Closely Watched Trains
The film is set during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Milos (Vaclav Neckar) is a teenager who has just got a job as an apprentice dispatcher at the train station. He narrates that he comes from a long line of men who preferred idleness. His grandfather was a hypnotist who tried to stop the German tanks with his hypnotic powers, but was run over by a tank. Nackar is glad to have a job where he doesn't have to work hard.
The station master is a kindly fellow who raises pigeons but has a dim view of the morals of others, especially the dispatcher, a Casanova who gets in trouble when he seduces the pretty young telegraph operator and uses rubber stamps on her bottom, which her mother spots.
Neckar is in love with another pretty girl, a conductor. When they go to bed he has a premature ejaculation. Mortified, he tries to kill himself by cutting his wrists. He is saved, and his doctor (played by the director) advises him to find an older woman to show him the ropes, and also to think of football during the act.
The war intrudes when they are visited by a Nazi functionary who keeps talking about pleasing the Fuehrer. Later, Neckar will be introduced to the ways of love by a member of the resistance, and he and the dispatcher will plot to blow up a train full of ammunition.
The film is shot in grim black and white, and has a sense of fatalism about it. None of the characters seem to have any interest in leaving town or doing anything great--they are resigned to just doing their jobs. The plan to blow up the train becomes a grand adventure.
Despite this, the film is consistently funny. Neckar, looking for an older woman, actually approaches the station master's wife, who is middle-aged. He makes his proposition while she is plucking a goose, and politely declines, as if he had asked her to get him a drink of water.
As with some of the early films of Milos Forman, the Czech New Wave showed the humor in ordinary life.
Comments
Post a Comment