Closely Watched Trains - Criterion Collection

Rating:
Summary: (Ostre sledované vlaky)
Review: The misadventures of a fledgling male, confronting the adult world for the first time, become a dark comedy about lost innocence and transitory accomplishments. The young hero, Milos, assumes the responsibility of his first job as a stationmaster's assistant in a village outside Prague. He is a frightened faun of a youth, all eyes and knobby knees, settling into the routines of a railway employee's life, and seldom removing his cherished cap, even in bed. The comic balance between Milos's shyness in both love and business matters, and the satirical look at small-town ribaldry, hypocrisy, and isolationism is overshadowed by the presence of the Germans. (It is the 1940s.) Menzel's film is a second look, filled with wit and pathos, at a particular Czech Everyman, catching every nuance of Milos's bright, often painful revelations, and leaving the spectator stunned by the inevitability of an unexpected fate.

Rating:
Summary: Train Station at the End
Review: This film adds a quirky resonance to the history of Neo-Freudian interpretation of human sexual psychology in film that rivals Bertolucci's "The Conformist". Gorgeously filmed in black and white, each frame by frame echoes of a past when life was still mired in concealment and innocence.

The story centers around a train station in a Czech, German occupied small town and an apprentice train watcher, Milos Hrma, who is confused about his place in the world. He is a young man and is approaching an instance in his life when sexuality is flourishing all around him and yet he can not comprehend it. Scattered throughout the film are leitmotifs that represent sex: the train blowing steam, a horse with a woman riding it, a skinless rabbit being fondled by a woman cook, etc. He is under the tutelage of a train dispatcher who seems a zealot when it comes to seducing women. Although he notices that the train dispatcher is a sex fiend, he does little to elicit help from him. The general thought of the males is that a young man should be bestowed with the foreknowledge and insight at birth. Thus, his inability to perform when his girlfriend Masa is in bed during a bombing causes him great existential crisis and leads to his attempted suicide. In fact, the war was subliminally to blame for his impotence.

This isn't a political film but uses subtle innuendos to trace the history of a young man into adulthood. Scattered throughout the film are affable characters such as a pigeon loving, crap covered Train master, a noble, aristocratic woman, a benign, slightly insane, photographer uncle of Masa, and a Nazi ideologue who refuses to believe that the Reich is in ruins.

The sexual metaphors are spread in gusty humorous episodes such as when the train dispatcher 'stamps' a girl's buttocks in a moment of ecstasy. In the finale, the boy is finally cured of his 'impotence' by a big bang, I won't give it away, you'll have to see this delightful film.



Rating:
Summary: The "Czechs" in the mail...
Review: This film was my introduction to Eastern European cinema and I was quite pleasantly surprised. Closely Watched Trains is a terrific coming of age story with plenty of humor thrown in along the way. On a deeper level, it expresses the problems with the Soviet occupation of the Czech republic after WWII. Thank goodness the censors weren't paying attention, or else we might never have had the chance to see this wonderful film. The image quality is excellent on this DVD transfer - there is hardly any grain and the film is wonderfully shot. I found myself empathizing with Milos by the end of the movie, and you will too!

Rating:
Summary: pure beauty
Review: This is the most delicate, beautiful, transcendant film that I have seen. There is a dark, persistant humor that pervades this tale of a young man's self and sexual discovery during world war two. But the internal meaning and references include so much more. From the juxtaposition of images to the development of the protagonist, there is a subtlety, an expressive magic that seems to crown Czech films from the first and second generation of FAMU graduates. If you have any chance to see a 35mm print of this film, take it.

Rating:
Summary: a romantic comedy with originality
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.


Closely Watched Trains, known as "Ostre sledované vlaky" in the Czech language, is another Oscar winner for best foreign language film. It remains popular and has some famous scenes in it.

Plot Summary:
During the German occupation in WWII, a young man starts working at a railway station and is determined to lose his virginity. He meets a young woman and pursues a relationship with her. He later is involved in a plot to destroy a German train carrying ammo.

The film has one of the most original love scenes I know where Milos uses rubber stamps on his girlfriend's bare buttocks. The love scenes are tame and probably would not go past a PG-13 rating.

The Criterion Collection only has a theatrical trailer as a special feature

Rating:
Summary: One of the best Black Comedies you will ever see
Review: This wonderful film from 1966 is one of the first black comedies, albiet with more pathos then you normally find in such fare. Director Jiri Mezel's film is set during the Second World War in a tiny Czech train when a young dispatcher (Vaclav Neckar) observes everything about life. Few black comedies cover so much, from the absurd to the erotic, with love and death thrown in, not to mention an ending that is still pretty shocking. "Closely Watched Trains" is an audacious film, especially for the time and place. Eastern Europe is not where you normally expect to find a jewel, but then the "Nazis" do not necessarily have to represent the Nazis, right? Again, this is one of the best black comedies you are going to come across in any language.

Rating:
Summary: A landmark movie !
Review: When you live in an oppressive regime the human mind artist becomes a huge laboratory where the chemical reactions take place and one the most important ingredients frequently used is the irony , an intellectual poison which seems to work out to perfection levels in special cases . And this was one of the these ones .
Once more in this special case and anticipating two years to the Russian tanks visit in Prague , Jiri Menzel made this brilliant jewel film about a young man on a first job in a small town station but eventually those twist of fate will become of him a tragic hero .
Bitter, acid , joyous and satiric film .
And please remember: There is not any serious issue which can not be told through a smile .