Movies: Zdeněk Štěpánek

The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological...

While in Bohemia, an American industrialist named Craigs goes missing. In Prague, the police have arrested a man without identification, who bears a striking resemblance to Craigs. The doctor, the secretary, and the hotel staff all claim that he is t...

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A young and ambitious engineer named Švajcar arrives at the family of a businessman as the fiancé of the factory owner's daughter. He meets his father-in-law's brother Cyril, who pretends to be invisible. The family plays this game with him so that t...

It is 5 May 1945 and the uprising against the hated German occupiers has broken out in Prague. The Czech guards open the gate of the Pankrác prison to allow the prisoners to escape en masse. Many of them are shot dead by the German guards but young R...

The Czech revival movement is divided at the end of the first half of the 19th century. While the older generation, such as František Palacký, urges restraint, students lean towards radical positions. A report on the revolutionary events in Paris pro...

When Vilem appears in the road with an unconscious young woman, it disturbs the peaceful life of three generations of the Balvínova family....

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A host of actors in the classic national fairy tale by A. Jirásek. Jirásek's "Lucerna" is the best-known and most performed of his plays. It was also used by television producers. In the second half of the 1960s, a successful transcription was create...

There are fairy tales that appear on TV screens every Christmas and there are fairy tales that have somewhat fallen into oblivion and few people remember them anymore. This is one of the lesser known ones. Its plot certainly needs no further introduc...

The work of actors on a stage makes a dreamlike parallelism between artistic immagination and the concreteness of everyday life. Tribute to Prague's Divadlo na zàbradlì, theater that has been a point of reference for Theater of the Absurd in Czechosl...

One of the few European films of the 30s to criticize the Nazis, even if they couldn't be directly named due to censorship: Gangsters with gray hats stir up trouble in what is obviously the Sudetenland....

A biographical film about the famous Czech painter Mikoláš Aleš, portrayed as part of the vanguard of the working class and a spokesman for the oppressed, who asserts himself despite the opposing bourgeoisie and reactionaries of all kinds. The film f...

Even the pre-Blohemian times were not idyllic. Even a bachelor, invited by the consuls to Rakovník to elevate the local education system, finds out. But the stingy and proud townspeople soon grow to dislike him, and even love does not develop accordi...

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The elder son of the farmer Marunáč dies of a work accident. His wife and younger brother fall in love and try to break free from their despotic father....

Lola Holm, a medical student, is studying for her final exams. She rejects the courtship of psychiatrist Associate Professor Linn. Bank cashier Goll lives extravagantly and his salary is not enough for his excesses. He is in need and has mental probl...

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A biographical film about a Czech doctor, Dr. Jánský. The athletically inclined medic Jánský successfully completes his studies. He wants to become a surgeon, but finds himself in Professor Kuffner's psychiatric clinic, where, together with his colle...