Jan Maška

At the end of the 1950s, some filmmakers attempted to escape the ideological dictates by turning to psychological drama. We watch as an aging, uptight, strict woman who has come to inspect a regional publishing house literally blossoms and snows. A few days of comfort and happiness, however, are capped by a bitter epiphany: the man who had so charmed her has indeed embezzled the money entrusted to him.

The film responds to the housing shortage that young couples in particular have had to deal with. This problem is also addressed by the couple Slávka and Olda. The girl gets a sublet on Hradčanské náměstí, in the large flat of the widowed pensioner Benda. Benda lived almost his whole life there, and is bound to the apartment by a thousand memories and feelings. The strange and sickly old man has to overcome his crankiness and distrust of people before he fully accepts his lodger and her husband "as his own"...

The family is connected with Prague's "Kolbenka", the ČKD locomotive factory. Grandfather Antonín, already retired, son Rudolf, a master in the locomotive assembly section and grandson Antonín, a promising football player. The film also tells the story of Rudolf's daughter Vera - each generation has its own ideas about life and cannot identify with the others. The film is linked by retrospective sequences from the lives of Antonín the Elder and Rudolf, especially from the war years. It is a realistic take on working-class life, unencumbered by ideology (despite the opening dedication), featuring well-known and time-tested actors in mainly male roles.

During the Second World War, an old fortress is transformed into a detention camp for arrested allied generals who the Germans provide with every possible comfort. In the nearby garrison camp, however, hundreds of captured private soldiers try to survive hunger and cold.

It is almost twenty years after the war. Wounds of the past that have never fully healed, but are still carried by many in their hearts. Marie Vláčilová, a survivor of one of the prison camps in Germany, also carries the traumas of the time with her. Now, so many years later, a mass grave of prisoners from that camp has been found and investigators visit Marie to get any information they can from her about the camp. With her important information, she is then to become a crown witness for the prosecution in Germany and now prepares to travel. But this brings back more and more unpleasant memories - especially of her daughter Paula, who has been through German re-education and hardly knew her mother after the reunion...

Working on the hops fields gathering hops for beer, Filip catches a glimpse of fellow worker/comrade Hanka and falls for her. Trying to keep their love secret from the field owners,fellow worker Honza becomes jealous of Filip having a romance with Hanka, which leads to Honza deciding that he will feed the hop field owners Hanka and Filip's secret romantic hops.

Three short story omnibus. The main hero and connecting link is Lieutenant Boruvka, created by Lubomír Lipsky. He deals with the murder case between climbers, the death of the dancer in the music theater and the strange disappearance of the mathematics professor.

Tram driver Marie has far too much to do after her shift is over. But she likes to do it all since she loves her husband Václav sincerely. One day she spots him on the Lesser Town Square in Prague, kissing an attractive blonde good-bye. It seems to Marie that her small comfortable world has collapsed and she walks out of the tram in tears. But her sadness does not last long. She wipes off the tears and begins to act. She withdraws all the money from their savings books and buys off all the latest models from the Fashion Works. The visit to the beauty salon then completes her transformation into a lady.

Story about the people around the circus and the unfortunate love of a young man an acrobat. Before the dispute escalates so much that, according to the old clown, Vincek ends up with a noose on his back and Lotyš in a bass, fate intervenes and the young acrobat is called up to the war, where he serves with the dragoons. After serving his time and being released into civilian life, he sets out to find the National with his beloved Nina. However, she has not been with the circus for almost a whole year. Her parents took her away and Vincek, to the chagrin of his friends and the principal, decides to go looking for her. After a long journey, he finds his beloved in the Russian Kuznecki circus, but she has changed a lot during the years of separation. A simple girl in love has turned into a calculating, ambitious woman who desires money above all. But Vincek doesn't have you.

Lemuel Gulliver has had a car accident and continues his journey across the unknown countryside on foot. On the road he finds a dead rabbit dressed like a man and takes a watch from its waistcoat breast pocket. The half-ruined house that he enters reminds Lemuel of his childhood and brings up a painful memory of a dearly loved girl Markéta who was drowned years ago. Gulliver finds himself in Balnibarbi, a country where he doesn't understand the laws and habits and so continually offends against public decency. It is a day when people are ordered to keep their mouths shut and they force their visitor to follow suit. He faces harsh interrogation and finds it difficult to explain that he is not the rabbit Oscar whose watch has been found in his possession.

This futuristic science fiction comedy features an atomic bomb blast that causes women to grow beards and lose the ability to have children. A summit meeting is held at the United Nations, with the proposed solution of building a time machine. The decision is made to travel back in time and murder Einstein, with the hopeful result being that without the noted mathematician's research there will be no atomic bombs.

Detective Lieutenant Boruvka (Lubomír Lipský) is called to the State Scientific Library to investigate the loss of a precious manuscript, the Infernal Psalter of the Occult Sciences by Master Peregrinus from the eleventh century, written in a secret script which has only recently been deciphered by senior lecturer Zajíc (Josef Chvalina). Chaos is reigning in the labyrinth of passages and halls of the former monastery where the library is housed. In order to save space the director of the library has introduced a peculiar system. The books are arranged in the bookcases according to height and six girls dressed in black, the library assistants, are quite happy to cut volumes down to size in case of need. Boruvka refuses the case, since he is specialist in murders. He has to return to the investigation, however, when senior lecturer Zajíc disappears.

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

The employees of the furniture company MARS welcome a rare visitor with hired music. Their boast that they would put together an orchestra is taken seriously, so they receive a small gift - musical instruments for thirty musicians.

After inheriting a villa from his uncle, Emil Tuma meets its strange inhabitants, getting him in trouble.

The Prague Grand Orchestra travels by train to a music festival in Yugoslavia. Only the singer Sona Klánová missed the departure. In the meantime, she managed to buy a ticket to Belgrade at the air-terminal from Mrs Navrátilová, who couldn't make the trip. In the meantime, the orchestra conductor is beside himself with despair. He phoned to Prague from the border, and when he realized that Sona had left her house in a taxi, he thought that she would catch up with them by the road. The orchestra delayed the train's departure with an improvised concert for the custom officers and the passengers.

The young worker Helena Pokorná and her widowed father are employed in the same factory. The father is spending his holidays at home in Prague and is looking forward to work. Helena is to go to the seaside for a rewarding holiday. On a hot July day, the girl rides to work in a crowded tram. On the embankment, the crowd pushes her out and Helena fails to get into several other cars. Tempted by the river, the girl calls in sick to work. She takes a steamer to Modřany. There she meets a young man who wants to sleep by the river after his night shift. Helena is drawn into the strange pastimes by a group of notorious loafers and water girls.

The sad hero of the story, Petr, an ordinary lawyer in a construction company, is crowded into a small apartment in Žižkov with his wife and grandparents, desperately struggling with the lack of money. One day he offers an old man a seat on a crowded trolley bus and is generously rewarded for his good deed, for the unknown old man is a fabulous grandfather. He gives Peter a magic bell and the opportunity to make three wishes, but the first two slip through his fingers. For the third, the astonished man must take time to think...

American agents hijack a plane on the Ostrava-Prague route to launch a campaign against the People's Democratic Czechoslovakia. The plane lands in West Germany, but the Americans have an unexpected problem convincing the hijackers to stay in the West. Based on a true story.

A spy film about how saboteurs obtain important data about the activities of a key company, while also trying to thwart the plan and undermine work morale. But vigilant security agencies intervene in time and stop their heinous raids.

From a scientific enterprise, a large sum of money has been stolen, in addition, research protocols have been photographed...

In the middle of the eighteenth century, at the time of the Prusso-Austrian War, a cuirassier, a hussar and an infantryman meet by chance and hide together in a secluded place. The war has left different marks on each of them, but they all long for normal human happiness. Although they initially have different attitudes towards military service, they are changed by their stay in seclusion and the atmosphere of life in a peasant cottage and refuse to return to the Austrian army. But all three Theresian "misfits" take up arms again, which they no longer want to touch, when the solitude is overrun by the Prussians. They manage to cover the escape of the family and their child, but pay with their lives.

Jaroslav Hašek screens four film stories in the fairground shed around 1900. After period advertising slides and a "newspaper", we see "the first part of a sensational, exemplary, parfuss, salon program - a film from the life of school-age children, shot under very difficult circumstances". The plot of this film takes place partly in a school classroom and partly in a gymnasium toilet, where the primate Chocholka took refuge from a Latin composition. "Exemplary Family Happiness" is the second film that takes the viewer into the family of the municipal official Honzátek, in which many stormy scenes occurred when the hamster, provided by Honzátek Jr., moved into the sofa - a wedding gift from Sister Ema. Equally surprising are two other stories, one of which tells about the "father of the poor", the owner of a company with unrecoverable cash flow and a famous patron, and the other about the fateful consequences of a joint trip between the old bachelor Mr. Hanzlíček and his neighbors.

In a small Texas town where cowboys lived their usual lives, local villain Bill Crooked Mouth and his cronies played cards in the saloon and the bandits raided the town, there lived rancher Andrews and his daughter Daisy. One day, rancher Andrews succumbed to his evil passion and lost not only the girl's dowry, but also the entire ranch, to Bill and his villains at cards. But at that moment, rescue appeared in the form of the noble cowboy Sandy, who fell in love with the girl and rushed to her aid. Unfortunately, the father also lost his daughter in poker. Sandy saved him from suicide - he won everything back. Then a melee broke out, during which the guests whitewashed the entire saloon and chased out the villains, led by Bill Crooked Mouth. Daisy asked how Sandy had acquired the money he had invested in the game - he had won it in the Sportka lottery. And so their happiness was no longer hindered...

A young agricultural expert fails as the manager of a cattle farm on a state farm in the borderlands... The attempt at a realistic view of the problems of nationalised agriculture did not exceed the average of the time.

Miloš Kopecký comments on himself in the roles of restaurant guests who suffer from various social ills. This satirical parade of grotesque human characters, such as the angry man, the alcoholic, the womanizer, and the thief, reminds us to be kind to restaurant staff, as they truly have much to endure.

On an early Sunday evening, people of the small town are reading lottery results that are hung on a board. Young man Karel Antos is annoyed that his lottery-ticket missed the main prize, a car, by only one number. Karel is going to the pub to drink away his bad luck with his friend Jirka Broz. The old accountant auditor Zelinka drops a wallet. Karel picks it up and before he gives it back he notices the winning lottery-ticket in it. Both young men accompany the old drunk man. Karel steals the ticket and exchanges it with his own. Next day, Zelinka is found dead. Investigators, Captain Tuma and the Lieutenant Líbal, soon discover that this is a murder case covered up as an accident.

A crime writer is accused of being too imaginative and his ideas unworkable, but everything changes when an international criminal demands his professional cooperation. The somewhat freaked out and disbelieving hero is also surprised to discover that his own wife has unsuspected criminal tendencies...

We learn that the greatest virtue of socialist competition is collective cooperation. This is what the young, physically fit assembler refuses to understand. He suspects his co-workers of overlooking his merits out of jealousy. And it takes him a long time to understand that the individual alone can do nothing, that only the collective has the necessary strength - and therefore the truth.

The achievements of socialism must be protected by all means - and it can even be fun. The Svazarmov paratroopers convince the casual cooperative members that the military education of the population must not be underestimated; they simply carry out an ambush.

A film about a boy who is protective of a runaway dog and the dog, who is protective of the boy.

Good-natured and garrulous, Schweik becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I -- although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle.

A short satire by Ladislav Rychman on "mischief" in the authorities. The successor of the General Director of the Central Food Stores, who literally worked himself to death, is called Nekluda and comes from Liberec...