Closely Watched Trains; Larks On a String

These two films from Czech director Jiri Menzel are similarly themed political satires with quite different histories: Closely Watched Trains picked up an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1967, while Larks On a String, shot in 1968, went directly into the censor's can where it remained until 1989. Previously available on home video (RCA Columbia Pictures Home Video, $59.95), Closely Watched Trains is a wry and earthy comedy set in a small Czechoslovakian rail station during WWII. 17-year old Milos (Vaclav Neckar), the new employee watches, in awe, as his boss Hubicka lands one lass after another on the station sofa. But when Milos gets his chance, he fails. The doctor's diagnosis: ejaculatio praecox. Responding in a somewhat extreme manner to the news, Milo slits his wrists, but is discovered before he can die. While attempting to solve his sexual problem, Milos becomes involved in Hubicka's plot to blow up a Nazi ammunitions train--an act which has tragicomic results. As an early example of absurdist film, Closely Watched Trains is really quite clever...taken as a whole. From scene to scene, however, it's a bit overrated (one suspects that the boldness of the film--tame, by today's standards--had much to do with its critical success). A minor irritant worth noting is the occasional misspelled word or downright grammatical mangling of English syntax in the subtitles. In the battle to bring quality foreign films to the American public, this kind of slipshod attention to the subtitling is a guaranteed way to ensure that foreign films never cross over into the mainstream. Fox Lorber Home Video is generally not guilty of this (actually, their packaging is some of the finest to ever adorn foreign videos). Larks On a String, an anti-Communist satire shot during the Prague Spring of 1968 (which resulted in the film's being shelved for two decades) is, for my money, a better film than Closely Watched Trains. Set in a Communist scrap metal yard where a group of dissidents are separated into male and female camps, the movie stars Train's Neckar as a love stricken worker who supplies the female camp with chocolate and paper. A lone guard, who has serious misgivings about the way the prisoners are segregated, eventually aids Neckar and his bride-to-be. In one of the funniest sequences in the film, Neckar marries his beloved by proxy (the bride's grandmother stands-in for the incarcerated bride). The opening of the film is heavy in "bourgeois pig" vs. "party worker" ideology, but if viewers can stick with the film long enough, it is the people not the politics which take center stage and engage our hearts. Closely Watched Trains and Larks On a String are being sold as a two-pack for $139.95, as well as individually. Although Larks is better, Trains is better known, therefore both films are recommended. (R. Pitman)