Un jour un chat

If seeing through someone's lies and deceit was as simple as the color they were projecting. Such is the case for this movie, which I watched under the title "The Cassandra Cat." In a small town in Czechoslovakia, a teacher is conveying the beauty of free thought, expression and art to his class, something that does not go over too well with the rigid and conservative hierarchy of the school's leadership. The teacher tells his kids about a cat with the ability to see through the veneer of someone's outer deception, painting them in vivid colors which clash mightily against the drab and cold backdrop of the town.

During this time, a lot of changes were happening in Czechoslovakia, especially from a social standpoint as the tenets of Soviet communism clashed with a desire for national democratic socialism. These sort of things happen when your country falls into an economic stagnation, which is visualized in the film as no one seems to really live a comfortable life. Ultimately, this film didn't see much of an audience for years as the country decided to keep its more rigid outlook on economics and free thought. Hence, this is why the film is so divisive.

The Cassandra Cat, as was once described in an old magazine many years ago, sees through the "bulls**t" that many people are projecting. If you take the glasses off the cat, your true colors come out so to speak. Red if you are in love, yellow if you are unfaithful, purple if you are a hypocrite and gray if you are dishonest. So yes, it would be quite scary to see this cat come into your town even under the guise of a whimsical performance troupe.

Ultimately, this movie speaks about the frailty of the human condition and how malleable it can be. As the final scene showcases, a person can change colors quite easily, especially when it comes to the less desirable colors of the Cassandra Cat's gaze. Only those with the purest of hearts can be the red color. Either way, its a great film to watch, witnessing how other countries were going through similar political and social turmoil like the United States.

And for all intents and purposes, the cat was adorable.

In a small town, Jan Werich is an amiable storyteller who tells the children about a fabulous cat who wear sunglasses. When his eyes are uncovered, anyone he looks at has their nature revealed by the color they turn. Up shows the cat, and raises havoc among the adults, particularly Jirí Sovák, the smarmy bureaucrat who understands everything, once it's dead.

It's one of those wobbly fantasies of the 1960s like THE SEVEN FACES OF DOCTOR LAO who attempt to exalt the honesty of children -- not that I saw much of that as a child. There are lots of special effects which nowadays look like director Vojtech Jasný and his staff got their hand on an optical printer for the first time. At the time, I'm sure this movie was pretty much state-of-the-art for Eastern Europe. It hasn't aged particularly well, but there's little doubt it will still appeal to children in its insistence that they and truth matter.

"The romance between Robert and Diana has a swooning roundelay feel and Vásáryová is a gorgeous stunner in her crimson one-piece dress, whereas Brodský is an all-too hangdog nonentity that their mismatch involuntarily betrays a self-pleasing masculine fantasy. But Svatopluk Havelka's accompanying score is a lush orchestral phenomenon, WHEN THE CAT COMES is more a musical fantasy than a straight-faced parable about human nature. Plus the implementation of children as the ultimate symbol of conscience is again, an over-simplified ideal that seems more farcical than its intention in its end result.

That said, Jasný's film is a testimony of the ceaseless wellspring that generates Czechoslovak New Wave movement, the imaginings, the innovations, the forms of expression, and the pursuit of aestheticizing, which is different from other motion pictures elsewhere in the world at that time. Its mentality may sometimes err on the side of naivety and rigidity, which creates a unique situation where the overflowing creativity clashes with an ideological stasis, a fascinating geopolitical aspect of the movement."

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The Cassandra Cat was one of the cutest films of the Eastern Bloc Cinema; the film was created in 1963, five years before Prague Spring erupted, It tells the story of a Strange Cat that arrived in a Small town, and that Cat made many people crazy, I know that this movie was funniest. I love it, and the Actor who plays Diana. Her name was Emília Vasaryová she so beautiful, and I know that this movie was the best and I loved it; good performance and many characters are Charming; I know that many people didn't watch this movie, but I recommended it to watch because this film was beautiful and cute.

What a curious movie this is. Ostensibly a family film - silly, ham-handed, and fantastical - there are small moments or ideas here and there (particularly interactions between men and women) that are more adult in nature. We get classic themes for such fare, including but definitely not limited to (a) expression and individuality set against notions of strict, regimented order and conformity, and (b) the underhanded ways people's true selves are revealed - themes that are somehow both amplified and somewhat twisted into a different shape in light of additional context. After all, 'Az prijde kocour' is also a bit of a time capsule - made in a country that no longer exists, and under the auspices of Soviet governance, with these origins apparent in small clues like passing dismissal of "formalism," or discussion or intimation of what does or does not meet the standards of approved work, art, or Truth, and still more subtly in the mayor's remarks about Tabby, or Oliva's favored pastime that so slyly echoes less innocent observation. Meanwhile, there's a bombastic theatricality to the presentation that makes one ponder how, were this a Hollywood production, it would almost certainly be a musical, or at least kin to live-action Disney features of the same period. And still all this is to say nothing of what may be the greatest curiosity, which is to say a decidedly unbothered sense of plot - its disparate threads, its development. I do quite enjoy this, but given the curious flavors here, I'm not entirely sure who I would even recommend it to!

This much is certain: 'Az prijde kocour' is wonderfully imaginative, charming in its somewhat gauche playfulness. Archetypal story ideas are teased out into curious directions with the addition of one very special cat and one very special set of spectacles, and the whimsy extends to the details of most every character and scene as written and executed. My commendations to filmmaker Vojtech Jasny and co-writers Jiri Brdecka and Jan Werich, for they have whipped up a splendid fancy that at once or in turns blends fantasy, children's stories, more adult conceptions of humor, romance, art-house conceits, and some overtones of the sociopolitical atmosphere in 1960s Czechoslovakia. If that's not an odd mixture, I don't know what is. Yet it works unexpectedly well, resulting in a viewing experience that's both peculiar and highly entertaining in its own offbeat way. And even at that, for everything that this is and represents, it's also impressively smart and well made. The best of the effects are pointedly inventive, while the worst are no more terrible than being on par with those of this picture's contemporaries. The production design and art direction are all around excellent, as are all other contributions of those behind the scenes including editing and cinematography, and the cast likewise embody their characters with gratifyingly spirited performances. Again, this really is quite well done.

One should note a content warning for themes of animal cruelty that are central to the plot, and especially prevalent in some scene writing and dialogue. I would argue, too, that the felines appearing in the film receive treatment at some points that, while not abjectly awful, does not comport with modern standards of how animals should be handled or cared for. This isn't to say that the feature couldn't be made in 2022, but some scenes would surely look a little different than they do here. Still, this is part and parcel of the story at hand, and film-making typical of the era - and rest assured that in accordance with such fare, all is well in the end. Ultimately this is a little bit of a strange ride, with a swirl of ideas and tones that one wouldn't expect to fit together. For all that, though, it's unmistakably fun, and worth exploring not just on its own merits but also as a tiny peek behind the "curtain," if you will, at Czechoslovakia in the 60s. It's worth mentioning, as a bonus for fans of Werner Herzog, that both this and his 1979 picture 'Woyzeck' were filmed in the same Czech town. At length, whether one is an especial fan of cats, or international cinema, or just looking for something a tad out of the ordinary but light, 'Az prijde kocour' is a weird but refreshing title, a fine way to spend 100 minutes if you have the opportunity.