Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

Discuss releases in the Janus Contemporaries, Eclipse, and Essential Art House lines and the films on them.
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domino harvey
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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#126 Post by domino harvey » Mon Sep 29, 2014 10:43 am

I haven't seen this in awhile (since when the Second Run disc came out), but I'll start things off by mentioning that what I most strongly remember with this film is how overpowering its sense of intimidation is. It is in fact a scarier film than most horror movies by the virtue of it being so uncomfortable and the narrative thread's uncertain path only adds to the wobbly feling. After a certain point it's pretty rare to be surprised by where even the best of films take a viewer, but this one consistently surprises for its scant running time.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#127 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:19 am

What frightened me the most about the intimidation--I'm probably not alone on this--is not the ways it sought to break the strong or the defiant, but how easily it corrupted and coopted thoughtful dissenters, encouraging them to replace their uneasy consciences with rationalizations meant to preserve their ease. I'm thinking especially of that one guy at the party who speaks up a few times about the abuses. He's intimated by the power of the host (naturally), but his reaction is not, say, to sit in quiet resentment but to talk himself out of his own position and into that of those in power. He ends up quietly smoking a cigarette with some others, comfortable with the fact that everyone else is hunting down the lone sensible member of the group like an animal.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#128 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:20 am

I first saw this on a BBC2 broadcast circa 1990, and what most struck me about the Second Run disc (and presumably the Eclipse disc follows suit) is the difference that a more thorough subtitle translation made. The BBC version covered what they presumably considered to be the essentials, but with this film it's the asides and seemingly throwaway comments that matter just as much.

Picking up on what Dom said about the film feeling uncomfortable, I think part of that is to do with the fact that many of the actors weren't professionals - Rudolf, for instance, is probably the showiest part in the entire film, but he's played by Jan Klusák, who's far better known as a composer. Similarly, the man who disappears is fellow Czechoslovak New Wave director Evald Schorm - who would join Jan Němec in having one of his films "banned forever", along with this one (a notionally permanent ban that was implicitly overturned in 1989), and there are plenty of other Czech and Slovak dissidents in the crowd scenes. But I think this disquieting tone is only partly to do with the performers' inexperience: it must have been clear that this was an unusually brave film to make at the time, two years before the thaw of the Prague Spring.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#129 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:23 am

Incidentally, the two official English titles translate the original O slavnosti a hostech in slightly different ways. A literal translation is "About Party and Guests", but the British version is merely The Party and the Guests, while the US version emphasises the "about" by turning it into a full-scale Report on the Party and the Guests.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#130 Post by jindianajonz » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:34 am

MichaelB wrote:Incidentally, the two official English titles translate the original O slavnosti a hostech in slightly different ways. A literal translation is "About Party and Guests", but the British version is merely The Party and the Guests, while the US version emphasises the "about" by turning it into a full-scale Report on the Party and the Guests.
Does the double meaning for the word "party" (referring to both a gala and the ruling/communist party) still hold up in Czech, or is that a coincidence of translation? If the former, it would make this film even braver!

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#131 Post by swo17 » Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:48 am

Interesting that everyone is noting how intimidating the film is. What I love about it is how it's so very polite (about being horrible). Of course, maybe this is only semantics and we're all getting at the same thing. I just think the tone here really sets this film apart from the typical anti-regime screed, and as an added bonus, it only serves to make the film's point more strongly.

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Re: Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

#132 Post by movielocke » Mon Sep 29, 2014 4:10 pm

(I realize, somewhat abashed, that Unbearable Lightness of Being is also Kundera, so I suppose I had been exposed to him before watching the Joke)

Return of the Prodigal Son is, um, it's not very good. After five tremendous and fascinating films, this one fell flat for me. It actually put me to sleep twice on consecutive nights before I was able to finish it. it does give one a sense of the class structures of czechloslovakia, as no matter what country, young men of means will have the same complaints, apparently. The ennui and "disappointment in the world" approach of the film feels almost like a generic, current indy film; unfortunately, in that modern context, the film disappears, vanishing into the void of my memory with all its innumerable and distinctionless cousins, who all beat this particular thematic dead horse with the same repetitive enthusiasm and identical story beats--they are indistinguishable from one another. By the end of the film, to keep myself interested, I was seeing if the film would hold up to a queer interpretation of a closeted protagonist/filmmaker; we have the twin dopplegangers used of an effeminate/gay foil as well as an impotent foil, and we have him refusing and being disinterested in sex as well. But there's not much there even if you can interpret it that way, because there's not much in the film.

It does feel the most heavily influenced by its contemporaries in Euro art cinema; the trope of kewl sunglasses on a cynical expressionless main character is definitely executed.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#133 Post by movielocke » Mon Sep 29, 2014 4:20 pm

Report on the Party and the Guests is fairly amazing. I found the abrupt shifts in tone both exhilarating and chilling. To go suddenly from the frolics in the woods to an impromptu-witch hunt-trial in the woods was shocking. It's one of the most scathing indictments of the regime in the Pearls set. That shift then casts a pallor over the festivities that follow when the trial is abruptly called off, and the audience gets to experience the sense of dread one would feel living under such a regime. Because we know that the party leader (get it? hah, he's the thrower of the party, therefore he's the party leader) is suspicious and capricious and prone to interrogations of the simpleist of missteps or problems. One given favor could become a castoff at a moments notice. Being part of the pary does not confer immunity, and leaving the party ist verboten. It's a terrifying way of life, and I can't imagine the mental and emotional toll it inflicts upon its subjects.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#134 Post by ptatler » Mon Sep 29, 2014 4:40 pm

Not sure if any of you saw this, a young J. Hoberman's experience with Nemec's film at the 1968 NYFF. His write-up is 15 paragraphs down.

I had to cover the Pearls set for GreenCine. Here's my review from May of 2012:
I wrote:Nemec’s feature in the set – A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966) – is pitch-perfect in establishing a mood of paranoid dread. The film opens with a group of well-dressed middle agers picnicking in a forest glen, enjoying pie and indecipherable conversation. Having finished, they meander back through the woods only to be accosted by a group of sinister men, led by a reptilian sociopath, who corral them into a clearing and begin making increasingly threatening demands of them.

Nemec’s staging of the appearance of these antagonists is extremely unsettling; the picnickers are vulnerable in their postprandial bliss, the marauding strangers materialize like a pack of dead-eyed wolves. Particularly disturbing is the leader’s combination of violent authority with childlike abandon. When one of the picnickers meekly attempts to leave the company of their newfound companions, the leader insists he stay. “Such a warm evening will be pleasant for a stay in the forest,” he says, his tone conveying more of an order than an observation.

With this characterization, Nemec nails totalitarian society’s wicked combination of menace and absurdity. For a chilling half hour or so, he concocts a riveting atmosphere of impending violence. The problem with Report, however, is that the mood sustained by its first half is trumped by its second half’s descent into silliness – a plot involving a banquet in the middle of the forest presided over by the strangers’ patriarch. Nemec’s premise plays better as a short since it has nowhere to go beyond a certain point other than to drown in its own absurdity while failing to pay off its menacing beginning. But what a beginning!

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Re: Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

#135 Post by movielocke » Mon Sep 29, 2014 8:47 pm

Having finished the set, I'm rather irritated that a second set hasn't yet materialized in the intervening years. Other than some minor print damage on a couple of the films, they all looked superb, and would be fine on blurays (and I wouldn't mind film damage in HD anymore than I mind it on SD), I wonder if part of the delay was they were considering an Etaix/Blank mainline single spine approach for the next set? Or perhaps the next set was slated to be the set that transitioned Eclipse to Dual Format and then abandoning DF shot those plans to hell? in any event, Criterion needs to get the next Czech set out, and get Intimate Lighting out on the mainline as well.

I also note they were not windowboxed, which was a refreshing change, and a definite step up from the usual degraded image criterion/eclipse 1.33 DVDs suffer from. On the other hand, they've only released 9 eclipse sets in the 2.5 years since releasing this, so maybe eclipse 42 will be Roots of the Czech New Wave?

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Gregory
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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#136 Post by Gregory » Tue Sep 30, 2014 2:17 pm

I think I understand Nemec's reluctance to have the film be considered a political allegory, because it says so much (even more broadly than "political" connotes) about the ways people tend to act around authority figures and unequal relationships of power, situations of uncertainty, and how we respond to perceived needs to maintain decorum and to incentives and rewards. Manipulative authoritarian leaders and sadistic henchmen wouldn't even have to be part of a fable like this for similar characters and behavior to be present.

A masterstroke was how understated and at times almost invisible as a character Nemec made the husband who escapes. This is in contrast to Karel, who at first seems to have an almost reflexive impulse to demonstrate his resistance: when Rudolph first strangely takes him by the arm, he pulls it away and, the next time, verbally objects. But then I think Karel makes a show of his disapproval of what's taking place and then of his resigned cynicism. The husband who escapes seems naturally introverted, and when he understands the situation he avoids calling any attention to himself so that he can more easily get out. Nemec underplays all of this—a more conventional film about even such a wallflower captive (as opposed to a "Cool Hand Luke" type) might have at least shown him looking furtively around for an opportunity to make a break for it.

This is definitely a film that's worth watching a few times to catch more and more nuances. The first time I saw it, right after the Second Run release, I read MichaelB's booklet essay and instantly got an idea of how many details I'd missed. (For any major fans of the film who only have the Eclipse disc, the Second Run DVD is worth its inexpensive price in order to get Michael's substantial essay on the film and Nemec's career, as well as the video piece with Peter Hames.)

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#137 Post by warren oates » Thu Oct 02, 2014 3:10 am

Well, since he didn't post it himself here's an excerpt from Michael B's Second Run booklet essay. I definitely appreciate the Bunuel references, as I was often reminded of both The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Though maybe the young J. Hoberman is right, that Bunuel gets at similar issues more interestingly.)

I'll second jindianajonz's questions about the variant English translations of the film's title. I'm almost as interested in the word "report" (which has connotations of judgement and surveillance) as I am in "party." Likewise I'm curious about a passage in the film where everyone seems to declare themselves "democrats." Is this just a nod to the way in which the word became a staple of (mis)naming totalitarian political entities in the 20th century, or is there something else I'm missing?

And I have to agree completely with ptatler's assessment in his pithy incisive capsule review. I'd say that the same goes for both the Nemec feature films I've seen so far. Diamonds of the Night, great as it is, also feels like it would have played better at half its length.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#138 Post by Gregory » Thu Oct 02, 2014 11:26 pm

I used to wonder whether this film was influenced by The Exterminating Angel, but interestingly, according to Peter Hames, Nemec didn't see it until after he'd made this film, but he is on record as an admirer of Buñuel.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#139 Post by warren oates » Fri Oct 03, 2014 12:01 am

Oh, I didn't mean to say Nemec was in any way influenced by Bunuel. Just that, as both Michael B in his essay and J. Hoberman suggest, Bunuel occupies similar territory. And I agree with Hoberman that he does so more interestingly.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#140 Post by movielocke » Fri Oct 03, 2014 1:01 am

I never actually connected it to exterminating angel. That film is dominated by its sense of claustrophobia and the critique of civilization. Nemecs film is far richer, expansively examining politics and the behaviors that enable it. Bunuel is saying we are only fooling ourselves and nemec is saying we have only ourselves to blame. The thrust of the argument of each is very different.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#141 Post by warren oates » Fri Oct 03, 2014 12:25 pm

I don't know. If you read even the excerpt from Michael B's booklet essay, he seems to be arguing that Nemec himself thought the political context and overt political interpretations were too limiting. Both films are about parties as metaphors for supposedly fun and voluntary things we humans freely do together that actually aren't as free or as fun as they may at first seem (a.k.a. society, civilization, etc. -- regardless of the system of government). Doesn't really feel like a stretch. What keeps the Bunuel film more watchable in my estimation is the way that he literally treats his party goers as disaster survivors, scavenging for food and water, awaiting rescuers, planning escapes, fighting amongst themselves, sinking into despair.

The Nemec film is powerful, but I agree with those like ptaler and Hoberman who feel it gets repetitious. There isn't a whole lot I gain from the final lakeside sequence that I'm not already thinking or feeling about the situation.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#142 Post by Sloper » Sat Oct 04, 2014 5:46 am

Michael also points out, in the extract from the booklet linked to above, that 'slavnost' means 'celebration' in Czech, so that the pun on 'party' works only in English. Indeed, 'slavnost' is the term used to refer to the 'banquet' at the end (and the earlier 'banquet' referred to right at the beginning, where the related verb 'oslavovat' is also used to say that 'it's quite nice to celebrate and indulge oneself'). I guess this word could happily be attached to each of the film's three parts: the picnic by the stream, the extended 'joke' in the clearing (which will become a sports field, a place for game-playing), and the climactic wedding/birthday feast. Each of these parties has its guests, with the woman who baked the cake serving as hostess to her six guests during the picnic, Rudolf and his thugs appropriating all seven members of this party as his 'guests' during the festivities in the clearing, and then the white-suited Host appropriating Rudolf, the 'boys', and the original party of guests as he guides them towards the lake.

I don't agree that the third of these sections adds little to the film: it lends a visual symmetry to the story (picnic with stream on the left - banquet with lake on the right) but also works tonally and thematically.

The opening conversation is about a prior celebration, and how wonderful it was. It's as if these seven people spend all their time at parties, and this picnic is an interlude, a mini-celebration to punctuate the large-scale banquets. We first see our protagonists as a small gathering of individuals, distinct from and yet attached to the larger group, always remembering a banquet or looking forward to another one. This small group is not 'an individual': it has its own group dynamic, its own way of maintaining cohesion. They agree with each other a lot about trivial things, and much of their conversation is incomprehensible without the knowledge they seem to share. Perhaps incomprehensible with that knowledge as well, though no one would ever say so. The soon-to-be dissident is exceptional in both respects: one man says he feels tired, another says he does too, then the dissident says, ‘No – you can’t be’. Twice he has to be prompted by his wife into agreeing that the place is lovely, and his responses clearly lack conviction.

So this isn’t a story about a small band of friends being absorbed into and oppressed by a larger and more sinister body. From the beginning, the picnickers are cooperating with the coercive power structures that emerge in the course of the film. When we see them, at the very end of the film, left behind at the banqueting table, blowing out the candles so that the party can resume when the others get back, this retrospectively clarifies what was going on in the opening scene. Those larger structures are supported and maintained by this subordinate and ostensibly separate group, just as the power structure within this group is maintained by the cooperative behaviour of each individual.

The dissident was subtly marked as problematic in the opening minutes of the film – now, at the end, the State sets out en masse to either destroy him or re-appropriate him. Same thing, maybe. The picnickers have facilitated this process of isolating the dissident and now wait complacently while the State they work for hunts him down. That hunt is a necessary activity for the maintenance of cohesion and harmony in this society – to have an empty chair is intolerable, even if it is just a footstool hidden out of sight beneath the table – and the harmony facilitated by the picnickers is echoed by the symmetry they now enjoy within their own group, consisting as it now does of three women and three men. Remember how pleased one of the thugs was when the ultra-cooperative bespectacled guest lined the men and women up separately. That was ‘much better’, and so is having three of each gender.

Yes, the film’s pace is rather slow. In this respect, it actually reminded me more of the extended party scenes in The Leopard than of The Exterminating Angel. In the latter, things start slowly but the sense of danger and horror builds and builds in the course of the film, until it really does turn into a full-blown visceral nightmare. In Němec’s film, despite the rather fitful tension of the middle section, the sense of threat and danger is kept very much under the surface, and it’s crucial that the film maintain the atmosphere of a ‘party’ throughout – a party where nothing much is happening, where nothing seems to be at stake, where everything is trivial and a joke. The dissident absents himself from the party, not because he feels threatened by it, but because ‘people don’t love each other here’. What a cryptic statement – an obscure negation (it’s not about what the party is, but about what it is not, what it lacks), and one that nobody comments on...which perhaps proves the dissident’s point, in a way that is hard to pin down.

And yes, it is also repetitive. Considered as drama, it’s really quite a boring film. Both times I’ve watched it, I’ve found myself tuning out every now and then and having to rewind. It’s hard to stay interested in such inconsequential dialogue and such trivial goings-on. That’s how they get you: notice how the Host keeps making the most banal statements in the most sententious terms, in the tone of a head of state delivering a rousing speech, pausing between phrases so that they can sink in and be written down. Everything is made banal, importance and meaning are replaced by banality. The film is simply ‘Of the Party and the Guests’ – the social gathering and the people at it.

The fact that, underneath this banality, there is a person being destroyed, is all the more chilling for being suppressed by the trivial surface narrative. Look at that final shot: it’s nothing, just some candles being blown out. And yet this is the kind of activity that goes into maintaining the oppressive state, that facilitates the annihilation of a person – and it’s only in this last shot that the film allows itself its one unsubtle moment, by placing the increasingly loud, menacing sound of the dog barking on the soundtrack while the smoke drifts up from the snuffed-out candles. For a moment we hear things from the dissident’s point of view, the brutal animal getting closer and closer until it’s virtually upon us, about to snuff us out too; and then we fade to black and order is reinstated by the anodyne, soporific music, drifting over us and dissipating like so much smoke.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#143 Post by Gregory » Sat Oct 04, 2014 5:19 pm

I also disagree that the third act adds little. When the host sits down with Rudolf and they preside over the party, and Josef is invited to join them on the host's right, things become very different than they were during the "interrogation." We see the full extent of the guests' complicity in this part of the film, including Karel becoming very easily co-opted. And of course the unnamed man's escape occurs, and both before and after that we get some clues about why it happened in the way it did and what his relationship with his wife is like.

Sloper, can you elaborate on what you meant about the dissident being subtly marked in the film's opening minutes?

Also, speaking of the beginning of the film, it's interesting to note that the "incomprehensible" conversation was written that way intentionally. On first viewing, I thought that maybe I just wasn't "getting" it, or that some of the meaning of it would become clearer by what followed later in the film. But here's what Ester Krumbachová (Nemec's wife and cowriter) had to say about the nonsensical dialogue:
The main creative element was distorted dialogue. I tried to create conversation in which the characters said nothing meaningful about themselves. The audience heard only isolated fragments of sentences, as if they had walked suddenly into the midst of a sophisticated party and had no idea what the conversation was about... It was my intention to demonstrate that people generally talk only in terms of disconnected ideas, even when it appears that they are communicating with one another.
(That's from the Hames essay in The Cinema of Central Europe) Yet I believe there are some clues about the guests scattered in with this nonsense and banality.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#144 Post by Sloper » Tue Oct 07, 2014 4:22 pm

Gregory wrote:Sloper, can you elaborate on what you meant about the dissident being subtly marked in the film's opening minutes?
He looks depressed and out of place from the start, I think, and is made distinct from the other picnickers: for instance, at the moment when one of them says that if he lived alone he would drink (alcohol) all the time, we see the dissident sipping from a rather delicate-looking teacup. He doesn't appear to eat any of the cake, and spends most of the picnic chewing a stalk of hay. There's another moment when two of the men are talking about working together, and the dissident is seen lying on the grass, chewing his hay, looking up at the sky.

He seems isolated, too, when the picnickers are walking through the woods, and again has to be prompted by his wife into participating in the inane chatter. These subtle hints at his alienation from the rest of the group escalate during the 'game' in the clearing, when he is repeatedly shown standing silently while his companions agree with each other - at one point he even refuses to respond to a direct prompt, and the bespectacled chief-collaborator has to go over and put his arm around the dissident, as a way of gently but forcibly bringing him into line. The camera then changes angle to emphasise the dissident's sadly contemptuous response to this.

Those hints in the opening minutes are quite subtle, and I didn't spot them on a first viewing. But the more I watch this film, the more it seems there is a lot of quite subtle, layered drama going on in almost every shot and every piece of dialogue. Thanks for quoting Krumbachová - that's very interesting, although yes I agree with you that this seemingly disjointed chatter contains various clues (though very indirect ones) about what is really going on beneath the surface.

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#145 Post by Sloper » Sun Oct 12, 2014 4:07 pm

There's also a lot to be said about the imagery in this film, and the way it contributes to the overall sense of unease, even when what is happening or being said seems more or less innocuous.

The opening is a good example. Ostensibly, the first shot just shows us seven people having a picnic in a sort of pastoral idyll, but the framing complicates this. Dominating the foreground is a huge clump of stinging-nettles; the left side of the frame, through which the stream runs (largely obscured by foliage), seems dark and vaguely foreboding; the picnickers themselves are just a little too far away from us, and seem hemmed in and imprisoned by the tall grass.

The shot is also held for slightly too long - and then there's a rather jarring cut to a close-up of one of the women, talking stridently about how much she enjoyed a prior celebration. No wonder the man with glasses tells her she could have been a lawyer: this comment underlines the slightly-too-insistent tone of her speech (note that she also says they 'have to finish' the cake), but also acknowledges its function within a larger system. What seems to be a comment about an enjoyable party is likened to a speech in a courtroom. It's a nice way of suggesting, from the start, the wider and more sinister implications of the banal chatter we will hear throughout the film.

The play with camera angles is also very clever at times. There are a lot of shots where characters speak into, or just past, the camera, and we often see several characters in sequence agreeing with each other or saying the same thing. The effect, I think, is both to isolate these individuals and to 'bring them into line', so to speak. They work together, but have no meaningful relationships with each other. (Compare the chairs at the banquet, all different yet all working together.)

During the banquet, the camera tends to adopt one of two positions: either it looks from the head of the table at the rest of the guests, or it looks at the three diners at the head of the table in close-up, without showing any other part of the banquet. There may well have been practical reasons for this, but in any case it strongly demarcates the authority-figures and the 'guests'. We see the Host looking at the guests; we see the guests looking at the Host; but we are not allowed to see them in relation to each other because the abusive, oppressive element is contained in this hidden relation.

There is, I think, just one exception to this rule in the banquet sequence, when the Host raises his glass to the married couple, and we see him from their point of view, standing up at the other end of the table, with all the other guests in between. Even there the head table cannot be seen clearly, and the Host's brief appearance feels like a generous indulgence on his part - he is graciously relaxing the normal boundary between himself and the guests, just a tiny little bit, and just for a moment.

When we first see the banqueting table, it has the same appearance as the picnickers did in the first shot: it seems rather cramped, crammed very tightly on that bank, trapped between the grey lake and the shadowy forest. In the shots of the banqueters, the composition becomes even tighter and more claustrophobic - and more so still when the 'boys' swarm in and sit amongst the guests. There is no room to move here, and no way to have a private (or even meaningful) conversation. During the 'changing seats' incident, only the wife of the dissident actually manages to move: many other guests get up and start to look for their assigned places, but one silent, thunderous look from the Host sends them all back to their former places. The woman's change of place is tolerated, because she's upset about the loss of her husband, she's a woman and 'We have to treat women well'. But otherwise, the guests' desire to find their own seats is akin to the dissident's departure from this loveless gathering. Mindless acceptance of your place, even if it is not really the 'right' place, or the place that belongs to you, or the place you want to be in, is what this Host requires.

Despite having led a very sheltered and privileged life, I've seen this kind of thing happen so many times. It's such a brilliant observation of the way abusive institutions work, and especially of the kind of 'ring-fencing' that goes on: the way that communication, transparency and expressions of individual will are stigmatised and punished; and the way that the members of the institution nonetheless appear to be working happily together, silently and often quite unconsciously helping the abuse to carry on. I work in places like this. I've had bosses just like the Host - the kind of people who leave you wondering which is worse, the screaming, infantile psychopath who chewed you out yesterday or the insidious, solicitous, ingratiating creep who today is telling you, ‘I think we understand each other’.

Perhaps the worst part of all is captured eloquently in Michael’s booklet, when he asks this question about the dissident: ‘If you can’t beat them and won’t join them, what’s the alternative?’ It would be nice to be able to identify with the dissident and think through a possible answer to this obviously rhetorical question. But the film invites us to see ourselves in the collaborators, including those whose resistance is (as Mr S and Gregory pointed out above) only a subtler form of collaboration. Clearly, it is possible to opt out; but in this film, doing so seems to equate to a kind of oblivion. That might almost be the ‘consummation devoutly to be wished’, if it weren’t for the off-screen horror-show, something far worse than mere oblivion, suggested by the ravenously barking dog at the very end of the film.

Ugh... Maybe this should have been our Halloween film?

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Re: Report on the Party and the Guests (Nemec, 1966)

#146 Post by swo17 » Sun Oct 12, 2014 6:57 pm

I like the allusion to unseen horrors, which are of course the most unsettling horrors of all. Now that I think about it, I suppose there are a lot of similarities between this film and Pasolini's contemporaneous Porcile, particularly in this regard. Although this film is still the table napkin to that one's steak knife.

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nietzsche
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Re: Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

#147 Post by nietzsche » Tue Jan 06, 2015 1:55 pm

I've been meaning to get around some Czech movies. Currently Daisies is on my watchlist. Any other noteworthy one?

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swo17
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Re: Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

#148 Post by swo17 » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:47 pm

There are a lot, but to limit myself to five:

Marketa Lazarová (František Vláčil)
The Cremator (Juraj Herz)
Conspirators of Pleasure (Jan Švankmajer)
Krakatit (Otakar Vávra)
Inspirace (Karel Zeman)

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Re: Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

#149 Post by knives » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:55 pm

Since they can almost all be gotten in one movement Jan Svankmajer deserves a mention. His Alice is probably the best place to start and a truly wonder made adaptation.

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Re: Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave

#150 Post by swo17 » Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:09 pm

I mentioned him! I happened to pick Conspirators because it's the most recent one that I've watched, and is therefore his best.

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