Two 17-year-olds, Werner Holt and Gilbert Wolzow, are pulled out of school and into Hitler's army. Gilbert becomes a fanatical soldier; but at the front, Werner begins to understand the senselessness of war.
Dr. med. Job Prätorius enjoys great popularity among patients, doctors and students alike thanks to his kindness and philanthropy. Only his colleague Prof. Speiter begrudges him his success. When his patient Maria Violetta wants to commit suicide because of an extramarital pregnancy, Prätorius takes care of the young woman. When he tries to gently prepare her father for the news, the latter considers Praetorius to be a more than welcome admirer of his daughter. As a deep affection develops between the doctor and his patient, the two eventually marry. Their private happiness fuels Prof. Speiter's envy. With the help of Praetorius' mysterious factotum Shunderson, he finally believes that he can uncover some dark secrets from the doctor's past. But Praetorius manages to refute all the accusations in a court of honor with wit and astonishing revelations.
The three Potůčks live in a house in Ouplavice: a widower grandfather, a son whose wife has run away, and a still unmarried grandson. The father works as chairman of the agricultural cooperative, the son leads the local youth and the pensioner grandfather supplies the two of them with lots of witty advice through the trumpet of his inseparable pipe. They've got a lot on their minds right now. Their village is in competition with neighbouring Piscory, and their opponents are using dishonest weapons to fight...
Five short stories: The Master and the Twentieth Disciple; Every Week is Sunday; It's Boniface's Fault; The Raggedy Song; The Spider's Web.
1. A taxi driver barely finishes his coffee before a young woman asks for a ride to impress her boyfriend, only to reveal her beau’s ramshackle “plan” beside his sleek car. He then smooths over a quarreling couple, helps a frustrated engineer solve his machine’s fault in a dream, and delivers a masked father’s gifts for his estranged daughter. 2. Mr. Kalina, an airport employee, fulfills a flight attendant’s plea by taking in an orphaned African girl for the night. He ensures her safe transfer to a children’s home the next day. 3. Zaza, a coquettish milliner’s assistant, juggles the attentions of a shy tailor and her stern salon manager. After a humiliating fall on the runway, the tailor comforts her and stages a private reprise, revealing where her heart truly belongs.
Delinquent youths wander aimlessly and commit mischief. Few, however, manage to break free from the influence of such a gang. One of the lucky ones is a girl who grew up in an orphanage - already reformed and reformed, she remembers her dark past.
Wandering through the forest, a woodcutter finds a golden fern whose seed turns into a beautiful woman - they fall in love. After getting drunk in a village feast, he gets to sign up to the army. The fairy gives him a shirt to wear and asks him to swear he will never abandon it. At the war front, he falls in love with the the colonel's daughter and will have to perform various feats to get her attention.
Twelve graduates of one year of DAMU decide to go to the regional theatre together. During the first season, the enthusiastic collective breaks up and only five remain, determined to continue.
On the train to Prague, the bride-to-be Zuzana Vítová accidentally meets the clerk Dr. Karel Jánský. Upon arriving in Prague, it seems that Jánský follows the girl on her way from the station, but it turns out that the two of them have only a common journey. When Zuzana discovers that her fiancé Petr Klika is not at home and that she has lost the keys to his apartment, Dr. Jánský gallantly helps her and keeps her company until deep into the night...
It is almost twenty years after the war. Wounds of the past that have never fully healed, but are still carried by many in their hearts. Marie Vláčilová, a survivor of one of the prison camps in Germany, also carries the traumas of the time with her. Now, so many years later, a mass grave of prisoners from that camp has been found and investigators visit Marie to get any information they can from her about the camp. With her important information, she is then to become a crown witness for the prosecution in Germany and now prepares to travel. But this brings back more and more unpleasant memories - especially of her daughter Paula, who has been through German re-education and hardly knew her mother after the reunion...
Kinoautomat was the world's first interactive movie, conceived by Radúz Činčera for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. At nine points during the film the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played.
A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil.
Getting into the popular music spotlight is not easy, as even an enthusiastic amateur, an overconfident young man whose singing career soon fails, will find out... A tantalising insight into the backstage of the entertainment industry, neither the musical passages nor the unexpectedly massive participation of the singing stars of the time succeeded.
The inhabitants of a picturesque village proud of its ancient linden tree will be disturbed by a disturbing event - a temporary road diversion is supposed to lead through the village. At first the population protests against the increased traffic, but eventually gets used to the bustle and excitement. Some, such as the innkeeper, benefit from the situation...
The life and reign of Polish king Casimir III The Great.
An unusual children's film set during World War II in Czechoslovakia, this compelling drama unfolds five different segments that present the war through the eyes of three youngsters. The three have a series of adventures which include saving a soldier from being captured by the Germans, helping out the resistance fighters, and meeting up with a young Russian woman trained in guerrilla warfare. As they learn more about life and danger, various circumstances constantly recall the reality of war itself. The title comes from a wounded pigeon under the care of one of the youngsters.
A group of children discover the new continent of the world, uninhabited by adults. Soon, many other children are joining them in that new paradise, leaving their parents and other adults baffled on all remaining continents.
In 1955, a detained agent feigns loss of memory, speech and hearing. According to his written statements, his name is Karel Neumann and he was born in Radhost...
Due to his profession, Fred, an easy-going and charming long-haul truck-driver, sees a lot of the world. Along his routes he enjoys the company of a lot of girlfriends who sweeten his spare time. One day, he suffers an accident in Prague which puts his co-driver Orje out of action. The beautiful Hungarian Jana persuades him to make her his new co-driver and does her utmost to take care of the stressful job. The more time the uneven couple spends on the road together, the more Jana feels attracted to Fred.
The myth of the anti-fascist resistance in Slovakia was one of the important themes of normalization cinema, of course, treated with an emphasis on the leading role of the communists. This primitively illustrative film depicts the heroic enthusiasm shown by the members of the resistance group, heroically and with constant commitment of life fighting against the treacherous police of the Slovak state and ultimately against the German Gestapo.
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.
A robbery in a Prague jeweler's shop results in the shop manager Kubát and his deputy Litera being shot and wounded. The culprits take the jewelery away in a stolen car and that very night hide the loot tens of kilometers outside Prague in a forest. Then the three robbers part with each other. One of them, Burian, leaves in the same car, the other two, Duda and Hovorka, take to flight in another car, which soon ends up in a car crash. Hovorka dies in the accident, but Duda survives and hides in an abandoned cottage. Burian is arrested, Duda is traced out by a police dog. Duda confesses to the robbery to the criminologist Málek, but refuses to say where is the jewelery. The robber then begins to shoot and Málek kills him in self-defense. The court fails to prove Litera's involvement in the robbery and the only one convicted is Burian. The disappointed Málek leaves the police and begins to work as a cab driver.
The thrilling story begins in 1318, during the reign of John of Luxembourg, when the Czech nobility rebelled against the king. However, the lord of Zlenice, Oldřich of Zlenice, did not join the resistance. He summoned the surrounding nobles to his castle for negotiations... and in the morning he was found dead. He had been murdered in his chamber, which was locked from the inside!
Pavel, a young student living in Prague in 1942, hides a Jewish girl in his apartment building's attic. Amidst the brutality of the occupying German army, love blossoms between the two. He is her only link to the outside world. Then the two are discovered by Pavel's mother, who forces the residents of the apartment building to decide whether Hana can remain.
When Dr. Hahn is found murdered in the hospital’s inspection room, investigators question several suspects: his colleague and longtime lover Dr. Marie Nováková (whom he cheated on with nurse Jiřina), the nurse herself, Dr. Petera (whose career he stymied), a senile patient named Zima, and the inept clinic head. As police sift through truthful and deceptive testimonies, complex professional rivalries and personal entanglements among the hospital staff come to light.
The young worker Helena Pokorná and her widowed father are employed in the same factory. The father is spending his holidays at home in Prague and is looking forward to work. Helena is to go to the seaside for a rewarding holiday. On a hot July day, the girl rides to work in a crowded tram. On the embankment, the crowd pushes her out and Helena fails to get into several other cars. Tempted by the river, the girl calls in sick to work. She takes a steamer to Modřany. There she meets a young man who wants to sleep by the river after his night shift. Helena is drawn into the strange pastimes by a group of notorious loafers and water girls.
Three friends - Tomás, Hubert and Jozka - are boys growing up in a little town. Tomás lives with his aunt Apolena and uncle Václav. Tomás is a boy with lots of ideas that often end up getting him into trouble not only with his teachers and aunt, but with the other inhabitants of the town as well. He has a crush on his schoolmate Blanka and for her sake he decides to try to get the prize for the best pupil in the school.
The plot of the film follows a bus ride on the Prague - Karlovy Vary route and the actions of the people on it. A diverse group of people with various interests, professions and personalities gathered on the bus. Their encounter in the close environment of the bus gave the opportunity to create a whole series of good humorous situations. The ride on the express bus is a symbolic example of the contemporary life of our society, in which, just like when riding a bus, it is necessary to suppress many private interests and selfish qualities in order to successfully reach the destination.
The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.
Three nine-year-old boys are ridden with guilt after chasing their classmate into a busy street, causing him to get hit by a truck.
A "fairly ordinary and mundane" working day in various operations of large steel mills...
Three stories (Gabriela, Eda and Jana), two of which are dedicated to girls. They share a common motif of disillusionment when the protagonists encounter scorn and disinterest.
A girl from a dance ensemble from Uherské Hradiště and an amateur jazz musician from Strakonice will meet at the II. National Spartakiada. Life under victorious socialism is presented as a permanent folk festival with mass gymnastic performances, dance and music. The film was said to have been very popular in Cuba at the time.
A student commits suicide out of unhappy love to a married man; story is recounted in retrospective by a "judge" who asks the audience to decide who is the guilty party.
Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.
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.
A lone military unit carrying a cannon is stopped while moving from the training area by a gamekeeper who is in extreme distress because his son is seriously ill and needs acute medical attention. The lieutenant hesitates for a moment whether to help or move on...