After taking a brief and all too rare detour into a story (Larisa Shepitko's Wings) told from the perspective of a mature, intelligent, self-reliant woman, my long sojourn through the Criterion Collection once again compels me to identify with yet another young man coming of age. This time around, it's the singularly unambitious Miloš Hrma, a newly appointed railroad station worker in Jiri Menzel's Czechoslovakian New Wave breakout sensation Closely Watched Trains. This modest but artfully rendered story of life under the Nazi occupation made such a big impression on American audiences that it took home the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967 (over a less than impressive field of competition, as far as I can tell, with any number of highly regarded classics like Persona, The Battle of Algiers and Au hasard Balthazar, all recently reviewed on this site, appallingly overlooked, not even making the cut.) Though the style, humor and overall effect is quite different on balance, Closely Watched Trains covers emotional and experiential territory not all that different from what I saw a couple weeks ago when I reviewed Seijun Suzuki's Fighting Elegy.
Both films revolve around a horny male protagonist straining at the groin to score his first intimate contact with another woman, and failing miserably (though quite comically) in the process. Their mutual struggles to "prove their manhood" each take place within the context of a militarized atmosphere, surrounded by other men more brash and experienced at amorous conquests than they are. That discrepancy in erotic achievement instills in them both a fairly knotty complex of insecurities and self-loathing that trigger highly risky behaviors. But the differences in their temperament and circumstances lead to divergent outcomes. Unlike Kiroku and the rest of his Fighting Elegy peers who were being prepped for eventual combat duties in the about to be launched Japanese imperial wars at the various prep schools they attended, Miloš is merely a servant in uniform, following in the time-honored tradition of his male forbears, all of them introduced to us at the beginning of the film as master slackers, highly skilled at the art of drawing a full government pension or some other sustaining income at an early stage of life, then riding it out on the dole with as little effort as possible and for as long as they can.
As heir to that noble tradition, Miloš is introduced to us in a coronation ceremony of sorts, as the distinguished cap of his office is placed on his head with a solemnity befitting a young prince. Soon enough, the apprentice train dispatcher is initiated into the routines of the village railroad station, where he's privileged to pull levers, watch clocks and record information received through the array of radios and tickertape machines set up in the office. The daily grind at the station has a veneer of ritualistic seriousness and attention to detail that resembles military discipline, at least on a surface level (and no more than that, since the Germans certainly didn't trust even the flunkiest of their Czech subjects with a loaded gun.) But in between all that attending to business concerning the timely arrivals and departures of Closely Watched Trains, there are many hours spent just standing around, letting the mind wander where it will. And as far as the mind of Miloš is concerned, it's definitely traveling on a single track: SEX.
In this respect, Miloš is hardly alone; given the wartime dreariness and deprivation that the Czech populace was subjected to at that time, a nice old fashioned roll between the sheets was about as good as it got to find relief from the tedium of life under occupation. But as is often the case with young and healthy (sometimes "too healthy") men, the imagination gets ahead of the body, the trigger gets pulled a bit early and everyone who has a stake in the encounter has to shuffle away disappointed. It's an experience that is, alas, all too universal and transcultural, and it's that very accessibility, coupled with a naturally sardonic world-weariness seemingly inherent in the Eastern European consciousness, that allowed international audiences to empathize and identify with these oddball citizens of a country that tossed way too many consonants into the mix when it came to naming themselves. This apparently easy-going, affably lackadaisical outlook on life served as an effective mask for a quietly defiant and subversive ethical core of resistance to overbearing power, as evidenced by the film's concluding scene, which I won't spoil here.
At once mercilessly blunt and unflinchingly determined to find laughter and even purpose in self-negating destruction, Closely Watched Trains must have served as a bracing change of pace for audiences of its time. It still packs a fresh punch today, even if we've become much more accustomed to the bittersweet essence that Menzel distilled here. This was his feature length follow-up to "Mr. Baltazar's Death," a small-scale diversion about the quirks of contemporary Czech motorcycle racing enthusiasts. It was the first of five short films included in the omnibus Pearls of the Deep, stories based on the work of Bohumil Hrabel, who also wrote the novel from which this film was adapted.
I'm not sure if such a thing as a "Czechoslovakian stereotype" ever existed in the United States prior to the mid-1960s, or even the Western world in general, but if there was, or is, or will be, I figure that films like Closely Watched Trains and the similarly frisky/poignant Loves of a Blonde (directed by fellow Czechoslovokian Miloš Forman) can take a lot of credit for establishing the basic parameters: wily survivors, utterly stripped of any ambitions to become world conquering dominant figures, merely happy to carve out a comfortable slot for themselves where they can find a bit of satisfaction with the mundane comforts of life. It's the stance of people who give knowing smiles and "what the hell?" shrugs of their shoulders even as they brush off the dust and debris left by bombs dropping all around them. They may or may not make through to tomorrow, but they'll persevere the best they can, without giving the impression of struggling too hard to survive. It's kind of sad that there are so many people in the world who are compelled by their own experience to relate to that resigned, fatalistic attitude, but that's the way it is. What are you gonna do about it, anyway?
Next: Made in U.S.A.