“Wounded” in revolution: the postwar intelligentsia and their self-distinction in Czechoslovak cinema (1956–1968)

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the social representations of the critical socialist intelligentsia in five major Czechoslovak films made by Communist filmmakers between 1956 and 1968. These politically transgressive films provide valuable insights into how the reform-minded Communist intelligentsia viewed real socialism and their place in it. The films often portrayed intellectual protagonists stuck and emotionally struggling between careerist Party elites and an insensitive working class in the new socialist reality. Through content and reception analysis of several of the most influential films of the period, the article demonstrates how the critical intelligentsia distinguished themselves not only from Party elites but also from members of the working class in the post-1956 predicament caused by Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and, by extension, the ruling logic of Communist parties in Eastern Bloc countries.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article analyse les représentations sociales de l’intelligentsia critique socialiste dans cinq grands films tchécoslovaques réalisés par des cinéastes communistes entre 1956 et 1968. Ces films politiquement transgressifs fournissent des indications précieuses sur la manière dont l’intelligentsia communiste réformiste considérait le socialisme réel et la place qu’elle y occupait. Les films mettent souvent en scène des protagonistes intellectuels coincés et luttant émotionnellement entre les élites carriéristes du parti et une classe ouvrière insensible à la nouvelle réalité socialiste. En analysant le contenu et la réception de plusieurs des films les plus influents de la période, l’article montre comment l’intelligentsia critique s’est distinguée non seulement des élites du parti, mais aussi des membres de la classe ouvrière dans la situation difficile de l’après-1956 provoquée par la dénonciation de Stalin par Nikita Hruŝëv et, plus largement, par la logique dirigeante des partis communistes dans les pays du bloc de l’Est.

KEYWORDS:

• Czechoslovak cinema
• reformist intelligentsia
• Czechoslovak New Wave
• new class
• reform socialism

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Eagle Glassheim and Anne Gorsuch for their suggestions on an early draft of this paper. I also would like to thank three anonymous reviewers as well as the editor of Canadian Slavonic Papers, James Krapfl, for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Bilík, Ladislav Helge, 138. See also Hames, Czechoslovak New Wave, 52; and Liehm, Closely Watched Films, 116.

2. Liehm, Closely Watched Films, 116; Bilík, Ladislav Helge, 139.

3. Liehm, Closely Watched Films, 116.

4. Here I use the terms “intelligentsia” or “intellectuals” to refer to the whole spectrum of university- or gymnasium-educated people. This is in accordance with usage of the term inteligence in the Czech and Slovak languages.

5. Bourdieu, Distinction; Bourdieu, “Social Space”; Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital.”

6. Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” 243. See also Calhoun, “Habitus, Field, and Capital,” 67–71.

7. Bourdieu, “Social Space,” 725–26.

8. See, for instance, Hames, Czechoslovak New Wave; Owen, Avant-Garde to New Wave; Eagle, “Dada and Structuralism”; and Lim, “Dolls in Fragments.”

9. See Skupa, Vadí – nevadí; Szczepanik, “State-Socialist Mode”; and Szczepanik, “‘Veterans’ and ‘Dilettantes.’”

10. Kaplan, Znárodnění a socialismus, 68–69. For a discussion about the level of Party membership among the various social classes before and after 1948, see Wightman and Brown, “Changes in the Levels,” 399.

11. Abrams, Struggle for the Soul, 45–46 and 148–55.

12. Hruby, Fools and Heroes, 3.

13. For such arguments, see Šik, “Komunisté pracující inteligenci”; Dolanský, “Slovo k pracující inteligenci”; and Černy, “Přiklad pracující inteligence.”

14. Kalinová, Společenské proměny v čase, 132–33.

15. Kubat, “Social Mobility in Czechoslovakia,” 204.

16. Kusin, Political Grouping, 57.

17. In 1947, the first year when the school began to accept admissions, it received 1,156 applications and admitted only 54 of the applicants. Bednařík, “Filmová a televizní fakulta,” 173 and 182.

18. Ibid., 179.

19. For instance, during his talent evaluation, the admission board asked Miloš Forman to dramatize a short play with the theme of “struggle for world peace.” Not expecting such a broad and political theme, Forman failed in the entrance exam and was admitted on his next try. Forman, Turnaround, 74–75.

20. Unfortunately, we do not have statistical data about what percentage of FAMU students were Communist Party members or had working-class family backgrounds. Nevertheless, the overall data suggest that there was a significant change in the class composition of gymnasium and university students after the Communist revolution of 1948. By the 1949–50 academic year – only one year after the introduction of the affirmative action policy – the percentage of working-class children in gymnasiums (secondary school that prepares students for higher education at a university) in the Czech lands rose from 8% to 46.5%. Similarly, the number of university students with working-class and small peasant family backgrounds steadily rose until 1958, reaching 41.5% from 18% in 1946. Connelly, Captive University, 254 and 273.

21. In addition to their formal training at FAMU, many of the young directors had formative filmmaking experience through Army Film Studios, where they carried out their mandatory military service. The military studios provided young filmmakers the technical equipment and freedom necessary for experimentation. See Lovejoy, Army Film.

22. McDermott and Sommer, “‘Club of Politically Engaged.’”

23. For the emotional impact of Khrushchev’s revelations on the Czechoslovak intelligentsia, see Shore, “Engineering in the Age,” 411–19; and Hruby, Fools and Heroes, 9–34.

24. Kaplan, Kronika komunistického Československa, 296–303.

25. Forman, Turnaround, 137.

26. Bilík, Ladislav Helge, 101–03 and 166–67; Skupa, Vadí – nevadí, 24.

27. Skupa, Vadí – nevadí, 260.

28. The birth years of the main film critics employed in the media as of 1963 reflected the generational character of the active film intelligentsia in the 1960s: Jaroslav Boček (Kulturní tvorba, 1932), Miloš Fiala (Rudé právo, 1930), František Goldscheider (Kino, 1923), Antonín J. Liehm (Literární noviny, 1924), František Vrba (Plamen, 1920), Agneša Kalinová (Kultúrny život, 1924). The only exception was Antonín Novák (Film a doba), who was born in 1911.

29. Bilík, Ladislav Helge, 125; Novotný, “Ivan Kríž.”

30. For a long interview with Helge about his life and career, see Bilík, Ladislav Helge, 124–99.

31. Bilík, Ladislav Helge, 140–41.

32. The movie was actually filmed in the southern Moravian town of Mikulov. Ibid.

33. “Zajímavá anketa.”

34. Březina, Lexikon českého filmu, 405.

35. See, for example, Francl, “Do třetice všeho dobrého,” 773; Czaban, “Škola otců,” 23; and Vrba, “Snadný život a škola.”

36. Vrba, “Snadný život a škola.”

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Klimeš, “Filmaři a komunistická moc,” 133.

40. Born in 1918 to Hungarian-speaking Jewish parents, Kadár (1918–79) was forced to quit his studies at the School of Industrial Arts in Bratislava during the war and was sent by the clerico-fascist Slovak state to a labour camp owing to his Jewish family origins. His parents, sister, and many of his relatives perished in Auschwitz, and he became a member of the Communist Party shortly after the end of the war. Following the revolution, he teamed up with Elmar Klos (1910–93), a slightly older Communist filmmaker with film experience from the First Republic, and the two directed a number of propagandistic films in the early 1950s. Like Kadár, the screenwriter Vratislav Blažek (1925–73) had to pause his studies during the war and joined the Party shortly afterwards because its “dissident character appealed to him.” Škvorecký, All the Bright Young, 45–66. On Kadár’s membership in the Party, see Macek, Ján Kadár, 36 and 39.

41. Liehm and Liehm, Most Important Art, 226.

42. Ibid., 226–27.

43. Národní archiv (Prague), f. 1261/011. aj./bod 280/9, sv. 203, Zpráva o filmu “Tři přání,” Schůze PB ÚV KSČ ze dne 10. února 1959.

44. Kahuda’s speech is reprinted in full in Kahuda, “Za užší sepětí filmové,” 180–81.

45. Lovejoy, Army Film, 124.

46. Zvoníček, “Dělnický hrdina v našem.”

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ján Kadár’s Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street, 1965) and Jiří Menzel’s Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains, 1967) won the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1966 and 1967, respectively. Vojtěch Jasný’s Až přijde kocour (The Cassandra Cat / When the Cat Comes, 1963) won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963. Jasný also won the Best Director Award at Cannes with his Všichni dobří rodáci (All My Good Countrymen, 1968) in 1969.

51. Benešová et al., “Filmový hrdina v mladé,” 569–70.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Škvorecký, All the Bright Young, 48.

55. Liehm, Closely Watched Films, 132.

56. Lovejoy, Army Film, 114.

57. Liehm, Most Important Art, 221. Together with Helge’s School for Fathers, the film shared the Czechoslovak Film Critics’ Award in 1957.

58. Hames, Czechoslovak New Wave, 60.

59. Pintas, “Proměny vztahu Vojtěcha Jasného.”

60. Votruba, “Historical and National Background”; Liehm, Closely Watched Films, 202; Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, 207.

61. Mjartanová, Štefan Uher, 4–6.

62. Havel, “Power of the Powerless,” 360–61.

63. Liehm, Closely Watched Films, 258.

64. Owen, “‘Heroes of the Working,’” 198.

65. “Forward people, to the rescue.” The first verse of the “Bandiera Rossa” (Red Flag), a popular song of the Italian labour movement.

66. Liehm, “Téma: Kocovina,” 619–20.

67. Ibid., 622.

68. Francl, “Každý den odvahu.”

69. Dubeň, “O odvahe inak.”

70. Ibid. Emphasis added.

71. Tudor, Image and Influence, 168. Also quoted in Hames, Czechoslovak New Wave, 4.

72. Hames, Czechoslovak New Wave, 5.

Additional information

Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 101034324.

Notes on contributors

Barış A. Yörümez

Barış A. Yörümez recently defended his dissertation, “Socialism with a Melancholy Heart: The Red-Collars and the Making of Reform Socialism in Czechoslovakia (1945–1968),” in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. He is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Autonomous University of Madrid.