The End of August at the Hotel Ozone (1967)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Load of rubbish!!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This 1966 Czech film is a gritty post apocalyptic cautionary tale. A senior lady guides a troupe of young women through a desolate and presumably radioactive future wasteland- a quest to find other people.The women are very easy on the eye, in a natural, 'cowgirl' or farmers daughter kind of way. They also harbor a darkness that unfolds as the film progresses. The black and white cinematography perfectly conveys the horror and sensibility of a land ravaged years ago by nuclear war.This film is direct, without symbolism. The women eventually meet up with an old man who......The film offers clues about humanities future emotional tone, our end maybe, in a world bereft of the humanizing elements of stability and civilization.This is a must see film for any serious aficionado of science fiction, or any other genre, for that matter.Animal lovers beware: scenes of actual animal cruelty appear in this film. Remember, this was made in 1966 in a non western nation, so standards were different.

A group of woman following an, implied, nuclear holocaust go on a search for men who enable them to continue the human race.The group's leader is the only one to be born pre-war and the only with an idea of civilised values, and also seemingly the only one with common sense. e.g. at one point the other women break open a drum of flammable fluid using an axe.(Apparently exposure to high levels of radiation in the womb can lead to mental retardation. Just a thought.) The women in group are not Hollywood glamour types, but they are all healthy and attractive. Which is perhaps a little odd given that their diet seems to consist of fifty year old tinned food and whatever else they can scavenge. Though this is perhaps just as well because, apart from the occasional quirk, only physical appearance differentiated the group as individual characters.With the exception of the older woman leading them, the group seems to have descended to the level of barbarians. No thought beyond self-gratification, and no this not a reference to Sapphic shenanigans, the main enjoyment for the woman seems to be cruelty to animals, which there is quiet a bit of in the film, coupled with an attitude of want it, take it. (Note: If you are an old gentleman and a bunch of wild and armed amazons want your prized gramophone, probably best to just hand it over.) And no thought of the long-term future; when deprived of leadership, aimless wandering seems to be their only goal.Perhaps this is the point of the film; when deprived the benefits of education - though at least some of the women are literate - and a society to impart values, barbarism will become the norm.Certainly the point of the film wasn't to entertain people. Events such as searching an apparently deserted town or crossing a wild river, seem flat and devoid of drama. Probably because I found it difficult to really care about any of the characters.The film is about a hour-and-twenty minutes long; it feels longer.

I remember seeing a small handbill in a college basement around 1980. One of the films to be screened was THE END OF AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE. The title intrigued, but, being the typical "too busy College Student" I did not attend the showing. So, for about a quarter century the title just lingered in my memory. Unreachable. I've NEVER heard of it screening anywhere, playing on TV or available on video or DVD (even in bootleg form). The title itself was so tantalizing, promising perhaps something apocalyptic (END OF "THE WORLD" not "AUGUST" perhaps?) or mysterious (a Hotel in the Ozone Layer?). And, of course, its sheer scarcity could only enhance the mystery, the suspense. Then, there it was in the American Cinemateque schedule. Oh, NO, I wasn't going to miss it this time! I had been up for work since 4 AM (!) and had worked a full 12 hour day. But, I was NOT to be denied! While the film does not quite live up to its evocative title (there was no reasonable way it could), it's still a find Eastern European contribution to the Post-Nuke, End-Of-The-World and Lord of the Flies sub-genre(s). After an oblique reference to the Nuclear calamity that man inflicted upon itself some 15 years earlier, the film proper begins slowly as we come to see a band of young, presumably fertile women, led by a wise old sage. I emphasize the word slowly, because the pace is off-putting at first. Events do happen and we get a picture of the women's pathetic and lonely existence. I particularly admired the fact that they are not scrubbed clean, shaved, manicured and primped and prettified as they doubtless would have been in an American production - Remember all those "lost women" films where the tribal women look like beauty contestants (indeed a couple of the actresses are very attractive, just unkempt)?! But, the glacial pacing is almost enough to drive most viewer's patience beyond the brink. Once the group stumbles upon an old man and his "Hotel Ozone", the film comes into its own. Where the viewer is naturally inclined to sympathize with the women (if they had been men would we be so accepting?) despite some cruel, savage and disturbing activities (particularly towards animals), slowly we come to see a fuller and less positive view towards them. This reversal is doubtless intentional and packs a strong visceral punch. The final images of this band of lost ladies wandering a barren landscape is both heart-breaking and depressingly believable. It's to the film's credit that we are not given a false or tidy ending: Befitting a title as gloriously ambiguous as THE END OF AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE.

I saw this last night at the American Cinematheque as part of their tribute to screenwriter Pavel Juracek, and I have to say WOW. I was thoroughly impressed, completely engrossed from the first frame. The Cinematheque's schedule described this as "MAD MAX directed by Andrei Tarkovsky", which isn't far from the mark. The actress who played the Old Lady, the leader of the amazons, has one of the most beautifully expressive faces I have ever seen onscreen, and this quality was only emphasized by the razor sharp black-&-white cinematography that brought out every tiny detail of emotional nuance. I found myself imagining that the Old Lady had been the teacher at an all-girl elementary school, and that after the Apocalypse she had merely extended her role of den mother into chief of the amazons' little tribe. The actresses who play her young charges, nearly all apparently amateurs (only a few have any other film credits), are all attractive to a greater or lesser degree, but not in a slick, Hollywood way. They're like healthy, athletic peasant girls and farmer's daughters. Many appear to be expert equestrians - how to describe the thrill of seeing one of them mount a galloping horse sans saddle or stirrups? Of particular note is the young woman who played Barboura, the Old Lady's heir apparent, a statuesque red(?)head, a Balkan Sophia Loren. What a shame that she and nearly all of the other amazons made only this film and no others. They're all completely believable in their roles as young women transformed by the rigors and loneliness of their post-apocalyptic environment into hardened, even cruel near-barbarians (all without any male influence, mind you). A word of caution for animal lovers: there all several scenes in which real animals - a snake, a cow - are actually killed onscreen, and very graphically. By today's standards this may seem callous, even evil, but in the context of the film I can understand how the filmmakers might have felt justified in doing so as these killings make the point of who these women are and what they've become (unlike, say, some of the egregious mondo thrills of onscreen animal slaughter in nearly every Italian cannibal film ever made). As for the dog mentioned by a previous reviewer, I'm uncertain whether or not it was killed. It may have been merely snared by one leg and pulled down to simulate its being shot, and it does appear to still be breathing after one of the amazons knocks its skull in just below the frameline; but it's hard for me to imagine an animal in such obvious distress being well-trained enough to suddenly go quiet after a 'pretend' blow to the head with a rifle butt. Besides, it's obviously a malnourished mutt and earlier in the film one of the actresses does connect with its head when she hurls a small log at it. Well, you can be the judge if you ever have a chance to see the film - which, if it does come up, I highly recommend you take.