Ucho

Husband and wife stagger tired and tipsy through their house at night holding candelabras. Something's not quite right, a basement door open ajar, keys where they shouldn't be, electricity and phone are out of order. A little earlier the movie opens with the couple back at their house after a 'party' gala. They fight and bicker on the pavement out of the car, then inside the house, like we're behind a closed door hearing echoes of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Flashbacks to the party earlier that night in subjective POV shots take us through a roomful of people dressed in suits holding up cocktail glasses ready to toast prominent Party figures, faces peering intently into the camera, huddling together to hide conspiratorial whispers or perhaps simple idle gossip. When the husband goes to the bathroom to freshen up, an old woman shows up to offer him a towel; in doing so, she disappears in the background and stays there, as though placed there to observe.

This is a great movie about paranoia, the "fear" of being watched and discussed, and it's a half good movie when it stops being about paranoia, because at some point we know the couple is being monitored by the Party and have had to live with bugs in their living room for years. In the famous finale of The Conversation, a maddened Gene Hackman tears through his apartment looking for bugs. His nightmare echoes through the years of cinema because it's a nightmare left incomplete, damnation through eternity. Here things become clear in the final act.

This is ambiguous psychodrama for as long as it suits the movie, then it becomes the political indictment it planned to be. It's stunning to me that a movie like this was allowed to be made in the Eastern Bloc of the 1970's. Usually filmmakers working in Soviet Union satellite republics spoke of Soviet tyranny indirectly. They used the Nazis to tell us about living through the oppression of a totalitarian regime. Here comrade Stalin is mentioned by name. As such, this is a brave movie that attacks contemporary things of a contemporary society.

The dimensions of this political thriller are most chilling for me in a particular scene: the husband asks the wife to remember earlier at the party if one particular guest was friendly to her and addressed her by her first name. He reasons that if he did so, if he recognized her in public in a friendly manner, that the husband is not under political scrutiny by his higher-ups, if that were the case everyone would keep their distance from even the wife. Social life in The Ear is not leisure time or exchange of ideas, it's an arena of suspicion and conspiracy, a chess game of ritualized behavior and expected moves.

Back home, behind closed doors, The Ear never sleeps. Under its scrutiny, married life becomes the forum of vented anger and frustration. As the married couple stagger through their household in the dark holding candelabras as though exploring the catacomb of a Gothic horror movie, their exchanges become increasingly unpleasant and hostile. There's one very grueling scene in the bathroom where the wife berates her husband for the choices of a lifetime. Yet in the important moments of life and death, when a man is about to take his own life or when they're coming to get him, they're close together in defiance of everything.

This is an outstanding film, even by the standards of the Czech New Wave and a hundred times better that The Lives of Others which covers similar ground and won much acclaim and the Oscar for Foreign Film- which just confirms that the process of critical evaluation and film recognition is grossly unfair. The only reason Ucho is not on any Best Film lists is because is was made in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact I am also baffled that it every got made at all- I see how it got banned, but how did anyone get the studio to make it?

So what makes the film outstanding?...well everything really: Like all the Czech films of this period, it is great in every department.

Very good photography cutting from the pitch black house (shot entirely by candlight- no mean feat technically) to the crossly overlit party. At the party, there is a lot of virtuosic hand held camera and wide angle point of view shots as the man slips in uncut sequence from intense gossip huddle to gossip huddle. These shots alone are remarkable.

Acting- the core of the film is the disintegrating relationship between the man and his alcoholic wife – it's like Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff but with the added edge that every accusation she makes of him is overheard and potentially going to destroy them. It's very well acted.

Music and sound- typically of Czech films, a minimalist modern score with a very skillful post dub sound edit and mix

Script- beautifully nuanced...maybe drags a little in the middle, but it takes on a huge challenge and it does it very well

Most impressive feature, made at the end of the 60s, with Russian troops already on the streets, and not released until 1990. Shot in stark b/w, very much with the look we came to expect of the Czech New Wave of the 1960s but lacking that romantic twinkle. Here we are plunged in to the tale of a couple, she drunk, he concerned and trying to get back into their house after a lavish State function. We cut back and forth between the childlike but ominous activities at the official do and the struggle without lights or door keys at home. Much of the action between the husband and wife is shot in close-up and the discord and insult exchange is reminiscent of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? But things get worse as the real paranoia of who might be listening in to their conversations becomes more worrying. The omnipresent 'Ear' probes a considerable level of paranoia and we too become involved in a terrifying scenario which may or may not imaginary. Stunning ending, both happy and very sad.

"The ear" is a late production of the Czech new wave movement. It is politically more explicit that earlier films of this movement such as "Closely watched trains" (1966, Jiri Menzel) or "The Firemen's ball" (1967, Milos Forman).

It was made in 1970, that is after the invasion of the Warsaw pact in 1968. The film was prohibited by the communist censorship and only released in 1990.

"The ear" is situated in a hectic time for the Czech communist party. A couple of promiment members have been purged away. The main character is still on his job, but suspects that he is being eavesdropped.

A comparison with "Das leben der anderen" (2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) is obviious, but there are differences too.

In "Das leben der anderen" the eavesdropping is certain, in "The ear" it is only a suspicion of the main character.

In "Das leben der anderen" the victim is a citizen outside the communist party. In "The ear" members of the communist party are fighting each other.

In "Das leben der anderen" the victim and the perpetrator are both being portrayed. "The ear" focusses exclusively on the victim (because it is not sure that there is a perpetrator). There is lot of attention for the effect on the married life of the victim. In this way the film also has a twist of "Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966, Mike Nichols) in it.

The acute paranoia of daily life behind the Iron Curtain haunts a petty bureaucrat after he overhears an indiscreet remark at a party and becomes convinced his house is under government surveillance. Not surprisingly, the film spent over two decades in official limbo for daring to paint an unflattering portrait of Big Brother, showing the unseen influence of the State in a society where privilege is bought at the cost of privacy. The story begins where Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Conversation' left off, with the anxious civil servant and his equally suspicious wife trapped in a claustrophobic, dark comic nightmare of hidden microphones, tapped telephones, and invisible prying eyes, all the time wondering why the axe of political expedience is aimed at their innocent necks. The scenario would be absurd if it weren't so unsettling, and succeeds as both a disturbing parable of totalitarian oppression and a perversely entertaining black comedy.