Closely Watched Trains (1966)

Peter's Nite

Richard Schickel
In the late Sixties, when Czechoslovakian films burst upon the West, they seemed something of a miracle. They were small in scale. They were typically about ordinary, unglamorous people, who were generally regarded with a humorous and humane eye. They were also different in tone from other national cinemas that had earlier caught our attention—Italian Neo-Realism, for example, or the French New Wave. There was a wryness about them, a gently stated sense of the absurd, that reminded us that the Czech national epic was—uniquely—a comic one, Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk.

We were frequently told that Svejk’s sly subversions of the warrior mentality represented the best that a small, geopolitically unfavored nation could offer in the way of resistance to its surrounding bullies, and we were glad to see that the work of a new generation of filmmakers—their attitudes formed during the Nazi Occupation of World War II, sharpened by the Stalinist dictatorship of the post-war period—confirmed the novel’s continuing relevance. The portrait of Czechoslovakia we pieced together from its films of the 1960s was of what we might now call a slacker nirvana, a place where private problems always took precedence over public issues, where ideological pomp was ever subverted by the imp of the perverse.

There was something delightfully casual about the manner of these films, too. Loosely structured, often shot in the streets and on provincial back roads, frequently acted by amateurs, their lack of formality seemed all the more remarkable since they were, after all, the products of an Iron Curtain country. Perhaps its rulers were not as sternly censorious as those of the other Middle European Stalinist regimes, but still…

Prague Spring or not, Dubcek or not, we wondered how the chief figures of this renaissance—Milos Forman, Ivan Passer, and Jirí Menzel, all the other graduates of FAMU, the famous state film school—got away with it. Mostly, though, we were simply grateful and welcoming when, at roughly the same historical moment, Forman’s Loves of a Blonde, Passer’s Intimate Lighting, and Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains struck us with gentle, insinuating force.

None was more successful in the United States than Menzel’s marvelous film. Even cranky John Simon thought it was “unique, indebted ultimately only to [Menzel’s] individual genius”—and his opinion was echoed by every major American reviewer. It went on to gain the fond regard of sophisticated audiences, such modest, but meaningful, commercial success as their patronage could grant an “art house” movie, and the Academy Award as the Best Foreign Language Film of 1967.

We always return to such widely hailed and greatly beloved films with trepidation, so often is our initial enthusiasm betrayed by the passing years. We wonder, especially with films that are so immediately adorable, if we were taken prisoner by people carrying false papers, whispering too-sweet nothings in our ears. That’s not the case with Closely Watched Trains. If anything, it seems to me more powerful—certainly more poignant—now than it did when it first appeared some 34 years ago.

I think we were all somewhat misled by the film back then. A lot of us, Simon included, treated the end of the film as no more than a coup de theatre, a sudden lurch toward seriousness that the director and the writer (novelist Bohumil Hrabal) somehow pull off without spoiling the film’s overall sense of absurdist fun.

There’s some truth in that argument. But what most powerfully struck me when I returned to the movie was how integral to the movie that ending is, how carefully it all along prepares us for its conclusion. Yes, it is a surprise at first glance. But on second thought it appears to be utterly inevitable. And utterly right. What’s most clever about the movie is the canny way Menzel and Hrabal deceive us, lead us into believing, right up to the end, that their aim is nothing more than a sort of chucklesome and off-hand geniality.

It seems that Menzel is one of the many victims of 20th Century megapolitics, yet another artist on whose art the difficult business of surviving in a totalitarian society imposed too much of a distorting strain. The descriptions one reads of his many unseen works sound so graceful, so original. We can only hope for the opportunity to one day see those films, to be in touch with the full career of this most insinuating and ingratiating filmmaker. In the meantime, we are lucky to have Closely Watched Trains, a film that remains as fresh and potent as it was when we first saw it so many years ago, a film that continues to reward many a close re-watching.

TIME 100 Best Movies of all time:

In the brief cold war moment before the Soviet Union brutally crushed its vitality in the crackdown after the "Prague Spring," the Czech cinema exemplified the country's sly, humane rebelliousness to the world. And Menzel's film, about a feckless young crossing guard at a sleepy railroad station who becomes an unlikely (and tragic) hero of the resistance to German occupation was its sweetly funny, curiously moving masterpiece. TIME thought Menzel kept his mood-shifting movie "on the track all the way." Indeed, he did.

Czech radio on the Time Magazine selection:

The American weekly Time magazine has just published a list of the 100 best films ever, compiled by its two much-respected film critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss. The list, which includes such American classics as The Godfather and Pulp Fiction, is well-balanced, containing many non—US titles, among them 'Closely Watched Trains' -one of only three Czech films to ever earn the Best Foreign-Language Oscar.
Made in 1966, 'Closely Watched Trains' is generally considered a small masterpiece by both Czech and foreign audiences the coming of age story of a shy young man in wartime, who longs for love but sacrifices his life in a futile mission against the Nazi occupiers. Based on Bohumil Hrabal's novel of the same name, the film drew rave reviews in the 60s and continues to enjoy a great following today. We caught up with fim historian Karel Och:

"The most beautiful thing on the film for me is this sort of intimacy which goes together with the main character. And all the things that are happening to him are sort of by coincidence, but actually describe the most important things in life. He is not sort of a likeable young man, he is very, very ordinary, very unglamorous, let's say. But, there's this gentle way of showing him, and all the absurd things that happen to him, which is very universal."
The loss of innocence and absurdity where characteristic of Hrabal, who also contributed to the final screenplay. Following the success of 'Closely Watched Trains' Hrabal and Menzel collaborated on several notable screen adaptations in the 70's, but never got around to Hrabal's seminal "I Served the King of England". Jiri Menzel, after a long hiatus, is getting set to make that film that now, something many film fans are looking forward to with great anticipation. Karel Och again:
"Jiri Menzel sort of disappeared, I mean it's been a long time since his last film, and as we can see a lot filmmakers who were successful in the 60s changed a lot and maybe their films are no longer as successful as they were before. It's one of Hrabal's most beautiful books, so it will be a tough task."
If anyone is up to it, it should be Jiri Menzel, who adapted more of Hrabal's work anyone else. The only shame is that Hrabal himself could not live to see it.

Prague Life on Hrabal:
Along with Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal is one of the most important Czech writers of the 20th century, and even more central to Prague than Kundera.
Kundera even said of Hrabal: “Bohumil Hrabal embodies as no other the fascinating Prague. He couples people's humor to baroque imagination.” Hrabal finished Law at Prague's Charles University, and lived in the city from the late 1940s until his death in 1997. Though not as internationally known as Kundera, Hrabal had more admirers than adversaries in the Czech Republic than the former, probably because he didn’t leave his homeland and language behind for France. However, Hrabal does have his admirers abroad, even inspiring the novel The Book of Hrabal by Hungarian writer Peter Esterhazy.

Hrabal was born in Brno in 1914, but his home became Prague after he finished university there. In 1965 Hrabal published his best known novel, Closely Watched Trains, which was made into a film by Czech director Jiri Menzel. Hrabal’s style was distinctive, often utilizing run-on sentences (the whole novel Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age is written in one long sentence) and the schizophrenic struggle between individual moral conscience and the demands of society. The classic Shakespearean clown character is ever-present, seemingly a fool but often pulling bits of profound insight out of the air.

Many of Hrabal’s works were translated and published in English, including his last, Total Fears: Letters to Dubenka, published posthumously. When in Prague, the best place by far to find English translations of Hrabal and other Czech writers is Anagram Bookstore, where they have a whole section of Czech literature. Hrabal’s death is nothing if not ironic like his works: in 1997, he fell from his fifth story hospital window, supposedly feeding pigeons. Hrabal lived in a fifth story apartment, however, and in several of his works a character has ended his life by suicide from the fifth story. Coincidence? Perhaps, but the truth shall never be known.