Tajemství hradu v Karpatech

Oldrich Lipsky made comedies the way comedies should be made - by a manic genius with a unique and recognisable but still quirky and unpredictable imagination, a director's eye for visual humour and bizarre images, a writer's love of language and of plot twists that are either so unlikely or so obvious that either way you'd never expect them. Clever and unashamedly silly, with a great feeling for both surrealism and slapstick, colourful and in spite of everything very slick, with acting and dialogue deadpan and hilariously serious one minute, totally over the top the next. Very Czech, or rather very Czechoslovakian since he made his films between the 60s and the 80s in that now long gone totalitarian police state, but generally set in another time, even when set (as in this case) in the same place. This isn't even his best film, but it's well worth tracking down.

Nobody but nobody has heard of this movie. I just can't understand it because it's such a great little flick; if nothing else it deserves its own underground cult following. I've been trying to start one for ages, but it seems in order to drum up a cult you need people. Drat.

Anyway, this film is like a yummy stew of Terry Gilliam (Monty Python), Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein), Rob Reiner (The Princess Bride), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, City of Lost Children) and who knows, maybe some Fellini thrown in for taste. It's surreal, bizarre, funny artistic, classy and has a great underlying story by Jules Verne to feed your brain.

It's one of those films with lots of antique sets and cool retro-scifi gadgets which put you into a timeless state of mind--not exactly the past nor the future, but definitely not the present. Think of the movies Brazil or HG Wells' The Time Machine, then throw in some absolutely crazy characters: a villain who is obsessed with beards, a hero whose super power is his bellowing opera voice (if not his hyper-inflated ego), a mad scientist who sends rockets to the moon in his spare time, and a gorgeous damsel in distress who has a rather curious affliction (I won't ruin it)...

If you're into bizarre Czechoslovakian nightmares* then this is the film for you. Some of the gags are corny, but they're so corny they're classic. If nothing else, it'll be a memorable experience for you, and you can boast about being the only person in your town (in your hemisphere?) who's seen this flick.

*speaking of bizarre Czechs, you might also want to look for the films of Jan Svankmajer (Alice, Faust, Little Otik), definitely worth czeching out. Har.

Pure steam-punk - way before it became mainstream. As it was made by Habsburgs themselves. A perfect party movie. Pairs well with Dobrý voják Svejk, The Phantom of Morrisville, Pilsner, and Czech sausages. Chase with Becherovka. A great introduction to the peculiar art of Czech humour. Try to search for Jožin z bažin on youtube.

The common cliché goes that there are two kinds of films: entertainment for the masses on one hand and arthouse cinema on the other. Of course, "consumers" of the former are supposed to find the latter pretentious and boring while "connoisseurs" of the later are expected to sneer upon the former. Oldrich Lipsky, probably not too respectfully, disagrees. Rarely has a filmmaker so successfully blended pure aesthetic, often quite surreal and bordering on oenirism, with unrivaled primal hilarity. This move is a prime example; taking one of the lesser known Jules Verne stories, and expanding on the book's plot all the while remaining quite faithful to it, he turned it into a retro-futurist steampunk horror comedy that Verne probably wouldn't recognise as his novel - which doesn't mean he wouldn't like it.

One particularity of this movie that should be noted here is that its creative use of language. The film is full of signs and written notices in the fictional language of the (also fictional) Kingdom of Carpathia. Clearly designed to imitate typical Romanian idioms but still be understandable by Czech viewers (and immediately bring Dracula stories and similar folklore to their minds), it is a wonderfully baroque creation that is to language what the film's props are to technology. The peasants, meanwhile, speak in another made up (but understandable) dialect that a Czech speaker will invariably find very funny. Indeed, may lines from those dialogues became part of the Czech popular culture. The movie draws a large part of its humour and atmosphere from this and, unfortunately, viewers who don't understand Czech and rely on subtitles are deprived of an important part of the viewer's experience.

@rooprect: if you loved this film, don't miss "Adele didn't have dinner yet" (Adela jeste nevecerela): same director, same producer, same actors in the two leading roles, same retro-futurism, same "horror" that will make you shake... with uncontrollable laughter.