Closely Watched Trains (1967)

Really Surprised!

How sad is this?

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A very slight film with a certain amount of charm but too weighed down with the gawky and seeming inept young hero. The girls are all fine and surprisingly erotic but apart from one guy at the station who seems to get all the action, everyone else seems too old, too crazy or just too awkward. It looks good, in that 60s New Wave sort of way. Because of the similarity of such Czech films of the period I have seen it pondered as to whether the films were like this because the people of that country have a very strange relationship with sexual activity or whether it was simply the style generated by the one film school that gave rise to this particular group of directors. More interesting than the film, I'm afraid. But there are fine moments - the horse ridden across the tracks and out of the steam, its lady rider adjusting her seating, the delightful young girl who lays down to be rubber stamped up to her bottom but it isn't quite enough to make this as good as the Milos Foreman films just before and just after.

After stumbling upon the stunning film Romance for Bugle,I decided to take a look at other Czech titles that the up-loader had put on,and I spotted the first ever Czech Oscar winner,which led to me getting ready to catch the train.The plot-WWII-Nazi Occupied Czechoslovakia:Following in his family footsteps, Milos Hrma gets set to be a guard at a train station,in the hope of having to avoid any real work,esp on the front line.With the idyll life at the train station only being interrupted by the odd appearance of Nazi collaborator Zednicek,Hrma talks to fellow staff member Hubička about still being a virgin. Encouraged to chat to a pretty young conductor called Máša,Hrma ends up having a night with Máša,that goes off the tracks prematurely.As Hrma starts to question his manhood, Hubička starts making plans to stop the Nazis in their tracks.View on the film:Placing the train station in the middle of nowhere,co-writer/(along with Bohumil Hrabal) director Jirí Menzel & cinematographer Jaromír Sofr track the horrors of war in the countryside with a ride to Miloš Hrma's rites of passage.Keeping both feet on the ground,Menzel avoids flashy tricks for an elegant,rustic atmosphere,as Menzel's lingering shots pick up on the locals attempting to keep their livelihood in tack,whilst making explosive plans against the occupying Nazis. Following Hrma on his agonising rites of passage,Menzel takes a restrained approach with jazzy fade ins/fade outs fading in on Hrma's sexual awakening.Filmed as the country was in the early stages of an economy recovery, Menzel & Hrabal's adaptation of Hrabal's own book lays superbly allegorical Czech New Wave tracks down against the Soviet Union,by making Hrma and all the other locals undermine all of the rules that the occupying rulers are enforcing on them.Making sure to not go off track with the political notes,the writers weave the allegorical edges with a delightfully ill-at-ease coming of age Drama,that shakes all of Menzel loose hormones out onto the station.Secretly going against the barking orders from the Nazis, Josef Somr gives a great performance as Hubicka,whose playfulness Somr reveals to be a shell for a cunning mind.Topping the charts with Czech Pop at the time, Václav Neckár gives an excellent performance as Hrma,thanks to Neckár coating Hrma in a shaky bag of awkward nerves,as Hrma closely watches the trains.

Hello In the discussion of sex and the young man's preoccupation with his personal life, his attempted suicide and the image of him being saved is often overlooked. The formation of his body as he is carried away from his death is in the shape of Michaelangelo's Pieta. In my mind, at least, this image ties his willingness to ultimately sacrifice his self-absorption for the greater good to that of the Christ.Even his quest for sexual satisfaction is fulfilled by putting his own needs on hold to contribute to the Resistance. A collaborating agent ensures that his needs are fulfilled, perhaps knowing better than he the risk that he will be taking.I suppose that image stuck with me having been raised Christian and also one who embraced art through the ages, but it touched me because it reminded me that we who live ordinary, simple, and seemingly unfulfilled lives may be called upon to do more...and in answering the call, do great and necessary things.

Note to American viewers: "Closely Watched Trains" (1966) is one of them "fereign films". It has subtitles and is in black and white (actually a strength as it is superb film stock). The setting is German-occupied Czechoslovakia during WWII. The setting and the use of the Czech resistance movement (to the German occupation) as a plot element may confuse Americans; many of who believe that Czechoslovakia was an Axis country or have never given the subject any thought. But just prior to the start of the war, Britain and France sold out Czechoslovakia. They backed out of their treaties and allowed Hitler to break up the country; establishing the German Protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia and annexing the Sudentenland (which had a significant German population). Also useful in understanding the film was a revisionist trend by European countries in the 1960's to rehabilitate their images; suppressing any record of cooperation/assistance to Germany while proclaiming their resistance to the Nazi agenda. The film is a product of this trend which is why the resistance elements seem rather tenuously inserted into the story.The film revolves around young Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar) who follows his father's example and goes to work for the railroad; becoming an apprentice dispatcher at a rural station. The impressionable Milos becomes fascinated with Hubicka, a veteran train dispatcher who devotes most of his energy to various on-the-job seductions. The second act involves Hubicka's on-going conflict with their superior, the pigeon-raising and feather covered stationmaster. But "Watched Trains" is really Milos' coming of age story, complete with the requisite line: "is the first time you have been with a woman?" Milos' first time proves a disaster and leads to an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Meanwhile, it turns out that Hubicka has more on his mind than girls. He is a member of the Czech resistance and is planning to destroy a German munitions train when it passes near the station. Unfortunately for Milos, Hubicka's recreational activities are reported to the authorities and he must attend an investigatory hearing inside the station, scheduled for the same time that the ammunition train is expected. For Milos, who has finally demonstrated his manhood in bed, the question is whether he can now demonstrate it my climbing the signal tower and dropping an explosive device onto the train as it passes beneath. The film goes out with a bang and one is left to decide on the relative merits of the two methods young men have of proving their manhood. I forgot to mention that the film is actually a comedy. And for that matter the resistance movement stuff is pretty much an irrelevant side story to the coming of age theme. And the female characters are all a little too good.As tends to happen with good little movies, the plot has very little to do with what the movie is about, and nothing to do with the effect it had on me. And as tends to happen with them "fereign" films there are allegorical elements. The characters are seen from Milos' innocent point of view, a nontraditional hero who is neither heroic nor particularly intelligent. But he does fall in love and that reshapes his destiny.All in all a very entertaining production. Especially good is Jitka Zelenohorská as a female telegraph operator, who becomes the object of Hubicka's playful attentions.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.