"I come from an upper-middle-class family." "My father was a bank executive, but later" "we were poor, because he died at a very young age." "Then I very acutely felt the difference between us and the rich people, because I still got invitations from the children of millionaires." "For instance, my classmate from elementary school invited me to his birthday party." "They lived in a villa, and I could have ice cream there." "It quite riled me, you know?" "Someone else was raising me at that time, and I would visit the public library in Brno." "I would always write something there." "The director of the library was Mr Mahen." "The writer Jiøí Mahen." "And he would look at what I was reading and what books I intended to borrow, and then he said: "I'll find you something better." So I didn't have to wade through all the junk and the duds." "He showed me the best in world literature." "That's how I gradually got such a literary education, because I read constantly." "So I acquired a certain discernment." "When I was still a university student" " I studied architecture in Brno" " I organized avant-garde screenings at the at the Dobz cinema on Lažanský Square." "There, I linked up with Alexandr Hackenschmied, who was organizing similar avant-garde screenings in Prague, at the Kotva cinema." "I saw such films as Nanook of the North - it was an amazing film about life in the icy north." "Then I saw Intolerance by D.W. Griffith," "I saw The Battleship Potemkin." "I remember exactly where it was." "It was at the Central cinema on the main square in Brno." "When I left the cinema with a friend, we walked around town at night and we couldn't stop talking about it." "It was fascinating." "After seeing a good film, I would sit down and write a kind of storyboard of what I remembered." "Sometimes I mixed it up or I didn't recall everything, but I always wrote about what I had seen." "And slowly I would see how it was constructed dramatically, why it was exciting, why the people in the cinema held their breath." "And why they cried or laughed." "That's how it came to me, in those lines, and that's how I learned to write screenplays." "It drew me in slowly, in a way that made me want to do it." "I felt closer to it than to architecture." "I had great success in architecture, but I didn't think with a pencil in my hand, so I said to myself that therefore I am not a true architect." "My friend František Pilát and I found out that at Jindøišská Street the architect Zdenìk Pešánek had erected a sculpture, the so-called Colourful Piano, which was composed abstractly from horizontal, vertical and circular forms." "He played it like a piano and the music was projected onto its surface as light, which is why it was called Colourful Piano." "So we said to ourselves that we had to film it." "We hired a handheld camera in Brno, then I went to Prague - that's where Pešánek was, and his uncle was chairman of the electric company." "I phoned him from a telephone booth and said:" ""My name is Otakar Vávra and I am an avant-garde filmmaker from Brno."" "And he corrected me: "You mean to say 'film pioneer'." ""So I said:"All right, I am a film pioneer, and I would like to film the sculpture by Mr Pešánek, because it interests me that music can be made visible." "There was half a minute of silence, and then he said: "Yes, that will mean one truck, an electrical engineer, who would be there to turn it on, one hundred metres of cable, and twenty lamps for outside; we will set everything up inside." "We shot it and turned it into an abstract film - the first abstract film to be made in Czechoslovakia at that time." "It lasted four minutes." "Ladislav Kolda, who organized screenings of avant-garde films at the Kotva cinema, slotted it in before Michail Kaufmann's Spring." "People watched what was going on in it, and before they could catch their breath it was over." "Brilliant." "And I had become a filmmaker." "When I was just starting out, I only wrote screenplays." "I would go to the Metro café in the morning, where I would have a black coffee for one crown, and I would write until lunch time." "I would go home to my mother's to eat, and then I would go back to the café, where for another crown I would write until dinner." "I wrote constantly." "I paid for it in my private life - in my marriage and with my son..." "and everything." "Now try to imagine what will arise in this new age and also in the future." "I wrote ten screenplays, which were shot by the best directors of that time." "I am not the author of such works as The Eleventh Commandment, which was directed by Martin Friè." "I wrote screenplays based on literary works." "I based them on novels or short stories." "The best screenplays come from short stories." "You have to dramatize the short story, that means the story has to have a dramatic structure all the way up to climax." "The worst films are made from dramatic plays, because it is drama built on words." "Film needs drama built on human behaviour, not on words." "The film Living in Prague is a documentary." "It can't really be called reportage because it was conceived." "It's a documentary because I wrote it in advance." "I got an offer to make a film about Prague." "These offers were common." "They were usually given to some cameraman, who shot fifty views of Prague, put it all together, and delivered a film about Prague." "And I did something different." "I wanted to show life in Prague, not just the buildings." "And so I imagined:" "Life." "Twenty-four hours in Prague." "From morning to night." "I walked around Prague, I looked around, and based on what I saw," "I wrote a screenplay and I shot it." "What helped me both in in life and in my work was a sense for drama." "And that was the result of that contrast, which represented dramatic tension." "For instance, when I am writing and I stop seeing that tension, feeling that tension," "I drop the pencil." "I can't write any more." "I have to take a long walk and think about how to get that tension back again." "I also apprenticed." "I first apprenticed with Julien Duvivier, and I saw how he did it, centimetre by centimetre." "So I had Duvivier studied, his work method, and also G.W. Pabst." "They had two different ways of working." "Duvivier did it centimetre by centimetre, as I said." "Through the camera, he was constantly watching the movement of the actors." "René Clair, too." "That's the way he looked at it." "While Pabst staged the scene and did the main shot." "The way he staged it was how he had studied it." "And he shot every possible detail." "Not everything was used, but everything he saw, even like someone tapping his foot, he shot." "Or some hand movement." "He shot everything." "I stood behind him, I had arranged that apprenticeship with him, and I watched it all." "His Majesty, the Emperor and King Ferdinand, has promised all nations of our constitution that there will be freedom of the press and that scrutiny of national guards will graciously be relaxed." "Citizen Rollerová, what are you doing here?" "Censorship has long been repealed." "I wanted to make Philosopher's Story because it was suitable for dramatization, and also because it spoke to the times." "The revolt of 1848 actually related to what was to come very soon." "It was immediately banned." "When Hitler came, the first film of mine that they banned was Philosopher's Story." "There were a lot of pictures from our 1848 revolution." "I knew about these pictures, of the barricades and so on, of the girl who was killed on the barricades, and these pictures inspired me." "I was made head of production by Vladimír Kabelík, who was a patriot and who was completely fired up about it." "It really excited him." "In Litomyšl, the citizens closed up shops, left their offices, closed the schools, and everyone came to shoot the film." "For twenty days, the sun shone." "And for twenty days, I filmed, with extras galore." "Mr Kabelík had someone set up tables, benches, barrels of beer, and schnitzels with bread." "I had twelve hundred people individually shouting," ""I signed up for it." "I want to be in the crowd scene."" "It was thought up in advance." "Then I lined them up and circulated among them, telling everyone what they would be doing." "Then I filmed - shot after shot, from morning until evening." "After Philosopher's Story was Virginity." "It was supposed to have been made by Josef Rovenský." "He had already shot for two days, but he snorted cocaine and had simply had enough." "They took him to the hospital, and he died two weeks later." "So I got a call from Mr Miloš Havel, the producer of the film, and he said to me: "Mr Vávra, here's the deal with Rovenský:" "He's not coming back, and I'd be happy if you would take over as director."" "It was a Thursday afternoon." "I said:" ""Fine, I'll take over." "I know the subject matter." "My only conditions are that I want to rewrite the script and recast the roles" " I'll keep Baarová and Mandlová, but I will replace all the others."" "And he closed his eyes, because it was like a nightmare for him, and he asked: "When can you start?"" "I told him Monday morning," "and he said: "So be it."" ""Who is it?" "It's me!" "Open up!"" ""Forgive me, Miss Anna, for welcoming you like this, but I had no idea that you were coming today." "At that time, there were only a few movie stars." "In first place was Lída Baarová, but that was mostly in Germany." "And then there was Adina Mandlová." "They couldn't act very well, but they were stars." "And you must understand that there aren't any real stars in this country today." "They were real stars." "When Baarová showed up at the Lucerna Bar, the entire bar turned around, because it was really something." "They knew how to dress wonderfully." "They were beautiful." "Mandlová was beautiful from the waist up, and Baarová was beautiful head to toe." ""Beautiful." "I'm really sorry about you." "Of course you know that I'm different from you." "Also I look at things quite differently." "Believe me, a person can get used to anything." "And in time you will not even know the difference."" "They were very ambitious, as such an actor truly has to be, and they worked to the point of exhaustion." "There was simply nothing that could deter them from it." "Also, they always were glad to work with me." "Zdenìk Štìpánek was a master." "He was fifteen years older than me, yet I spoke to him as to an actor, and I corrected his accents." "Instead of giving me the gate, he thought about it and he did it." "He was primarily a stage actor, and I had to lead him toward filmic speech." "I knew what I wanted, and they saw that." "So Štìpánek listened to me." "Everyone listened to me." "They never acted towards me like they were the masters and I was just a young lad." "You understand, it was such a catastrophe." "We didn't know if we would survive, let alone whether or not I would shoot the film." "I learned from the situation, and then I used it during the totalitarian communist period." "I learned to accurately gauge what the Germans would go after." "There was terrible censorship." "They studied whether the theme was anti-German, whether the plot was anti-German, if some dialogue or some word was anti-German, and so forth." "I sidestepped all of that." "Prag-Film wanted to make German films here." "And I signed, because if I did not sign it" "I would go to a concentration camp." "I added the clause that it must suit me artistically." "And none of the screenplays suited me artistically." "It was a terrible job." ""Folks, I have inherited a million!"" "Saša Rašilov was originally a cabaret performer." "He had ideas." "It was definitely his idea." "That Barvínek, who's stuffing the birds, that was something unusual from him." "The love story" " I came up with that, with Svatopluk Beneš and Vlasta Matulová." "Pull down the shades, she's always watching." "There was the janitress who once came to tell me that Heydrich's assassins had slept at her home and that things would probably get bad." "It's another Nazi." "I took that into account." "And so it happened that her husband was thrown in jail by the Gestapo, and she always brought him a package of food to the jail or clothes, and she followed us to Hostivaø, where we filmed" "I'll Be Right Back." "Quickly, hurry, hurry!" "I directed, and she sat behind the scenes with her head in her hands." "Then I invited her to come onto the set, and she played comic relief." "Old man, come have a look what's going on." "And when there was a cut and the take was finished, she would sit back down like that again." "First they said:" "It has nothing to do with you, it applies to your husband." "Havel had requested to let her finish filming, so they were still waiting for her, someone was tailing her." "And when she finished filming, she was taken back to jail, and they left her there." "Then they executed her." "Attention!" "Attention!" "The Golden Horn department store brings you spring - spring fabrics, spring clothing, spring hats, spring shoes, an entire spring assortment." "Everything you need for spring, you'll find in the Golden Horn department store." "Olga Horáková wrote two pages." "The rest, I wrote." "That was all she wrote." "It was a storyline that had been lying around at Elekta Film or somewhere, and I took a look at it and said:" ""I'll make the department store."" "Hey look, the light flashed for you." "It was interesting for me how when you have four plot lines you still have to maintain the dramatic structure." "This means four exposures - everything times four." "But there must be only one climax." "Milena, come over tonight, I have some goodies." "Fanynka, you come, too." "I can't, I already..." "Everything was crammed into the studio." "It was supposed to be an impression of life." "When Adina Mandlová got the script, she dashed it to the floor and telephoned Mr Havel, the producer, saying she would not play the role - that I had misrepresented it, that it would seriously damage her career, and so on." "And Mr Havel told her:" ""Adina, the role is exactly you, only idealized."" "The pace was such that we had to do, on average, thirty shots a day, and of these thirty shots, most of the time went to the cameraman because he had to light it." "Of course, there were cameramen like Jan Roth, Jan Stallich," "Václav Vích and Otto Heller who would go through the sets ahead of time and know in advance how the lighting should be." "So the cameraman had five minutes to light the shot." "Then I had another five minutes to stage it." "That's why - and I was criticized for it, but luckily I managed to hold my ground - I would choose the best actors." "Beforehand, I sat down with them and went over their roles." "They gave me their opinions about how they viewed the roles, and I stated my opinion, and then everything moved along quickly, because obviously they already knew the script." "On 11 August 1945 at Prague Castle, a major national act was signed, a presidential decree on provisions in the field of filmmaking." "With this decree, which was presented to the president by Minster Kopecký and film section head Vítìzslav Nezval, a plan to nationalize the film industry has been fulfilled, and unprecedented opportunities have opened up for" "Czechoslovak film production." "When I met with Vladislav Vanèura each week at Mánes, we were already talking about the fact that film producers are simply poor." "They were poor millionaires" "When they had a million, sure they were millionaires, but a million isn't enough for a film." "A film with sound is expensive." "And the only starting point for making films that would amount to something, but that wouldn't make you go broke with just a couple of sets, would be if the state lent money towards it." "The state lent money for films at one time, but only a little." "So we said that it might be best to nationalize the film industry, assuming that everything would be decided by a commission of writers, film directors - essentially cultural people." "Then film was, in fact, nationalized, but decisions were made by bureaucrats, who had totally different opinions, who destroyed it." "With this decree by the president of the republic, all the film studios in" "Czechoslovakia will be nationalized and will exclusively serve the public interest." "All businesses will be nationalized, from manufacturers of celluloid to cameras to film projectors in the cinemas." "I wasted two years at Barrandov writing up rights and obligations." "I wanted to put some order to it:" "What obligations apply to the head of production, the production assistant, the assistant director, the second director, and so forth." "I devoted two years to it." "But it was all for nothing." "I made lots of enemies there, because at that time there were a hundred screenwriters employed there and drawing a monthly salary." "One hundred!" "All of them were members of the Communist Party, and I left them alone to write for two years, and they didn't write anything." "So I fired these hundred screenwriters." "That was my biggest triumph." "Saturday 21 February 1948 became a memorable day in the history of our people's democratic republic." "Working people from all Prague factories came to assemble into a large camp of people who voted for the Communist" "Party of Czechoslovakia."" "I realized it the most when I listened to those show trials with Slánský and the others." "That was 1950." "I remember how all of a sudden those people disappeared, those politicians, and in 1952 the show trials suddenly began." "I confess that I was in contact with representatives of the Anglo-American imperialists and their intelligence services, which are full of evil..." "When I listened to the radio, I realized it." "I said it to myself right away - because I can hear things - that Slánský was not speaking his own words, and that his speech, where he confessed that he was at" "the centre of an anti-socialist and anti-Stalin conspiracy, as he called it, had been rehearsed for two years." "When I heard it, I knew that he was not uttering his own words but a rehearsed speech." "Whoever takes away bread from the poor, confess that it is dastardly." "Those who in this way have transgressed the law of God, who wrongfully govern and hold property..." "Only those who actually work can rightfully ask for bread here." "Give it to us today."" "All my films contain or try to create a framework of the development of the character of the Czech people." "The Hussites were certainly part of it, when we got into such a big revolt." "I saw it not only as religious revolt but also as social revolt." "It is futile, Troclav." "It is hard to be the king of Bohemia these days." "No matter what I do, everything gets turned upside down." "That's because you are acting against your people, my king." "What, then?" "Do I have to take the chalice in my hand and go to the forefront of those rioters?" "No, but you are giving up your power into the hands of the Church and the noblemen against the people." "That's why I established a group of stuntmen." "We used them, for example, where the Hussite foot soldiers encounter the Iron Knights." "This is when I started staging the first crowd scenes in our country that were based on D.W. Griffith's approach." "The first two rows, the ones that clash, had to rehearse every move precisely, otherwise they would get killed." "I came up with fifteen or twenty tasks to give to those Olympians." "These were Olympic athletes who were already past their prime and were no longer competing." "Everybody got a job, and they rehearsed it for three months." "These weren't easy tasks." "They were tasks such as taking a flail through the helmet to the head and enduring the blow in such a way so as to not break your neck, but still to fall, and then to have your horse flip over you." "It was quite a task." "They were not allowed to injure the horses, and they couldn't injure themselves." "There were twenty such tasks, and they rehearsed them for three months." "Then they came to me, and I filmed them." "Now go get them!" "Beat them, kill them, don't leave anyone out!" "I just wanted to teach at the school, and the way I devised to do this was by founding the Department of Directing." "But I was still filming all the time." "I wrote the entire curriculum, and I wrote the lectures for fifth-year students." "It took me a year, and the next year I began." "I looked at IDHEC, the French film school, which has the requirement that directors must complete philosophy studies at the Sorbonne - two years at that university - and then two more years at IDHEC as a supplemental specialized school." "I read that the curriculum is so complicated that in this country absolutely no one would be able to graduate from it - they wouldn't even get accepted there." "But but I took the view that, first, the director has to be educated in all classical forms of art, meaning literature, theatre, drama, and music." "And then that theory has to be connected with practice, and that there has to be a balance." "An equal amount of theory and practice." "If there was more practical experience, then it would be a trade school and not a university." "Therefore, I still am learning theory today." "I'm still studying the theory and aesthetics of filmmaking so that it will balance the practical experience." "But I taught students practice right from the beginning, from small tasks to increasingly complex ones, and eventually a twenty-minute film." "I gave them complete freedom, and I was looking to prod them to work in the most creative way possible." "So that they would have it in themselves." "So that they could get it from themselves even more than they realized." "How many suns, how many little suns?" "One?" "No." "Ten?" "No." "A thousand?" "No." "A million million, as with stars." "Working with František Hrubín was my greatest, happiest period, I would say." "My most productive period." "That was a time when he there was opposition to totalitarianism, you see, and from that resistance, the best stuff was born." "Come on out, another one will be born!" "The bridge wasn't here then." "Nor the road." "But these stones were here." "They will be here forever." "I came for them." "For them, I must return." "The Golden Apple:" "Yes, of course, that was also by Hrubín." "Beautifully written." "I merely filmed it, really, just as he intended." "Just as he dreamed of." "We were in tune." "It requires both writer and director to be are in tune." "Marta, Marta, Marta!" "Come here." "Please." "Ludvík, come here." "Come to me." "Please..." "Come here." "What would you do without me?" "Why won't you stay here?" "Why must you always run this way?"" "I experienced this myself, during the occupation." "That fear of what's behind the door, of those footsteps, and so on." "They really did fire, from our building, from the roof." "I lived in a building across from Olšany." "I experienced it." "I'll help you, lady." "Look what has happened to me." "I can't take it like this." "I will have to wash everything again." "Jan, leave it alone, you'll just make it dirtier." "Why are you ruining everything?" "I do everything for you." "How much longer can you take this?" "The Golden Apple won four international awards." "It had the most success outside our country." "It was weird, and it won because it was weird." "No one here went to see it." "So Hrubín and I said to ourselves that" "Romance for Flugelhorn, which was already written - it's a poem that's completely weird - would be merged into one story." "And it was a huge success." "The biggest success ever." "Let's go to America!" "Let's go to Minjapore!" "We are waiting for you." "You're a little late today." "Do you want to ride?" "I guess so." "I rate it very highly, because there is terrific stuff there." "The grandfather, who's living in limbo, who speaks with the dead." "It was Andrej Barla who, as a young cameraman, helped me." "He did amazing things, things that no professional cameraman wanted to do." "The way he blends slowly with the countryside, that buzzing of dragonflies." "He filmed everything." "Nobody else would consider doing it." "No cameraman would consider doing that for me." "For instance, I had some of the interiors brought from the architect into the studios, literally carried in, so that they could be illuminated." "Plastic was stretched over it and it was illuminated with indirect lighting, and then there was direct lighting inside." "It was precisely controlled, because in the real world it wouldn't have worked." "There, the sunlight would have kept changing." "I do not want it for free, Mr Berk." "I have something on the book." "But I don't have it with me." "I have it at home." "I'll wait for you." "So stand up." "I'll help you with your coat." "That's kind of you." "I've never remained in anyone's debt." "I was authoritarian." "Absolutely." "Because that's how it is." "When I wrote a screenplay, that's how I envisioned it." "And directing depends on that - the reality that it defends, those material things, the actors, the environment, and so on." "One fights to get to that vision, to the image one had when writing the screenplay." "And it lies in the directing." "I had to realize my ideas." "I had to force it." "And that's why I had to be authoritarian." "Tereza," "Terka," "Tereza." "Witches' Hammer - you know that it was a hit." "I made it because of the Slánský show trials." "I experienced it, I saw how he became a puppet, how Slánský was manipulated, how every sentence he spoke had been scripted for him and that he rehearsed it for two years." "That inspired me, so that when I filmed the novel by Václav Kaplický, I put the whole atmosphere into it." "How it is possible to manipulate a man to the point where he prays for his own death." "Davidka, confess, in detail, the things that both women denounced you for." "So that we do not have to use harsh interrogation." "Because you have a silent soul, we have to fill it with commands from above." "Master Háj, carry out the first stretch." "I confess to everything those two women said about me." "She was kind of a jack of all trades." "Almost a renaissance woman." "A jack of all trades." "I initially employed her for jewellery." "She made jewellery - such finely detailed things." "And it soon became apparent that she could really talk" " a bit too much for my taste" " and knew how to think up ideas, even episodes in plots." "She thought up a number of details for the scene where the servant massages Boblig's toes." "That kind of stuff." "And that enriched the film tremendously." "You treat Zuzana very gently." "And yet it was precisely her testimony that was guaranteed to stir up the bishop" "." "As you know, she is not like those filthy country crones." "Ugh." "From her, you could paint a Madonna." "The left one first - how many times do I have to tell you that?" "You know that I have a bad heart." "I'm sorry, sir, pardon me." "There is nothing in evil." "It's a shame that I am already old." "Don't apply so much pressure." "Can you imagine her naked?" "I filmed it in 1969." "It was a hit." "By 1970, the screws were already being tightened." "I had somehow managed to catch the period when it was possible to film." "But it could not be screened in the centre of Prague." "So people rode buses out to the suburbs and villages around Prague." "It had its first million viewers right away, in the very first year." "I had to confess." "I was tortured for nine days in a row." "That's a lie." "It was regular interrogation with thumbscrews and the Spanish boot." "Hmm." "Of course that is normal." "People, people flee." "Or what is happening to us will happen to you." "Run away!" "I go to my death innocent." "My children will curse us." "There is no point in comparing oneself to the Americans." "First of all, I don't like American movies at all." "It is pure craft, perfectly executed in all possible respects." "They have a measure of suggestion there, and I don't know what all." "But it's worthless." "For what they do, they do it well." "But to make something like Bergman's films, like Fellini's films, like" "Renoir's, Carné's, and so on - they don't have what it takes." "I remember Hugo Hass, who was a great man, we worked together wonderfully." "When he returned briefly from America, he spoke only about money." "Whatever makes a profit it good." "Suddenly, that's what he was talking about." "So I couldn't talk with him any more." "They are all foolish in that way." "Whatever brings in money is good." "It wasn't like that here." "It has never been like that in Europe." "Ever." "But there have been a lot of beautiful films." "For example, everything by Bergman, everything by Fellini." "They are simply brilliant." "A they knew it, those two bastards." "I saw them together in one film." "They shot them together for a documentary, saying:" ""We're the best." And they were!" "But Fellini is dead already, right?" "He was simply a genius." "You can not get into any framework when a man of genius comes along." "I did sixty films, one better than the next, but all of them have the same theme:" "Human isolation." "That is the defiance." "Human isolation." "And it was also the same with Evald Schorm and the others." "Chytilová and her Daisies - that rails against human isolation like mad." "It's amazing!" "Closely Watched Trains." "These were wonderful!" "What for you was most important in life?" "Well, you have to have within yourself some kind of moral code." "A moral code that you must instinctively feel and behave accordingly." "And you never had any doubts, for instance that the situation was beyond your control?" "That it was more complicated than you could deal with?" "Well, I had to sidestep things." "You know, Czechs are peculiar." "The Czechs basically wouldn't be here, after the year 500, if they didn't know how to bend." "They would have been Germanized ages ago." "Starting in the 1970s, Otakar Vávra tended towards the genre of historical dramas" "(Days of Betrayal, 1973;" "Red Army, Attack!" "1974;" "The Liberation of Prague, 1976, and others)." "Over the course of his life, he has made nearly 50 feature films, and, until 2008, he has taught several generations of filmmakers at FAMU, the" "Film Academy in Prague."