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Continue reading →: Die Pratermizzi – Karl Leiter, Gustav Ucicky (1927)Die Pratermizzi, directed by Karl Leiter and Gustav Ucicky, is one of those 1920s melodramas that seem to thrive on contrasts: between social classes, between desire and innocence, between one’s true face and the one concealed behind a mask. Above all, however, it is a film that uses its Viennese…
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Continue reading →: His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz – J. Farrell MacDonald (1914)We are used to films being adapted from books, or, at most, to novels and films being developed side by side, as happened with 2001: A Space Odyssey, written and scripted by Arthur C. Clarke. His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz is a rather unusual case, because L. Frank Baum…
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Continue reading →: The Patchwork Girl of Oz – J. Farrell MacDonald (1914)Ten years after the publication of the first book in the Oz series, what L. Frank Baum intended to be its final installment was released: The Emerald City of Oz (1910). At the end of the novel, Oz becomes inaccessible to anyone from the outside world, effectively severing its connection…
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Continue reading →: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – Otis Turner (1910)L. Frank Baum, the creator of the Oz saga, made an early attempt to bring his stories to the screen with the stage-and-film hybrid The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908). The project failed to win over audiences and ultimately led Baum to bankruptcy, forcing him to sell the film rights to…
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Continue reading →: Tonka of the Gallows (Tonka Šibenice) – Karl Anton (1930)Throughout our long journey into Czech silent cinema, we’ve repeatedly encountered a rich vein of films devoted to society’s outcasts and their bleak, often devastating lives. Very often these stories revolve around characters from the countryside who are swallowed by the harshness of the city, trapped in vice, poverty, and…
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Continue reading →: Vendelin’s Purgatory and Paradise (Vendelínův očistec a ráj) – Přemysl Pražský (1930)Vendelínův očistec a ráj stages the lively and often chaotic misadventures of the Žemlička family and their determined efforts to push their daughter Amálka (Máňa Ženíšková) into marrying Vendelín Hrom (Jiří Hron). Vendelín soon discovers—very much to his own detriment—the intrusiveness and boundless enthusiasm of the family of the woman…
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Continue reading →: Such Is Life (Takový je život) – Carl Junghans (1930)With Takový je život we stand at the very twilight of Czech silent cinema, a film that opens the door to the sound era in one of the most compelling ways imaginable. Loosely inspired by Émile Zola’s La curée, German director Carl Junghans sought to bring to the screen the…
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Continue reading →: Colonel Švec (Plukovník Švec) – Svatopluk Innemann (1930)Earlier this week I wrote about the propagandistic Za československý stát (1928), a film centered on the Czechoslovak Legion. Today’s title, Plukovník Švec, covers similar ground but is far more accomplished—better structured, more mature, and simply more compelling to watch. Directed by Svatopluk Innemann and based on the play by…
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Continue reading →: Armoured Car (Pancéřové auto) – Rolf Randolf (1930)We’ve come to know the American brand of action films—think Harry Houdini or Charles Hutchison—and Pancéřové auto, which has very little that’s genuinely Czech aside from a few Prague backdrops, could easily pass for one of them. It has all the ingredients: fistfights, stunts, Americanized names… and occasionally, if you…
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Continue reading →: The Organist at St. Vitus’ Cathedral (Varhaník u sv. Víta) – Martin Frič (1929)This film is inspired by a short story by Vítězslav Nezval, a prolific author whose works often carried a strong sense of national pride. At its center is St. Vitus Cathedral and its great organ, whose music marks the rhythm of Prague’s daily life. Since the Cathedral is one of…
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