from caring for her near-autistic son at the local convenience store. Meanwhile, bouncer Zdenek Godla has fallen for single mum stripper Klaudia Dudová, who resists his attentions because her boyfriend is due to be released from prison.

Famously turned into a symphonic ballad by

Antonín Dvorák, Karel Jaromír Erben's 1853 verse saga The Noon Witch is based on the Slavic myth of Lady Midday, who steals away badly behaved children. In conjunction with writer Michal Samir, twentysomething debutant Jirí Sádek updates the story for The Noonday Witch, which makes unsettling use of a blazing sun and some golden cornfields to convince a young widow that she is being menaced by a malevolent spirit.

Deciding against telling young daughter Karolína Lipowská that her father is dead, Anna Geislerová leaves Prague to settle in the country cottage she has inherited from her late husband. It soon becomes clear that the property is in need of repair and leering handyman Jirí Štrébl offers to help out. But mayor Zdenek Mucha is unable to assist Geislerová with her insurance claim because her spouse committed suicide. Needing time to think, Geislerová entrusts Lipowská to Štrébl's homely wife, Marie Ludvíková. But she becomes increasingly unnerved by the prognostications of Mucha's cackling wife Daniela Kolárová, who warns her of the folly of not trusting her child with the truth.

As the house creaks in the night and an eclipse covers the landscape parching in the heatwave, Geislerová learns that Kolárová has spent many years in an asylum after murdering her own son. She also has to fight off the drunken Štrébl's advances. But it's her relationship with Lipowská that most begins to suffer, as the tweenager resents being left on her own and reacts badly to discovering her father's fate. Yet, while Geislerová's fear of new surroundings intensifies, it's slowly revealed that the biggest threat to her family's safety comes from within.

Steadily building suspense, while treating the audience to the odd jolt and bump in the night, Sádek edges the tale towards its rather anaemic conclusion. Geislerová fans will see a side of her they have never seen before, but she struggles to impose herself upon a sketchy and decidedly unsympathetic heroine who is no better defined than many of the secondary characters. Lipowská effectively shifts between naiveté and petulance, while Kolárová does such a nice line in tormented eccentricity that the story suffers from her absence. So, for all the contrasts that cinematographer Alexander Surkala achieves between the rustic glare and the enveloping gloom of Jan Pjena Novotný's interiors, this study of paralysing grief and creeping dread dips after a promising start and lacks the visual panache (or the effects budget) to deliver a suitably chilling climax.

Alice Nellis

also ventures into folklore in The Seven Ravens, which marks something of a departure for the FAMU-trained director who has previously specialised in comedies like Some Secrets (2002) and Revival (2013) and such dramas as Little Girl Blue (2007), Mamas & Papas (2010), Perfect Days (2011) and Angels (2014). Blending elements of retellings by the Brothers Grimm and Božena Nemcová, this harks back to the kind of fairytales that were made across the Soviet bloc, with Matej Cibulka's photography, Peter Canecký and Ondrej Mašek's production design and Katerina Štefková's costumes enhancing the air of enchantment.

Long before Bohdanka (Martha Issová) was born, her mother (Jana Olhová) put a curse on her seven brothers that turned them into ravens. Her baker father (Marián Geišberg) keeps the secret hidden from her for many years. But she discovers the truth and is informed by Gabriela the witch (Zuzana Bydžovská) that she can only restore her brothers to normal by weaving them shirts made from nettles. However, should anyone find out about her sacrifice, the curse will remain.

Armed with a magic comb given to her by Gabriela and taking a vow of silence until her task is complete, Bohdanka goes to gather the materials she will need for the shirts. However, she meets Prince Bartolomej (Lukáš Príkazký) and he becomes so enamoured of her that he invites her to his castle to meet his mother, Queen Alexandra (Sabina Remundová).

Using her comb, Bohdanka is able to piece together fragments of the past and realises that the monarch intends to cheat Bartolomej out of his inheritance and place his younger brother Norbert (Václav Neužil) on the throne. But, even though she uncovers a plot to prevent her from marrying Bartolomej, Bohdanka decides to remain mute in order to deliver her brothers from their ordeal.

Despite the success of Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales, traditional fables have so slipped out of vogue with younger audiences that Disney has largely abandoned them for original storylines. But they remain popular on the continent and this charming account of a classic wicked queen saga contains enough wit, peril, romance and magic to keep viewers of all ages enthralled. Martha Issová (who is married to director David Ondrícek) makes a delightful heroine, while Sabina Remundová is splendidly hissable as her scheming adversary. Unfortunately, outside events like Made in Prague, this kind of film rarely reaches UK screens, which just goes to show what our children are missing out on and how great a monopoly American companies have over their precious imagination.

There's a fairytale feel about Štepán Altrichter's first feature, Schmitke, which was adapted from Tomás Koncinský's wonderfully titled short story, `Julius Schmitke Slipped Through Death's Fingers Like an Awkward Seal'. Exploring the extent to which progress is as much a curse as an unhappy history, this blend of socio-political satire and fantastical mystery seems to be building towards a significant revelation. But the narrative thread seems to fizzle like a faulty wire, as Altrichter and fellow scribes Koncinský and Jan Fusek lose their dramatic and thematic way.

Once upon a time, German engineer Peter Kurth was feted for his role in the development of a revolutionary wind turbine that sold across Europe. Now in his fifties, he feels lost in the new world of disposable technology and clings on to his job because no one else knows how to maintain the old windmills. Apprentice Johann Jürgens is too much of a slacker know-all to want to learn and Kurth often gets home wondering why he bothers. His mood is scarcely improved by a surprise visit by his New Age daughter, Lana Cooper, who fills his neat apartment with scented candles and ethnic throws to try and release a little positive energy.

Shortly after this unwanted intrusion, Kurth and Jürgens are dispatched to the border village of Crimeleva in the Ore Mountains to fix a failing turbine. Much to Kurth's frustration, he can't work out what is causing the machinery to misfire. But his situation worsens when Jürgens disappears with the van and Kurth is forced to hunker down at the hotel run by Helena Dvoráková, where he makes the acquaintance of geologist Peter Vrsek and starts hearing rumours that a mysterious bear-like creature has taken sanctuary in the mist-shrouded forest that surrounds the sleepy, but sinister hamlet.

At times reminiscent of David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990-91), this sets its scene amusingly, with Kurth's superannuated jobsworth being an eminently empathetic anti-hero. The ending is also teasingly ambiguous, but too many secondary characters fail to register. Moreover, Altrichter allows things to meander in the woods, as he strives for profundity in his discussion of borders, language barriers and time's impact on both people and places. Nevertheless, Barbora Kacena and Nadine Schmidt's production design is highly evocative, while Cristian Pirjol's views of the Ore scenery and the workings of the turbine are equally effective.

Slávek Horák remains in the countryside for Home Care, which the 40 year-old debutant has based on the stories told by his nurse mother. Indeed, this is something of a family affair, as Horák has filmed much of the action in and around the vineyard belonging to his parents on the outskirts of the southern Moravian town of Zlin. Moreover, this is firmly rooted in the cinematic past, with the shifts between drama and bittersweet comedy recalling the films of Miloš Forman, Jirí Menzel and Jan Sverák, whom the FAMU-trained Horák assisted on Kolya (1996) before specialising in commercials.

District nurse Alena Mihulová is devoted to the patients on her home care route. She uses public transport to get around and pays the fares out of her own pocket, as she knows her regulars can't afford to contribute to her expenses. Husband of 30 years Bolek Polívka could easily give her a lift between calls, as he has recently retired. But he refuses to waste petrol and prefers to potter around in his workshop while waiting for Mihulová to get home and make his supper. Daughter Sara Venclovská is no more helpful, as she has long since moved to Prague and keeps fussing over her upcoming wedding to troublesome fiancé Slávek Horák.

Fortified with a morning shot of slivovitz to make lugging her heavy medical bags more bearable, Mihulová puts up with a good deal on her travels. One patient owns a snarling dog that only allows her to enter after she gives it the meat from her sandwich, while another is so terrified of needles that they lock Mihulová in the bathroom and she has to clamber out of the window. One rainy night, however, Mihulová accepts a ride home on the back of a motorbike. But, in a bid to avoid the frogs hopping near the underpass that she has always considered a waste of money, the driver crashes.

Mihulová winds up in hospital with his passenger. While he gets away with a few broken bones, she has to have a piece of metal removed from her stomach and learns after the surgery that she has such an advanced case of inoperable cancer that she only has a few months left to live. Suddenly, Mihulová becomes the patient and the shock of her diagnosis causes her to lose faith in both traditional medicine and religion.

Fortunately, Zuzana Krónerová (the Slovakian dance instructor daughter of one of her clients) practices alternative therapies and she alleviates Mihulová's pain by laying on her hands, applying heated spoons and persuading her charge to hug a dead tree, drink her own urine and spice up her wardrobe. Feeling relief, Mihulová learns to channel her energy and put faith in her own spirit rather than the patented medicines suggested by her physicians and the increasingly irritated Polívka. Yet, she also becomes somewhat erratic, as she tumbles into an open grave and accuses one of her patients of faking their condition when she catches them out of their wheelchair. Furthermore, when Krónerová reveals that she can only offer palliative care rather than a cure, Mihulová retreats into a downward spiral as Venclovská's wedding day approaches. But her distress seems to revive dormant feelings in Polívka, who recognises how much time they have wasted on petty incidentals.

In addition to providing much of the inspiration for his screenplay and composing the nuptial folk song, Horák's mother also insisted that he cast Mihulová, as she had such fond memories of her breakthrough performance in Nurses (1983), an adaptation of Adolf Branald's novel Ward Round that not only made Mihulová a star, but also led to her marrying director Karel Kachyna. She more than repays Horák's faith, as her poignant performance earned her the Best Actress prize at the prestigious Karlovy Vary film festival.

But, while Polívka makes a suitably chauvinistic spouse, many of the minor characters are thinly sketched, with the result that Horák's more satirical points seem a little laboured. He also struggles to change mood (a problem doctor-turned-director Thomas Lilti also faces in the forthcoming country practice saga, Irreplaceable), with the sequence in which Krónerová puts Mihulová into a trance and she dreams she is a deer that Polívka hits in his car being particularly specious.

Yet, while the storytelling may not be particularly polished, Horák and cinematographer Jan Štastný make affectionately effective use of natural light and the family home and gardens. Moreover, this wry study of human nature and the state of the Czech healthcare system and the economically stagnant provinces is full of everyday details that impart an irresistibly credible authenticity.

Debuting documentarist Eva Tomanová latches on to another offbeat rural story in Always Together, which charts the relationship between Petr Mlcoch, his wife Simona and their nine children. Raised in a tower block in Pilsen, Petr was studying cybernetics at Charles University in Prague when he met Simona, who was reading Czech language and history. They have now been together for 25 years. But, rather than making the most of their talents and opportunities, the pair decided to drop out of mainstream society and live in a self-built caravan compound (without running water or flushing toilet facilities) in a meadow outside the village of Šumava in southern Bohemia.

This would be well and good, as Simona was able to home school the children and they proved adept at learning, even though they were denied the use of paper and had to learn their letters and numbers using crude stick figures. But Petr is such a chauvinist disciplinarian that it's almost impossible to watch this observational study without a rising sense of contempt for a man who exists to impose his tin-pot dictatorship over his offspring, while seeking handouts from the state to perpetuate his twisted fantasy.

A couple of the older boys take pleasure in making their own guitars and playing flamenco music. But, when Tomanová asks about Petr's parenting, they become hesitant and seek out their father's opinion before replying. He even forbids them to accept any form of gift, as he regards taking from anyone outside the clan as a sign of weakness. Simona appears to back him all the way. But one of the boys tries to run away, while her eldest daughter gets pregnant after sleeping with a local farmer.

Tomanová is under no illusions that Petr is an ogre. But her fascination with his personality and methods and the impact they have on his almost feral children keeps her coming back to see how they are getting on. At one point, he packs them into a camper van and sets off to Spain for an annual change of climate and scenery. But, as if she is also slightly intimidated by her subject, Tomanová avoids posing awkward questions and, thus, for all her compassion for the younger Mlcoches, she becomes complicit in the eccentric antics of a conceited man whose arrogance has almost resulted in his kids being taken into care and the entire family being arrested by the police.

Having been nominated for the Czech Lion award for Best Director for Sunday League - Pepik Hnatek's Final Match (2012), Jan Prušinovský took the prize and the Best Film gong for The Snake Brothers, which also earned Kryštof Hádek the Best Actor prize at Karlovy Vary. Scripted by first-timer Jaroslav Žvácek, this brings a new grit and edge to Czech social realism, while retaining the bleak wit that has characterised everyday tales since the onset of the Film Miracle in the early 1960s.

Bristling with his lilac hair and a fuddled air of entitlement, Petr `Cobra' Štastný (Kryštof Hádek) walks down a street in the post-industrial Bohemian town of Kralupy nad Vltavou pushing a trolley filled with contraband past an eye witness who can't help but notice the wire cutters slung across his back. An addict whose need far outweighs his intelligence, the thirtysomething lives with his mother (Jana Šulcová), who has long lost interest in his loser antics, and his grandmother (Vera Kubánková), who dotes indulgently on both Cobra and his older brother, Vojtech (aka `Viper'. Matej Hádek), who invariably gets summoned to the local police station to collective his errant sibling after his latest escapade.

The pressure of being Cobra's keeper takes its toll on Viper after he threatens to jump off a roof after being cornered and when he pushes his luck with a girl in a nightclub. But, while his drinking problem makes him too unreliable to keep his job at a local factory, school pal Ládík (David Máj) is keen to get him involved in a German fashion franchise, if only because he knows that Viper's grandmother will be too soft-hearted to deny him the seed money he needs to buy into the business.

Indeed, Viper is so grateful to his grandma that he buys her a widescreen television when the company starts to turn a profit. But Cobra can't resist stealing it and Viper reveals his own weakness when the initial success turns sour and Ládik proposes a little drug-smuggling to keep the coffers filled. Moreover, in pouring out his woes to best friend Tomasz (Jan Hájek), Viper gets a little too close to his wife, Zuza (Lucie Žácková), and they embark upon an affair that has a shockingly violent conclusion, even though he would be much better off romancing sympathetically sensible barmaid Kaca (Lucie Polišenská).

Unlike a couple of other pictures in this year's Made in Prague line-up, the supporting characters are every bit as cogent and vibrant as the abrasive leads, who are played with a seething sibling tension by Kryštof and Matej Hádek. The 90 year-old Vera Kubánková is also superb as their pushover grandmother, whose faith in such arrant wastrels is all the more touching as they have been disowned by just about everyone else (although the dissolute Šulcová is always ready to defend her youngest for his weakness).

Yet, while Jan Novotný's interiors and Petr Koblovský's stark imagery reinforce the gnawing sense of backwater ennui, Prušinovský and Žvácek struggle to gather much narrative momentum, as the director cleaves to the episodic approach he employed on his hit sitcoms District League (2010) and Fourth Star (2014), which respectively centred on a Sunday football team and the staff of a shambolic hotel. There are plenty of dark asides, but Prušinovský refuses to flinch from the gimmer aspects of small-town life and the fact that, despite the recession compoundng the problems left unsolved by the Velvet Revolution and EU membership, the Snake Brothers bring many of their problems upon themselves.

The debuting Andy Fehu combines comedy, down-at-heel realism and some unsettling horror in The Greedy Tiffany, which he produced while completing his studies in the editing department at FAMU. Opting not to use real name Ondrej Pavliš for professional purposes, Fehu started out in his late teens making shorts like Dead End (2005) and St Nicholas (2006) before experimenting with fantasy in Sea Urchin (2011). This brooding fable follows the 2009 short, Andy's Film, in riffing on the vogue for `found footage' movies. But it also contains echoes of The Snake Brothers in its depiction of those dwelling below the lower rung who have lost all faith in conventional social norms.

Fehu opens boldly by leaving the audience hanging after sequence shows a couple filming their search for a mythical pot of gold. Their camcorder is found, however, by Leoš Noha, during one of his periodic staggers between his seedy apartment and the local pawn shop. En route, he invariably diverts into an unguarded holiday cottage in order to steal a few trinkets to sell in order to buy the hooch that will enable him to crash out on his filthy mattress with his cares well marinaded for another night.

On watching the tape in the camera, Noha realises that its owners have met with a grisly fate in allowing their greed to get the better of him. In stumbling upon the hiding place of an endless supply of coins, the pair made the mistake of over-reaching themselves and being devoured by the wicked sprite who uses the lucre as bait. But, while Noha convinces himself he is too smart to be duped by a carnivorous troll, he allows the video to go viral and sparks a gold rush that turns into a blood bath. Moreover, he acquires a metal detector in order to unearth the loot and resume the freewheeling lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.

Shot on a shoestring and sometimes betraying the exuberance of a newcomer eager to make an impression, this is a patchy allegory that can't make up its mind whether it's a satirical social critique or a knowing genre flick. Yet Leoš Noha makes a splendidly dishevelled non-hero, while cinematographer Jakub Ševcík makes eerie use of shakicam dislocation, canted angles and the abandoned coal mine at Horní Jiretín, which is situated in the foothills of the same Ore Mountains that featured in Schmitke. Moreover, Fehu deserves credit for limiting the amount of gore and emphasising the grasping ghoulishness of human nature in these benighted times.

Gustav Machatý will always be best remembered for Ecstasy (1933), if only because 19 year-old Hedy Kiesler's nude run through the forest reportedly made it Adolf Hitler's favourite film. However, Machatý's use of sensual imagery is much more subtle and arousing in his silent masterpiece, Erotikon (1929).

Stranded in a provincial backwater after missing his train to Prague, globe-trotting playboy Oleg Fjord seduces stationmaster Karel Schleichert's daughter Ita Rina, only to abandon her next day. Discovering she is pregnant, Rina leaves home to avoid a scandal. The child is stillborn, however, and Rina drifts into a marriage with Luiji Serventi, who rescues her from a rapist. However, any hope of happiness seems short lived, as Rina runs into Fjord, who is embroiled in a ménage with bottle blonde Charlotte Susa and her jealous husband, Theodor Pistek.

Relying only rarely on intertitles, this is a masterclass in visual suggestion. The night of passion is thrillingly voluptuous 80 years on, with Vaclav Vich's subjective camera approximating Rina's views of the walls and ceiling of her bedroom as she is transported to ever-greater levels of rapture by the experienced Fjord. Particularly memorable is the way in which Machatý plays light upon Rina's face as she surrenders to sensation, while the moment of climax is mischievously depicted as two raindrops merging into one on the window pane. However, the chess match between Serventi and Fjord, with Rina perched on the arm of her husband's chair, is also exemplary.

The Slovenian Rina and the Norwegian Fjord ably convey the contrasting traits of virginal curiousity and caddish opportunism. But, as well as being a textbook silent melodrama, this is also a work of avant-garde audacity, with Surrealist writer Vítezslav Nezval having an uncredited hand in the screenplay and the sets being co-designed by Maya Deren's future husband, Alexander Hackenschmied. However, this is very much Machatý's picture, with his restless camerawork and sure sense of a telling image testifying to the enduring eloquence of silent film.

Ever since the Lumières and the Skladanowskys battled to project the first moving images in the 1890s, cinema has seen its share of sibling partnerships behind the camera. But, until recently, successful elective directorial duos have been comparatively rare, with the most prominent from yesteryear being Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos. More akin to Marcel Carné and Jacques Prévert than an on-set team, Kadár and Klos worked together for 17 years and helped change the nature of Czechoslovakian cinema.

Born in Brno to the south of Prague in 1910, Klos began writing scripts in the late 1920s with his humorist uncle, Josef Skruzny. But, following Svatopluk Innemann's Three Steps From the Body (1935), he co-founded the Zlin documentary studio with Jan Bata and started directing his own shorts. By contrast, Kadár was all set to become a lawyer when he took a film-making class in 1938 with the leading Slovak director, Karel Plicka. Raised in Rožnava, after being born in Budapest in 1918, Kadár found himself back in Hungary following border changes. But, while his family perished in Auschwitz, he managed to escape from a labour camp and later revealed, `I did not know I was a Jew until Hitler spoke of it.'

While Klos wrote scripts like Borivoj Zeman's A Dead Man Among the Living (1947) and played a leading role in the nationalisation of the Czechoslovakian film industry, Kadár started directing with the documentaries, Life Is Rising From the Ruins (1945) and They Are Personally Responsible (1946). The latter denounced the Slovak alliance with the Nazis and earned him a place at the newly opened FAMU film school, where Plicka was the dean. He met Klos while working as an assistant director, but returned to Bratislava to make his feature bow with Katka (1949), the first of three collaborations with writer Vratislav Blažek, who had made his name with the Theatre of Satire.

Despite adhering to the tenets of Socialist Realism imposed by Moscow, this study of life in a pantyhose factory was criticised for its bourgeois perspective and insufficient Slovakism and Kadár left for Prague to rebuild his career. Klos was also looking for a fresh start after being fired from the Barrandov Studios in 1951 and they joined forces on Kidnapped (1952), a Cold War hijack thriller whose objectivism so incensed the authorities that it was only released following the intervention of the pioneering Soviet montagist, Vsevolod Pudovkin.

Although they shared the directing credit, Kadár worked with the actors while Klos concentrated on the screenplay, and they stuck to this arrangement throughout their eight-picture collaboration. They ventured into colour to make Music From Mars (1953), a Blažek-inspired musical comedy about a furniture factory band that was castigated for being disrespectful to the establishment. Somehow, however, the censor missed the veiled criticism contained in House At the Terminus (1957), an exercise in poetic realism that drew on a collection of stories by Ludvík Aškenazy to explore the extent to which everyday problems were rooted in rigidly enforced ideology. But the authorities came down hard on Three Wishes (1958), a satirical fairytale that sought to expose the corruption and incompetence of the system by focusing on a man's refusal to lose his privileges to help a beleaguered colleague. Indeed, the film was shelved for five years and Kadár and Klos were barred from working until they embarked upon Death Is Called Engelchen (1963).

Made at a time when new waves across the world were challenging formal preconceptions, The Shop on the High Street (1965) belongs to the classical tradition. Nevertheless, Kadár and Klos departed from the conventional depiction of the Second World War to show how daily life could continue away from the frontline right up until the moment when bitter reality intrudes with hideous swiftness. Working from a novel that Ladislav Grosman had based on his short story. `The Trap', the co-directors audaciously switched between comedy and tragedy to contrast humanism and fascism, truth and façade, and duty and self-interest, while demonstrating how something as monstrous as the Holocaust could take place with the compliance of ordinary people who were able to disregard former friends and neighbours with chilling insouciance.

Filmed in the unnamed north-eastern town of Sabinov (which sent 1040 Jews to the camps, with only 60 returning), this is very much a Slovak story whose significance requires a little historical context. The Slovaks had been lobbying for autonomy since the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and seized the opportunity following the infamous Munich Agreement in September 1938. However, the newly minted Czecho-Slovakia did not last long, as Adolf Hitler persuaded former Slovak prime minister Monsignor Josef Tiso that the territory would be divided between Germany, Hungary and Poland unless he declared an independent state under Berlin's protection following the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939.

As the new head of state, Tiso appointed Vojtech Tuka prime minister and he formed the Hlinka Guard in memory of Andrej Hlinka, a Catholic priest and fervent nationalist who had helped shape the ruling Slovak People's Party. This militia was used to impose the Jewish Code from September 1941, which followed the Nuremberg Laws in forcing Jews to wear a yellow armband while preventing them from entering certain professions. A month later, Tiso and Tuka approved the first expulsions from the capital, Bratislava, and cut a deal with the Third Reich to spare Aryan Slovaks by sending Jews to the labour camps in their place.

The deportations began on 25 March 1942, although they were halted in October when Jewish activists Gisi Fleischmann and Rabbi Michael Ber Weissmandl sought to bribe officials into halting the mass transports after 58,000 had been driven from their homes. This moratorium lasted until September 1944, when the Wehrmacht invaded to suppress the Slovak National Uprising and around 14,000 were dispatched to the death camps before the final party arrived in the Terezin ghetto in March 1945. It's impossible to determine exact numbers, but it's estimated that 77% of Slovakia's pre-war Jewish population perished during the Shoah.

Thus, the mere mention of 1942 in the film's captioned preamble is ominous in the extreme. Yet industrial-scale slaughter seems a million miles away in the opening shots of nesting storks seemingly dancing to the brass band playing in the park, as the residents of a sleepy Slovakian town promenade along the main street in their Sunday finery. The only hint that a conflict is being fought somewhere comes as carpenter Tóno Brtko (Jozef Kroner) and his dog Esenc pause at the level crossing to watch a train loaded with military vehicles rumble into the distance. But normality seems to return as a soldier in the last truck sits on a sofa while playing a harmonica and Tóno can return home to another tongue lashing from frustrated wife Evelyna (Hana Slivková), who has seen her sister Ruzena (Elena Pappová-Zvaríková) go up in the world after marrying Hlinka Guard commander Markuš Kolkotský (František Zvarík).

The first tonal shift occurs that evening, however, when Kolkotský and Ruzena pay their impoverished in-laws a visit, laden with food and drink. As he gets tipsy, Tóno accuses Kolkotský of swindling him out of an inheritance and blocking his employment on the Tower of Victory being constructed on Hlinka Square. But Kolkotský is just as angry with Tóno because his refusal to join the Guard has scuppered his own chances of promotion and he exacts his revenge by announcing that he has secured him the post of Aryan controller of the button and fabric shop owned by Jewish widow, Rozália Lautmannová (Ida Kaminska). Evelyna hopes this will prove a gold mine, but Tóno realises he has been set up when he wakes the next morning with his world having literally been turned upside down.

This witty point-of-view shot signals the shift to Tóno's vantage point, as he arrives at the shop to discover it survives solely because of a stipend paid by the Jewish community. Resistance activist Imrich Kuchár (Martin Holly) is disappointed that he has accepted the post, but is grateful that Rozália had not been entrusted to a more ruthless anti-Semite. Indeed, it quickly becomes clear that many of Tóno's friends are Jewish, including Katz the barber (Martin Gregor), who is dismayed that regular customers like Piti (Adam Matejka) can accept a job handing out eviction notices when his post of town crier is rendered obsolete by the introduction of a tannoy system.

Kadár and Klos ironically contrast this booming voice of doom with the nostalgic music that the near-deaf Rozália plays on her gramophone. Moreover, they set her complete ignorance of the war against Tóno's growing dread that he is going to have to betray her or suffer the same brutal humiliation as Kuchár when Kolkotský has him arrested as a `white Jew'. So overpowering is this moral crisis that Tóno twice imagines himself strolling with Rozália, even though he ultimately fails to protect her in the same way that Mrs Andoricová (Gita Mišurová) shelters a neighbour's abandoned son, Danko (J. Mittelmann), even though her husband (František Papp) works on the railway entrusted with ferrying the Jews to their final destination.

Despite the darkening of the mood, the storks continue to tend to their young and the church bells still toll. But, as the fateful Sabbath dawns and Tóno tries to decide what to do for the best as the Hlinka Guard round-up and register the Jews in the street outside, his viewpoint becomes confused during his desperate search for a suitable hiding place somewhere in the shop after Rozália realises a pogrom is underway. However, when circumstances conspire against him, Tóno quickly accepts that only one course of action is open to him.

As Kadár later opined:`Violence is caused not only by men equipped with revolvers, but also by the good, orderly, insignificant people who collaborate with the criminals because they are afraid of them.' However, while The Shop on the High Street presents Slovak fascism in all its petty provincialism and bigoted cowardice, Kadár also insists that, by telling the story through two characters, `it touches wider issues so that it can be applied to any type of fascism. While presenting the fate of individuals, it in fact portrays a prototype. For the lot of the Jews one can substitute the lot of anyone in this world.'

Virtually unchanged in the 20 years since the war ended, Sabinov has a crucial role to play in the picture, as did its residents. As Kadár remembered, `They were uninhibited, they enjoyed working and playing. They were disciplined, too, and honest in their daily work and in making a movie. It would have been out of the question to film all this with professional extras. But we did not use the system of cinéma vérité; the people naturally and consciously acted out the screenplay.' Excellent though they are, however, it's tempting to wonder how many of those milling in the background had secrets to hide.

But, while Hana Slivková, František Zvarík, Martin Holly and Martin Gregor provide sterling support, the film very much belongs to Jozef Koner and Ida Kaminska. Both came from the stage, with Kroner being one of Slovakia's finest actors and Kaminska (whose mother was the Yiddish actress Esther Rachel Kaminska) being the manager-star of the Jewish State Theatre of Poland. She was helped with her accent by assistant director Juraj Herz, but the combination of her struggles with the language and her limited hearing made Rozália seem all the more helpless. Indeed, Kadár claimed `She is the most powerful reminder I know of fascism and its victims.'

Despite mishearing his surname as Krtko (which means `mole'), Rozália's trust in Tóno exposes his cynicism, as he eats her cauliflower soup before spending his ill-gotten gains on luxuries for himself and Evelyna. There is little direct communication between them, but her hospitality and acceptance teach him to discard Hlinka propaganda and he not only starts repairing her furniture for free, but he also takes Danko under his wing. Yet the burden of responsibility changes Tóno, who no longer plays hopscotch as he walks along and takes to locking the devoted Esenc in the yard. Thus, while he jokes that he looks like Charlie Chaplin in the late Mr Lautmann's suit, he also impersonates Hitler when he gets drunk and slaps Evelyna for persuading him to accept a position that has complicated his life and forced him to take sides.

Kadár noted the unity of Kroner and Kaminska's performance and they were commended at the Cannes Film Festival. But the critics took to the 65 year-old Kaminska and, consequently, she was nominated for Best Actress at both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. Like Anouk Aimée (Un Homme et une Femme) and Lynn (Georgy Girl) and Vanessa Redgrave (Morgan! A Suitable Case for Treatment), she lost out to Elizabeth Taylor for her powerhouse turn in Mike Nichols's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But, curiously, Kaminska was nominated a full year after the picture had made Oscar history.

Somewhat bizarrely, Kaminska was nominated in April 1967, a year after The Shop on the High Street became the first Czechoslovakian film to win an Oscar. The fact it won Best Foreign Film against such comparatively moderate competition as Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan, Lars-Magnus Lindgren's Dear John, Vittorio De Sica's Marriage Italian Style and Vasilis Georgiadis's Blood on the Land should not be allowed to detract from the achievement, especially as it paved the way for Jirí Menzel's Closely Watched Trains (1966) to take the same award in between Milos Forman's nominations for A Blonde in Love (1965) and The Fireman's Ball (1967).

Although Vojtech Jasný's The Cassandra Cat had taken the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1963, the wider world had been slow to respond to the Czech Film Miracle that had stirred with features like The White Dove (1960). Like Kadár and Klos, director František Vlácil came from an earlier generation and the first inklings of a bolder stylisation influenced by the nouvelle vague in France were seen in Slovak Stefan Uher's Sunshine in a Net (1962). The biggest impact, however, was made over the next five years by the phalanx of FAMU graduates that included Jasný, Menzel, Forman, Jan Nemec, Vera Chytilová, Evald Schorm and Jaromil Jireš.

But the members of both `the 1956 generation' and `the young wave' were forced into silence following the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968. One of the films halted was Kadár and Klos's Adrift, a seething parable on faith, ideology and obsession that was only completed after the former had emigrated to the United States. Moreover, The Shop on the High Street was banned for being Zionist, while its Oscar success was attributed to the surfeit of influential Jews in Hollywood. Klos spent much of the next decade working as a construction engineer, although he eventually got to teach at FAMU and co-directed Bizon (1989) with former student Moris Issa.

He never met his old partner again after they reunited briefly to finish Adrift, as Kadár remained in the States. By all accounts, he turned down projects like Fiddler on the Roof and The Godfather, but struggled to secure financing after the moderate showing of his reunion with Kaminska on The Angel Levine (1970). Indeed, having made Lies My Father Told Me (1975) in Canada, Kadár had to teach at the American Film Institute's Centre for Advanced Film Studies while working on the TV-movies The Blue Hotel (1977), The Other Side of Hell (1978) and Freedom Road (1979). Sadly, the latter proved to be his final assignment, as he died on 1 June 1979. Klos followed on 31 July 1993, although he did live to see their reputation restored and Slovakia part company with the Czech Republic following the Velvet Revolution.

Two decades have passed since Krzysztof Kieslowski died at the tragically early age of 54, but his spirit infuses the two Eastern European films on release this week. In their true-life recreation, I, Olga Hepnarová, the debuting Czech duo of Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda invoke A Short Film About Killing (1988) which started out as `Thou Shalt Not Kill', an episode of Dekalog, an epic television compendium inspired by the Ten Commandments that also appears to have had a profound influence on Pole Tomasz Wasilewski's third feature, The United States of Love. Neither feature has the humanist compassion that characterises Kieslowski's canon. But each has a visual austerity and dramatic authenticity that is not only worthy of the maestro, but which also respectively recalls the Czech Film Miracle of the 1960s and the 1980s Polish Cinema of Moral Anxiety.

It certainly comes as no surprise to learn that Weinreb and Kazda graduated from the FAMU film school that set the likes of Milos Foman on the way to greatness. But their existentialist account of the life and crime of the last woman to be executed in Czechoslovakia owes much to the expertise of Roman Cilek, as the screenplay was based on his study of Olga Hepnarová, who went to the gallows at the age of 23 on 12 March 1975.

Ignoring a wake-up call from her doctor mother (Klára Melísková), 13 year-old Olga Hepnarová (Michalina Olszanska) rushes into the bathroom to vomit before shuffling slowly along the hallway and into a side room. The camera maintains a static forward glare before Olga's father (Viktor Vrabec) emerges with a guilty look on his face. No wonder, therefore, that Olga attempts suicide with some pills. But he mother taunts her that she lacks the strength of character to kill herself and has Olga committed to an asylum. She is ignored by the other girls until they beat her for warning against trying to get into her bed. A male orderly advises her to stop reading sombre tomes by the likes of Franz Kafka and Albert Camus, but she ignores him and starts keeping a journal in which she records her darkest thoughts and her sense of disappointment with the world.

On being released after several years, Olga has a celebration lunch with her parents and sister (Zuzana Stavná). But she continues to feel like an outsider and asks if she can move into the family's ramshackle hut, which is close to the plant where she is hired as a driver. Her co-workers refuse to help her lug tyres on to the garage shelves and she can barely bring herself to queue for her wages alongside them. However, she is instantly smitten when an office clerk named Jitka (Marika Soposká) pushes her way to the front of the line and struts off counting her money.

Mother comes to visit and brings Olga a gas stove. But they argue over an invitation to come home for the winter and Olga castigates her mother for interfering in her life. Emboldened by the row, Olga introduces herself to Jitka and they go to a bar together. While Jitka gets the drinks, Olga ventures on to the dance floor and unbuttons her blouse while flirting with a stranger. Jitka is amused and they kiss passionately as they sway to the music.

Such is her sense of exaltation that Olga (who is always so surly and intense) doesn't mind locking herself out. But she is hurt to discover that Jitka is living with a single mother and sulks when another friend takes her along to a campfire party and she slinks away to a nearby shop to buy salami and wine. She also drives too fast when giving a pregnant workmate a lift. Yet, when she invites Jitka to supper, they end up snuggling on the single bed before Olga pleasures Jikta against the wall of her tiny shack. The moment means so much to her that she offers Jitka the hut, in the hope that she will move in. But Jitka feels guilty about cheating on her lover and tells Olga that it is hard to be turned on by someone who always wears trousers and smells so strongly of oil.

Jitka still spends the night, but is disturbed to wake and find a naked Olga standing over her and threatening to commit suicide if they break up. She begs Olga to leave her alone when she camps out on her doorstep and Olga is so distraught by her loss that she drives down a flight of stairs when a lorry blocks her way and she is threatened with disciplinary action unless she undergoes a psychiatric evaluation. Her mother demands to see her and a nurse off screen informs Olga that she would be better off hanging herself than bringing shame upon such a fine physician.

With her stove broken, Olga huddles in bed when not dashing into the rain to hang out her washing. She looks into the camera and declares herself to be an enlightened psycho, who will make people pay for their laughter and her tears. But she steels herself to pick up a stranger in a bar and also accepts the friendship of Miroslav (Martin Pechlát) when he stops to ask if she is having any problems with her truck. They go drinking together and he tells her about his abusive upbringing. Glad to have a sympathetic ear, Olga visits a psychiatrist and confides that she doesn't like or understand people and is content of dwelling in the margins.

Olga decides to buy a car and tries to sell the shack to raise some funds. When her mother pays a call, she asks about the identity of her real father. But her mother merely humours her and they don't see each other for a while after Olga moves into a company dormitory and befriends Alena (Marta Mazurek). They hold hands as they walk along the corridor, but Olga can't keep her eyes off a passenger's skirt hemline when she offers her a lift in her new car. Yet her failure to find love prompts Olga to ask a psychiatrist if he would be able to help find her a lesbian partner, as she is convinced that stability would do wonders for her psychological well-being.

Despite seeming to have settled into her new surroundings, Olga takes to her bed and Miroslav takes her to see his doctor friend. He refuses to treat a patient who is not on his books, however, and dismisses Olga's contention that she needs to check into an asylum by suggesting that she takes a holiday. Miroslav tries to help by taking Olga to camp in the countryside. But the rain lashes down as they try to erect the tent and Olga barely says a word as they huddle together under the canvas.

Skiving off work, Olga asks her mother for some tablets to help her sleep and to cure her tonsillitis. She writes a long letter explaining how years of mistreatment had turned her into a `Prügelknab' or a victim of bullying who has been exploited more callously than `a black American'. In conclusion, Olga announces that she is going to kill her tormentors and that society will have no one to blame but itself for failing her. Pulling the covers over Alena, she finishes her breakfast and posts the letters before climbing into the cab of her truck on 10 July 1973 and ploughing through the 20 people waiting at a Prague tram stop.

Onlookers crowd around the vehicle, as Olga puts her bag on her shoulder and informs the policeman who opens the driver door that she had not had an accident, as she had every intention of murdering as many people as she could. Ultimately, eight citizens lost their lives and Olga's family sit at the dinner table with a sense of shame that she could commit such a wilful act and dread that she might let slip a few secrets during her interrogation.

Olga shows no emotion when he mother visits and fights back the tears as she hands a gift over the table. Her advocate (Juraj Nvota) is also surprised by her lack of remorse and tries to make her see that evil should not be repaid in kind, no matter how much she may feel that she has been betrayed by God and humanity. Insisting that she is the victim in all this, Olga claims that she simply ran out of the superhuman strength that had prevented her from lashing out before. She orders the lawyer not to plead insanity, as she wishes to die for her deed. But he can feel the pain that she has endured and wishes to protect Olga from herself.

As the judge (Jan Novotny) listens to compensation claims from some of those affected by the incident, Olga stares inscrutably ahead. She remains unperturbed as the clerk declares that she drove 31 metres along the pavement before applying the brake. Olga insists that she was standing up for Prügelknabs everywhere by drawing attention to the brutality that they have been forced to withstand by a society that invariably turns a blind eye. She also avers that she had to commit such a monstrous crime to address the problem of domestic violence and ensure that it doesn't happen to others.

When her lawyer claims in summation that Olga is suffering from schizophrenia, she waives the right to an appeal and requests the death penalty. Her composure disappears, however, when her mother comes to the prison and Olga flies at her across the table and has to be restrained. She is back on an even keel when she sees another psychiatrist, but surprises him when she avows that she is the daughter of Oto Winifer, who holds an important position at the Vatican. Olga reveals that they speak all the time and that he has promised to rescue her and warned her not to trust the Hepnarová side of her personality.

Nothing more is said of this interview, however, as Olga is called from her cell a short time later and pinned against the wall by two burly male officers to be handcuffed. Realising that she is making her final walk, Olga begins to scream and tries to hold on to the bannister. She is bundled down the metal steps and is next seen dangling above a trap door, as the witnesses to her execution drift away. That night, mother serves soup to her husband and daughter in complete silence.

Starkly photographed by Adam Sikora with a monochrome bleakness that is wholly commensurate with Alexander Kozák's oppressive interiors and the linear inevitability of the narrative, this is a remarkably non-committal reconstruction of the key moments in Olga Hepnarová's wasted life. Scrupulously avoiding interpretation, Weinreb and Kazda present their version of the facts without seeking to excuse or apportion blame. But, like the condemnation of capital punishment, it's hard to escape the bestial nature of the patriarchal Communist state, as Olga slips through so many nets that might have averted tragedy.

With her bobbed hair, masculine attire and saturnine intensity, Polish actress Michalina Olszanska excels in the title role. However, the reliance on her stock mannerisms makes her difficult to read, especially in some of the linking scenes that appear to offer clues in spite of their seeming inconsequentiality. The exchanges with Klára Melísková and Martin Pechlát are particularly frustrating in this regard, as Dr Hepnarová nor Miroslav are as much ciphers as Marika Soposká, whose shabby treatment of Olszanska does as much to tip her over the edge as anything she suffered at home.

In truth, the formal rigour can be a little stultifying, while the economy that makes the depiction of Olga's adolescence so chillingly compelling is sometimes absent between the split with Jitka and the massacre. But this is a fine evocation of a time and a place, with the staging of both the crime and its punishment leaving a deeper impact because of their understated banality.