mdblist.com logo The Best Jiří Menzel Directed Movies


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poster
Criterion Channel
80
7.6
/14787/
72
/248/
71
/254/
3.9
/19663/
90
/21/
86
/237/

Closely Watched Trains (1966)
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.
poster
79
7.8
/5135/
76
/130/
72
/75/
3.7
/2105/
80
/5/
88
/10/

My Sweet Little Village (1985)
The movie's main storyline follows the life of Otík, a young man, in a tight-knit village community. The sweet-tempered Otík works as an assistant truck driver with Mr. Pávek, his older colleague and practical-minded neighbor. Pávek's family takes care of Otík, whose parents are dead. However, the two coworkers become at odds over Otík's inability to perform even the simplest tasks. Pávek demands that Otík be transferred to assist another driver, who happens to be a choleric and suspicious man named Turek (Turk in Czech). Rather than work with Turek, Otík decides to accept an offer of employment in Prague, but finds he does not fit in to the city life. After discovering that the transfer of Otík to Prague was a trick by a crooked politician to get a deal on Otík's large inherited house, Pávek agrees to give Otík a second chance and retrieves him from the city to resume their work together.
poster
74
7.3
/8481/
72
/152/
68
/111/
3.6
/2127/
79
/87/
81
/288/
72
/26/

I Served the King of England (2007)
Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the inter-war period. Jan Dítě, a young and clever waiter who wants to become a millionaire, comes to the conclusion that to achieve his ambitious goal he must be diligent, listen and observe as much as he can, be always discreet and use what he learns to his own advantage; but the turbulent tides of history will continually stand in his way.
poster
72
50
7.5
/2916/
70
/59/
71
/46/
3.6
/1566/

Cutting It Short (1981)
Francin, manager of a small-town brewery, has a charming wife whose abundant blonde locks are an adornment to the town. Maryska looks ethereal but loves meat and beer, while Francin is an ascetic. The strict members of the brewery board of directors come to audit the accounts, but are diverted from concentrating on Francin's detailed reports by Maryska, who has organized a pig-killing feast and is ably assisting the butcher. When she invites the old curmudgeons on the board to enjoy the fresh pork, they are too happy to agree. Francin doesn't know whether he is going to get a permanent contract. To make things worse his brother Pepin - eccentric, noisy and garrulous - turns up on an indefinite visit.
poster
Criterion Channel
67
42
6.9
/1745/
65
/34/
64
/31/
3.4
/1820/
71
/7/
69
/14/

Capricious Summer (1968)
Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest skill, but with a slim and beautiful assistant, Anna. Antonin speaks to her. The two spend the night in the change room by the river, Antonin massaging her feet all night long. Katherine decides to move into the caravan with Ernie. But now the major and even the canon sense Anna's attractiveness...
poster
75
42
7.3
/2355/
71
/43/
68
/44/
3.7
/2018/
89
/6/

Larks on a String (1990)
In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict.
poster
78
38
7.6
/1709/
79
/86/
72
/38/
3.7
/1321/
89
/4/

Secluded, Near Woods (1976)
The Lavicka's, a Czech family from the city, rents a house in the country with the option to buy. However, old Mr Komarek seems reluctant to sell the house as they agreed.
poster
Criterion Channel
62
35
6.5
/870/
65
/13/
59
/31/
3.5
/1695/
50
/86/

Pearls of the Deep (1966)
A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression and the versatility of the movement’s directors. Based on stories by the legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal, the shorts range from the surreally chilling to the caustically observant to the casually romantic, but all have a cutting, wily view of the world.
poster
72
34
7.5
/1754/
77
/44/
65
/31/
3.6
/872/

The Snowdrop Festival (1984)
This movie is based on texts of Bohumil Hrabal, world-known Czech prosaic. It's a story (in a form of a mosaic of short episodes and pictures) about the sadness and happiness of inhabitants of Kersko (Kersko is a small woody area full of cottages and roods). These people are both simple and sensitive, they have their own pleasures (e.g. Leli is a collector of cheap, but inutile things) and the greatest delight of all of them is a hunting. Crude poetics of amateur hunting is screened by dreamy pictures of this area. Menzel mixes sentimental lyricism and rough (but not vulgar!) humor and the outcome is the never-ending landscape of continuous life in the proximate nearness of nature. The performances of actors are brilliant. Both Rudolf Hrusinsky as a Franz and Jaromír Hanzlik as a Leli have nonrecurring charm bottomed on a pain and inebriation. Only the music is not perfect: Jiri Sust usually assembled his film music from his older works and in this movie there is many quotations.
poster
66
31
6.6
/1923/
65
/18/
66
/27/
3.5
/795/

Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (2002)
Collection of short films the summaries of which include; a foreign man moving to Italy, getting married and having a child; a four split scene short involving plot-less images of old people with television sets for heads, a beautiful woman having sex, and overall confusion; and an old man reminiscing over his youth.
poster
65
14
7.1
/632/
68
/21/
64
/20/
60
/2/

The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1994)
Set in a small Ukrainian village during the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941 Private Chonkin, not overly endowed with intelligence, is left to guard a downed military aircraft. The authorities appear to have forgotten about him so this leaves him free to work his chams on the village postmistress, Njura, untill the local militia are tipped off.
poster
?
10
/1/

Tři v tom (1981)
N/A
poster
62
?
6.5
/188/
62
/4/
59
/8/

Crime in the Night Club (1968)
A black comedy set in a Prague cabaret.
poster
?
10
/1/

Mandragora (1971)
N/A
poster
?
8.4
/32/
55
/2/
65
/2/

Audience (1990)
A recording of the legendary production “Audience“ from the Prague Drama Club with Josef Abrhám and Pavel Landovský. In 1975, Václav Havel worked as a labourer in the brewery in Trutnov; he could do nothing else. And it was here that he made perhaps his most successful one-act play, Audience, about the writer Ferdinand Vanek, who is invited by his superior to offer him a deal - a promotion to warehouse keeper, but in return has to inform on himself for StB reports.
poster
?
6.6
/16/

Jiří Menzel: 7 Questions (2011)
An idiosyncratic reflection on the film Larks on a String and its history, shot by it's director Jiri Menzel.
poster
54
?
7.0
/193/
53
/6/
43
/3/

The Beggar's Opera (1991)
Unlike any other opera, the so-called Beggar's Opera is not just one composition, but a lineage of adapted compositions, beginning with the original hugely successful 1728 political satire written by Englishman John Gay. Composers and writers have penned variations on it ever since. The most famous of these was A Threepenny Opera by Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Some things these compositions share in common is their setting among the poor and criminal classes, and the roguish character Macheath. This production is based on an adaptation of Gay's original by Vaclav Havel the freedom-fighter, writer and philosopher who became the first (and only) president of the united post-communist country of Czechoslovakia, and it retains many traces of its theatrical origins. Film reviewers were not too tolerant of what they called "slavish adherence" to the noted Czech writer's stage production, but theater, philosophy and history buffs may feel otherwise.
poster
?
6.6
/80/
30
/2/
62
/5/

Our Mr. Foerster Died (1963)
On a sunny afternoon an old man speaks to a laundress about his love for Provence, then a black flag is unfurled outside the town monument: news has arrived over the radio that the famous composer Foerster, born in the town, has just died.
poster
?
5.6
/53/
10
/1/
55
/2/

Prefabricated Houses (1960)
A student work by Jiří Menzel, filmed during his second year at the FAMU film school. Views of old Prague and its tenement buildings, symbolizing the obsolete past, alternate with shots of construction sites for new prefabricated apartment buildings. In spite of certain unavoidable propagandistic overtones added by the director, it is notable as the beginning of his search for a “dramaturgy of colors.”
poster
64
?
7.0
/477/
65
/15/
58
/9/

The End of Old Times (1990)
Czechoslovakia 1918. The newly formed National Assembly has made Stoklasa the administrator of the Kratochvile Castle. Although with no aristocratic background, he is a man of fortune and is trying to buy the castle. To impress his neighbors and the local politicians he invites them to a great hunting party. Uninvited comes a man who claims to be Duke Alexej. Stoklasa believes him to be a hustler. This hustler, however, manages to charm all the women before he leaves.
poster
?
4.9
/75/
40
/2/
50
/4/

Who Looks for Gold? (1974)
When he returns to Prague from a stint in the Army, Lada does not seem to fit in anywhere, and he cannot get the hang of the system of deliberately underperforming on the job. His girlfriend tries to keep him in the city with a variety of stratagems, but he eventually takes a job as a truck driver on a dam-building project. He uses the truck to visit his girl on weekends. Ingenuous, he is unaware that the truck is being used for black-market smuggling, and that his girlfriend two-times on him when he cannot arrange to leave on time for his weekend.
poster
?
4.0
/58/
50
/2/
50
/2/

Die Schokoladenschnüffler (1986)
A crime comedy directed by Jirí Menzel, based on a story by Edgar Wallace.
poster
61
?
6.7
/317/
60
/12/
62
/13/

Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (1979)
Returning home to Prague, the magician Pasparte, an owner of a circus caravan, meets his dying colleague who entrusts his beautiful daughter Aloisie to his care. In Prague they all take up their lodgings at the house At Blue Fish in which they intend to arrange the programs. The firm is owned by widow Evzenie with whom Pasparte shares flat and bed. Evzenie is jealous of Aloisie therefore Pasparte sends Aloisie as a housewife to the single man Jakub Kolenatý who earns his living by photographing and wants to record the revived pictures of Prague. Pasparte wants to found in Prague the first permanent Czech movie theatre in which there would be projected also the original Czech films.
poster
49
?
4.9
/152/
55
/10/
44
/7/

The Don Juans (2013)
An opera troupe in a small town decides to perform Mozart's Don Giovanni. The view behind the scenes uncovers the world of opera without the glitter. A tale of love and disappointment, about music and passionate love-making and about people that live their lives in spite of the opera.
poster
63
?
6.5
/118/
60
/3/
64
/5/

Crime at the Girls School (1966)
Three short story omnibus. The main hero and connecting link is Lieutenant Boruvka, created by Lubomír Lipsky. He deals with the murder case between climbers, the death of the dancer in the music theater and the strange disappearance of the mathematics professor.
poster
?

One Moment (2002)
Poetic, affectionate, lyrical, and elegy for actor Rudolf Hrusinsky composed of a wordless montage of slowed film footage spanning Hrusinsky’s entire career that embodies the human experience: toil, rest, education, romantic love, rejection, desire, aging, frailty. A recurring interstitial black screen with the words “ten minutes” becomes a constant reinforcement of transience, a career and life distilled to the precious few minutes of the film, a reflection of its brevity.


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