The best Petr Čepek’s movies
We present our ranking of the best Petr Čepek’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Petr Čepek.
Faust
7.4/10
A very free adaptation of Marlowe's 'Doctor Faustus', Goethe's 'Faust' and various other treatments of the old legend of the man who sold his soul to the devil. Svankmajer's Faust is a nondescript man who, after being lured by a strange map into a sinister puppet theatre, finds himself immersed in an indescribably weird version of the play, blending live actors, clay animation and giant puppets.
The Snowdrop Festival
7.5/10
This movie is based on texts of Bohumil Hrabal, world-known Czech prosaic. It's a story (in a form of a mosaic of short episodes and pictures) about the sadness and happiness of inhabitants of Kersko (Kersko is a small woody area full of cottages and roods). These people are both simple and sensitive, they have their own pleasures (e.g. Leli is a collector of cheap, but inutile things) and the greatest delight of all of them is a hunting. Crude poetics of amateur hunting is screened by dreamy pictures of this area. Menzel mixes sentimental lyricism and rough (but not vulgar!) humor and the outcome is the never-ending landscape of continuous life in the proximate nearness of nature. The performances of actors are brilliant. Both Rudolf Hrusinsky as a Franz and Jaromír Hanzlik as a Leli have nonrecurring charm bottomed on a pain and inebriation. Only the music is not perfect: Jiri Sust usually assembled his film music from his older works and in this movie there is many quotations.
The Elementary School
7.8/10
The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict - but also very just. His weakness is his interest in young women. Plot by Mattias Thuresson.
The Valley of the Bees
7.8/10
Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Armin now not only assumes control of his fathers properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.
Adelheid
7.4/10
In the aftermath of World War II, a soldier takes charge of a manor formerly owned by a German family and falls in love with the daughter, now a maid. Their relationship forces him to confront the tension between his love and his conscience.
Morgiana
7.2/10
Jealous of her vapidly "good" sister's popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara's tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.
The Hit
7/10
I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen
6.8/10
This futuristic science fiction comedy features an atomic bomb blast that causes women to grow beards and lose the ability to have children. A summit meeting is held at the United Nations, with the proposed solution of building a time machine. The decision is made to travel back in time and murder Einstein, with the hopeful result being that without the noted mathematician's research there will be no atomic bombs.
My Sweet Little Village
7.8/10
The movie's main storyline follows the life of Otík, a mentally retarded young man, in a tight-knit village community. The sweet-tempered Otík works as an assistant truck driver with Mr. Pávek, his older colleague and practical-minded neighbor. Pávek's family takes care of Otík, whose parents are dead. However, the two coworkers become at odds over Otík's inability to perform even the simplest tasks. Pávek demands that Otík be transferred to assist another driver, who happens to be a choleric and suspicious man named Turek (Turk in Czech). Rather than work with Turek, Otík decides to accept an offer of employment in Prague, but finds he does not fit in to the city life. After discovering that the transfer of Otík to Prague was a trick by a crooked politician to get a deal on Otík's large inherited house, Pávek agrees to give Otík a second chance and retrieves him from the city to resume their work together.
Ferat Vampire
5.8/10
A doctor is shocked when his beloved colleague Mima signs a contract with foreign car manufacturer Ferat, in order to work for them as a rally-driver. A scientist convinces him that human blood is being used as fuel for Mima's ever winning car, but does that really work?
Oil Lamps
7.2/10
In 1900, Stepha, the vivacious 30 year old daughter of a wealthy couple, agrees to marry her cousin Paul, who has accumulated large debts as an Austrian army officer. Paul refuses to work or to consummate the marriage, and then his health steadily declines.
Hotel for Strangers
6.9/10
A gifted poet checks into a Gothic hotel in hopes of meeting the woman with whom he has long been enamored. He is surrounded by a variety of offbeat characters like the hefty homosexual cook, shadowy clerks, snooty waiters, and valets prone to violence. He finally meets the woman of his dreams only to lose her and ultimately meet with tragedy.
Cutting It Short
7.6/10
Francin, manager of a small-town brewery, has a charming wife whose abundant blonde locks are an adornment to the town. Maryska looks ethereal but loves meat and beer, while Francin is an ascetic. The strict members of the brewery board of directors come to audit the accounts, but are diverted from concentrating on Francin's detailed reports by Maryska, who has organized a pig-killing feast and is ably assisting the butcher. When she invites the old curmudgeons on the board to enjoy the fresh pork, they are too happy to agree. Francin doesn't know whether he is going to get a permanent contract. To make things worse his brother Pepin - eccentric, noisy and garrulous - turns up on an indefinite visit.
Nudity
6.7/10
Young prisoner Jan, nicknamed Roughboy (Petr Cepek), tries to commit suicide. He was imprisoned for a fight in which he injured a functionary of the National Committee and for stealing material but actually by the blame for this crime was pinned on him by the road-builders in whose group he worked. The prison doctor knows that Jan is an emotionally deprived person who never knew his parents and spent all his childhood - except one year with foster-parents - in orphanages, homes for youth and reform schools. He arranges a five-day holiday for Jan, who wants to find his mother's grave.
The Secret of Steel City
6.4/10
The film is a metaphor for the Cold War. It depicts two neighbouring nations: peace loving Fortuna and the not so peaceful land of the Steel City.
Mág
6.7/10
A narration of episodes from the life of the famous Czech poet, Karel Hynek Mácha. Throughout the film, we witness a deep analysis of Mácha's complex character (his relation to another Czech writer of the time Josef Kajetán Tyl, his unbearable jealousy, his solitude, his attitude to nature,etc.) on the well-depicted historical background with all its particularities.
Granny
7.2/10
A tale based on novel by Czech writer Bozena Nemcova.
Prodloužený čas
6.1/10
The Three Veterans
7.8/10
It is a story of three veterans released from the army. During one night spent camping in the country they one by one wake up and meet three elvish brothers. Each of the veterans is given a magic item - one gets magic harp that provides him with servants by wish, other one endless pouch of gold and the last one owns magic hat that can create all the staff excluding money and people.
Diagnóza smrti
5.6/10
Two seriously injured patients are brought to the hospital at almost the same time: truck driver Honza Linhart, who had an accident, and a young woman found unconscious in a forest by a man picking mushrooms. The woman is identified as Katerina Marková, the divorced mother of a young girl. Major Kalas (Rudolf Hrusínský) suspects that she is a victim of mugging since a bloodstained small ax has been found near the site of the crime and, according to witnesses, Ms Marková was missing her watch and a bracelet, from which a gemstone has also been discovered. Linhart has lost his only kidney in the accident; in order to live a normal life again, he will need a kidney transplant from the mugged woman if she dies.
