Jan W. Speerger

Year of the Revolution 1848

6.4/10

After an attack against the guard of the Third Reich, Nazi repression intensifies, and the Czechoslovakian resistance's organized sabotage in an aircraft factory leads to Gestapo shootings.

7.1/10

Fifty years old Baron von Fibberg lives at The Fibberg Castle with his wife Olga and daughter Charley. Besides the delight in hunting, Baron is very enthusiastic about truth. Although he can't withstand any falsehood of others, he keeps his own intimate secrets from his wife. Charley seems to be an innocent girl at first glance, but she has a little secret too. She fell in love with a young fop Ernest Benda and married him in secret. Her only concern is the way, how to let her strict father know about the marriage. Together with her husband they prepare a plan how to do it, but it turns out to be a catastrophe for the whole family.

7.1/10

"Grandmother" is a highly romanticized autobiographical novel by a Czech 19th century writer, Bozena Nemcova. It's a classical, compulsory reading in Czech schools, about a wise, working-class woman, happier in her simplicity and good heart than the nobles whom she serves.

6.6/10

This romantic story turns on a stirring infatuation that takes hold of three young people under the influence of Simon, a Prague student. After the study year, 18 year-old Julio returns to his parental home, a little chateau on the Otava river. There he converges with his childhood friend Petr and the young boatman's daughter Klárka. Sharing her beguilement with Simon, who has quickly turned a tranquil summer atmosphere into a relationship drama, is Julio's cousin Rosa.

6.4/10

A dashing but mysterious man saves a gambler from suicide, crashes the posh party of a prominent industrialist, falls in love with his daughter, and finds himself in a web of intrigue revolving around her blackmailing fiance and a gang of counterfeiters.

6.9/10

Venice Film Festival 1938

7/10

Venice Film Festival 1938

7.1/10

A morally questionable lord comes to the aid of a working class man who is to be executed for speaking out about thieving rich scoundrels sticking it to the poor.

7.1/10

The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra’s classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood’s Frank Borzage. (BAM/PFA)

6.8/10

Venice Film Festival 1937

7/10

Mother-Hen

5.4/10

Film about famous poet Karel Hynek Mácha

5.9/10

Jánošík has been topic of many Slovak and Polish legends, books and films. According to the legend, he robbed nobles and gave the loot to the poor. The legend were also known in neighboring Silesia, the Margraviate of Moravia and later spread to the Kingdom of Bohemia. The actual robber had little to do with the modern legend, whose content partly reflects the ubiquitous folk myths of a hero taking from the rich and giving to the poor. However, the legend was also shaped in important ways by the activists and writers in the 19th century when Jánošík became the key highwayman character in stories that spread in the north counties of the Kingdom of Hungary (present Slovakia) and among the local Gorals and Polish tourists in the Podhale region north of the Tatras.

7/10

Wealthy and ill Petr Kornel (Karel Hasler) is not pleased with the carousing lifestyle of his nephew. He stops supporting him financially and demands that he change his name. Out of gratitude Kornel bequeaths a substantial sum of money to his nurse Alice (Adina Mandlová) with the condition that she marries. Petr Suk (Hugo Haas), as the nephew is now named, visits the doctor. In the waiting room his X-ray is mistakenly switched with one of another patient's. On the basis of this he presently learns that he is seriously ill and has only one day of life left to him.

7.3/10

Woman concert star seeks to connect with her adult daughter, by her former marriage to a staid industrialist who has kept the two apart since the girl was very small, and receives inadvertent help from the industrialist's just-fired employee who has fallen in love with the girl.

5.8/10

A Milk-Cannery baron, Jakub Simonides, is broken by the Canned Milk-Trust and, in his wanderings with a worker, Filip Kornet, he discovers he still owns a half-finished apartment-house. They rally the workers and complete the building for use as a collectivist dairy. The cooperative flourishes and after a chase/pursuit with the police, pratfalls, slapstick and various crashes, the workers buy out the Milk-Trust.

7.1/10

Original in its sincere, lyrical realism, The River is a naturalistic melodrama otherwise characteristic of the period. Shot in sunbathed pastoral locations by Jan Stallich (Ecstasy), the story of first love between a sturdy village boy and a country girl is filmed with a movingly genuine charm.

7.2/10

Vlasta Burian appears in a town of Czarist Russia impersonating an Inspector General, and he is entertained lavishly by the local political-hacks and peasants seeking his favor for whatever they are advocating or need fixed. Burain is involved in a series of comical situations as he takes everything he can gets his hands on while the peasants, who must plead for the betterment of their conditions, are left on the outside-looking-in. He makes his escape just as the real Inspector General is set to appear, but those-in-need will be no better off when the real McCoy shows up then they were with Burian.

6.9/10

A czech film that focuses on an unfaithful husband who married in to money, as well as an impoverished man who is turns to theft.

7.1/10

Anton Špelec (Vlasta Burin) is a producer of musical instruments by trade but a sharp-shooter at heart. He expects to be awarded a medal at a large parade in town where veteran sharp-shooters will be honored. When the town council is one medal short, Anton must wait another year for his prized possession. He drowns his disappointment in drink at the local pub and becomes so drunk that he insults the emperor who sentences him to jail. Instead of fulfilling the emperor’s orders himself, Anton sends his employee in his stead.

7.1/10

The Portorican prime minister asks British detective Sherlock Holmes to find a twin for King Fernando XXIII, a weak and frightened man who fears anarchists and does not want to show himself in public. Holmes finds in the Czech newspapers a photo of the perfect double, František Lelíček, a daring bon vivant drowned in debt, so when Holmes offers him money, Lelíček decides to travel to Portorico and play the role.

7/10

This light-hearted comedy operetta tells the story of a newly appointed high school professor who becomes an ideal target for pranks and jokes.

6.5/10

Life and drama in a gypsy camp with the groups young lady falling in love with an outsider.

3.7/10

Mimi lives with her parents and the maid Fanka in a villa near the forest. One day, a gamekeeper comes to court Mimi when her parents are away. A plane has to make an emergency landing in the clearing and out steps a young man who is immediately taken with Mimi; she, too, is charmed by him. This provokes the gamekeeper who shoots the Robber, as he calls the pilot. The young man is wounded, but this only strengthens Mimi's love. Written by NFA.cz

4.4/10

Comedy film directed by Karel Lamač.

6.6/10

An unknown gang has again broken into a van containing money from the European bank. Banker Sam Hamilton decides to use an armoured car for the next money transport. He hires racing driver Charly Allan as the driver. Allan is invited to Hamilton's house for a party. During a dance with the banker's daughter Bessy he is attacked by bandits, pushed to the ground and Bessy is kidnapped.

7/10

St. Wenceslas (Czech: Svatý Václav) is a 1930 Czechoslovak historical film about Saint Wenceslas.[2] It was the most expensive Czech film to date,[3] with the largest set constructed in Europe to accommodate an all-star cast of over a hundred, together with 1,000 extras for the lavish battle scenes.

6.4/10

The illegitimate child, Marie Růžová, grows up in the family of the Bořický miller. Childhood and youth spend with the son of Bořice, Klement. Klement asserts the rights, becomes a lawyer, and marries Jirina. In order not to cause further contradictions, Mary will go to Prague secretly at night. There he is living heavily as a waitress. He resists the insults of architect Jansky until he ultimately decides to commit suicide in despair.

6.3/10

This film is held in the collections of the Czech Film Archive and Filmarchiv Austria.

A Carl Lamac directed movie based on a novel by Karel Václav Rais.

Directed by Svatopluk Innemann.

Factory owner Pardon, meets Olga, daughter of clairvoyant Stefanie Lesczynska at a ball. Their brief acquaintance is interrupted when Olga and her mother have to leave. Fifi Hrazánková has her sights set on the elligible Pardon. Pardon asks his Uncle Cyril Ponděliček if the girl could take over his position at work so that she may be dissuaded of her amorous intentions. Fifi seduces Pondělíček. In the meantime, Pardon meets Olga and Stefanie again by chance and offers them a place to stay at Ponděliček’s while Pondělíček passes himself off as Pardon.

7/10

Directed by Carl Lamac.

A biographical story about significant Czech dramatist, writer and actor Josef Kajetán Tyl.

5/10

We have a liberal, modern Czech flapper bound to a serious and bored husband and don't forget the important fact that the wife has a lover so soon the widening gulf between husband and wife leads to stress and resentment and we get a tormented psychological study of irreconcilable differences that will lead to tragedy.

6.5/10

A Czechoslovakian comedy directed by Carl Lamac and starring himself Theodor Pistek & Anny Ondra.

5.8/10

The Czech Film Archive and Filmarchiv Austria both hold the film in their collections.

The film version of Karel Hynek Mácha's novel about love, disappointment and revenge.

6.6/10

Shot in the early 1920s, this classic film about the elixir of life and the secret of the Black Tower has finally been restored to its original version.

6.3/10