Kocár do Vídne

Gorgeous film. Sweet sad story. What I really appreciated was that it did not portray Germans as evil. Everyone in this movie is a human being. Typically I avoid any films about WW2 because the mainstream narrative on that topic is pure lies and atrocity propaganda, but "Carriage to Vienna" is just a good movie that doesn't overstay its welcome. I could put this on just for ambiance.

During the opening shot of Karel Kachyňa's Carriage to Vienna, you can imagine what is to come. Wheels are heard rolling down a dirt road through a lush evergreen forest, inspiring thoughts of a splendidly adorned horse-drawn carriage making its way to the so-called City of Music, pride of Austria. Inside the coach, the fair and delicate daughter of an esteemed nobleman anticipates a rendezvous with a certain handsome gentleman. A lady in waiting attends to the necessary primping, ensuring that everything is just exactly perfect.

Baroque orchestral music emanates from deep within the woods, and a mystical fog hovers between the trees. Magic is in the air. An amazing night awaits: opera at Theater an der Wien, coffee and cakes at a quiet garden café, and an appearance at an exclusive ball in the Ceremonial Hall of Hofburg Palace, where the waltzes of Strauss and Brahms will have them dancing until dawn. La-di-da. Isn't life grand? Then you wake up from your daydream and realize that Carriage to Vienna is a dark, rough, gritty war drama, not some syrupy romantic fantasy suitable for a 15 Kleenex bon-bon fest. The carriage is little more than a cart, certainly not something in which anyone would want to show up at a ball. Tall trees block the sun, creating a gloomy world where the fog is not magical but ominous, opera is out of the question, and few eyes can see what happens along the shadowy road. Also, as it turns out, the cakes are a lie.

Krista, the leading lady, is no foofy princess type, but a tough Czech chick who is furious and quite willing to take it out on Hans and Günter, a pair of soldiers who picked the wrong day to mess with her. Had they known what kind of week she had been having, they may have chosen a different cartjack victim, likely resulting in them having an easier trip, though perhaps with a less capable driver. Their failure to make a well-informed decision means Hans and Günter are in for a hell of a ride, and there won't even be coffee to adjust anyone's attitude.

Back in the day, some government folks decided that nobody should watch Carriage to Vienna something about non-compliance with party propaganda guidelines, so they shut down production before shooting was complete. Co-writer Jan Procházka demonstrated the advantage of being well connected by obtaining permission for the movie to be finished, only for it to be shown once in 1966 and then banned until the communist government was booted out of Czechoslovakia in 1989. Fortunately, the film was well preserved while locked away, and now we can watch it in relatively high quality, commie propaganda guidelines be damned.

This movie about a Czech widow escorting two soldiers of the Reich on a coach to Vienna as she plots her revenge is a bright example of the breach with visual narrative I value in the best of New Wave films, of the peeling back of established rules to reveal new ways of making cinema, the disassociation of the common rules of stagebound studio filmmaking, the possibilities of discovery created by a curious roaming camera.

If you're inclined to read the enormity of nature, deserts or forests, as existential playgrounds, the movie will give you ample opportunity. Karel Kachyna plays out a nightmare poem of innocence plucked from the stem, of lives torn asunder by guilt and desperation, and with the progression of this journey through a sunless forest that never seems to end he sketches in clear pencil strokes how the madness of war creates moral conundrums punishing for the soul.

I come to this mostly for the pleasure of a freewheeling cinema, but the viewer who values the faith restoring pathos of classicist cinema, Dick's change of heart in Casablanca, will be graced with a soaring finale. How much the finale will resonate with the viewer, or crush him, boils down to that. Me, I view this mode as more a reflection of a storytelling demand for catharsis than a reflection of a true world, an affirmation of the expected rather than a breach with it, so in the context of this films I'm left a little indifferent to it.

A fascinating small touch for me, is when the soldier hears bells ringing from afar and leaps for joy, confident the bloodshed has finally ended. But is that so, the film never lets out.

Kocár do Vídne is really the masterpiece of Czech movie school. The movie shows the common people in the war, not heros. Enemy soldiers are not animals. Warriors of freedom can also rape women.

Iva Janzurová acts amazingly, she proved she is one of the greatest Czech actresses ever. Although she is known and great in comedies, this was maybe her first drama role. And it worked pretty good!