Czech filmmaking has a long tradition. The Prague studios in the Barrandov Hills churned out glossy pre-Communist romantic comedies and period pieces rivaling the output of Paris, Berlin, and even Hollywood at the time.
While Czech literature and music have carved their places in classical culture, the country's films and their directors have collected the widest praise in the mid- to late 20th century. Cunning, melancholy views of Bohemian life (before the Soviets moved in for a few decades) were captured by some of the finest filmmakers in the era known as the "Czech New Wave" of the 1960s.
Directors Jirí Menzel and Milos Forman were in the vanguard. An easy-to-find example of this period's work (with English subtitles) is Menzel's Oscar-winning Closely Watched Trains, a snapshot of the odd routine at a rural Czech train station.
Forman made his splash with a quirky look at a night in the life of a town trying to have fun despite itself. The Fireman's Ball shows Forman's true mastery as he captures the essence of being stone-bored in a gray world, yet he still makes it strangely intriguing. Of course, this was made before Forman emigrated to the big budgets of Hollywood and first shocked Americans with Hair. He then directed the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. For Amadeus, Forman sought authenticity, so he received special permission from the Communists to return to Prague; while filming, he brought back to life the original Estates' Theater (Stavovské divadlo), where Mozart first performed. Forman also consulted a friend, then-President Václav Havel, before choosing Courtney Love as the pornographer's wife in the Oscar-nominated The People vs. Larry Flynt. Havel loved the choice but refused to attend a private 1996 screening in Prague along with Flynt himself.
Czech-based directors after the New Wave mostly disappeared from view, but one stunningly brave film was made in 1970, as the repressive post-invasion period known as "normalization" began its long, cold freeze of talent. In The Ear (Ucho), director Karel Kachyna presents the anguished story of a man trapped in an apartment wired for sound, subject to the Communist leaders' obsession and paranoia with Moscow. That The Ear was made in the political environment of the time was astounding. That it was quickly banned wasn't. Fortunately, local TV has dusted off copies from the archives, and it has begun playing to art-house audiences again.
But maybe a new Czech wave has begun. The father-and-son team of Zdenek and Jan Sverák won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1997 for Kolja, the bittersweet tale of an abandoned Russian boy grudgingly adopted by an aging Czech bachelor on the cusp of the 1989 revolution. After a previous Oscar nomination for the 1992 Elementary School (Obecná skola), the 30-something director Jan and his actor father are making an industry out of golden reflections about Czech life.
Prague has become a popular location for major motion pictures, in spite of itself. Producer/actor Tom Cruise and director Brian De Palma chose it for the stunning night shots around Charles Bridge in the early scenes of Mission: Impossible. During shooting, a verbal brawl broke out with Czech officials, who jacked up the rent for use of the riverside palace that acts as the American Embassy in the film (the palace is actually claimed by the von Liechtenstein family). Immortal Beloved, a story of Beethoven, made use of Prague's timeless streets (shooting around the graffiti).
Finally, The Beautician and the Beast, starring "Bond" hunk Timothy Dalton and nasal-siren Fran Drescher, uses Prague as a mythical East European capital invaded by a Brooklyn hairdresser (who makes pretty good use of her Frommer's guidebook while traveling through faux-Prague).
Still, the film about Prague probably most familiar to American audiences is The Unbearable Lightness of Being, based on the book by émigré author Milan Kundera. Set in the days surrounding the Soviet invasion, the story draws on the psychology of three Czechs who can't escape their personal obsessions while the political world outside collapses around them. Many Czechs find the film disturbing, some because it hits home, others because they say it portrays a Western stereotype.
