Closely Watched Trains

1966 Czechoslovak film directed by Jiří Menzel

Closely Watched Trains

Theatrical release poster

Directed by| Jiří Menzel
Screenplay by| Bohumil Hrabal
Jiří Menzel
Based on| Closely Watched Trains
by Bohumil Hrabal
Produced by| Zdeněk Oves
Starring| Václav Neckář
Jitka Bendová
Josef Somr
Vlastimil Brodský
Vladimír Valenta
Cinematography| Jaromír Šofr
Edited by| Jiřina Lukešová
Music by| Jiří Šust

Production
companies

Barrandov Studios
Ceskoslovensky Film

Distributed by| Ústřední půjčovna filmů

Release date

* 18 November 1966 (1966-11-18)

Running time

| 92 minutes
Country| Czechoslovakia
Languages| Czech
German
Box office| $1,500,000 (US/ Canada)[1]

Closely Watched Trains (Czech: Ostře sledované vlaky) is a 1966 Czechoslovakian comedy film directed by Jiří Menzel and is one of the best-known films of the Czechoslovak New Wave. It was released in the United Kingdom as Closely Observed Trains. It is a coming-of-age story about a young man working at a train station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. The film is based on a 1965 novel by Bohumil Hrabal. It was produced by Barrandov Studios and filmed on location in Central Bohemia. Released outside Czechoslovakia during 1967, it won the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 40th Academy Awards in 1968.[2]

## Plot[edit]

The young Miloš Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly-trained train dispatcher at a small railway station near the end of the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He admires himself in his new uniform and looks forward, like his prematurely retired train driver father, to avoiding real work. The sometimes pompous stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder who has a kind wife, but is envious of train dispatcher Hubička's success with women. The idyll of the railway station is periodically disturbed by the arrival of Councillor Zedníček, a Nazi collaborator who spouts propaganda at the staff, though he does not influence anyone with it.

Miloš is in a budding relationship with the pretty, young conductor Máša. The experienced Hubička presses for details and realizes that Miloš is still a virgin. At her initiative, Máša spends the night with Miloš, but in his youthful excitability he ejaculates prematurely and is unable to perform sexually. The next day, despairing, he attempts suicide, but is saved. A young doctor at the hospital explains to Miloš that ejaculatio praecox is normal at his age, recommending that Miloš "think of something else", such as football, and seek out an experienced woman to help him through his first sexual experience.

During the nightshift, Hubička flirts with the young telegraphist, Zdenička, and imprints her thighs and buttocks with the office's rubber stamps. Her mother sees the stamps and complains to Hubička's superiors.

The Germans and their collaborators are on edge, since their trains and railroad tracks are being attacked by partisans. A glamorous resistance agent, code-named Viktoria Freie, delivers a time bomb to Hubička for use in blowing up a large ammunition train. At Hubička's request, the "experienced" Viktoria also helps Miloš to resolve his sexual problem.

The next day, at the crucial moment when the ammunition train is approaching the station, Hubička is caught up in a farcical disciplinary hearing, overseen by Zedníček, over his rubber-stamping of Zdenička's backside. In Hubička's place, Miloš, liberated from his former passivity by his experience with Viktoria, takes the time bomb and drops it onto the train from a semaphore gantry, which extends transversely above the tracks. A machine-gunner on the train, spotting Miloš, sprays him with bullets, and his body falls onto the train.

Zedníček winds up the disciplinary hearing by dismissing the Czech people as "nothing but laughing hyenas" (a phrase actually employed by the senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich[3]). The stationmaster is despondent because the scandal with Hubička and Zdenička seems to have frustrated his ambition of being promoted to inspector. Then a huge series of explosions happens just around a bend in the track as the train is destroyed by the bomb.[4] Hubička, unaware of what has happened to Miloš, laughs to express his joy at this blow to the Nazi occupiers. Máša, who has been waiting to speak with Miloš, picks up his uniform cap, which has wound up at her feet, blown by the huge winds from the blast.

## Cast[edit]

The station building in Loděnice where the film was shot

* Václav Neckář as Miloš Hrma
* Josef Somr as train dispatcher Hubička
* Vlastimil Brodský as councilor Zedníček
* Vladimír Valenta as stationmaster Lanska
* Jitka Bendová as conductor Máša
* Jitka Zelenohorská as telegraphist Zdenička
* Naďa Urbánková as Viktoria Freie
* Libuše Havelková as Lanska's wife
* Milada Ježková as Zdenička's mother
* Jiří Menzel as Doctor Brabec

## Production[edit]

The film is based on a 1965 novel of the same name by the noted Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, whose work Jiří Menzel had previously adapted to make The Death of Mr. Balthazar, his segment of the anthology film of Hrabal stories Pearls of the Deep (1965).[3] Barrandov Studios first offered this project to the more experienced directors Evald Schorm and Věra Chytilová (Closely Watched Trains was the first feature film directed by Menzel), but neither of them saw a way to adapt the book to film.[5] Menzel and Hrabal worked together closely on the script, making a number of modifications to the novel.[5]

Menzel's first choice for the lead role of Miloš was Vladimír Pucholt, but he was occupied filming Jiří Krejčík's Svatba jako řemen. Menzel considered playing the role himself, but he concluded that, at almost 28, he was too old. Fifteen non-professional actors were then tested before the wife of Ladislav Fikar (a poet and publisher) came up with the suggestion of the pop singer Václav Neckář.[5] Menzel has related that he himself only took on the cameo role of the doctor at the last minute, after the actor originally cast failed to show up for shooting.

Filming began in late February and lasted until the end of April 1966. Locations were used in and around the station building in Loděnice.[6]

The association between Menzel and Hrabal was to continue, with Larks on a String (made in 1969 but not released until 1990), Cutting It Short (1981), The Snowdrop Festival (1984), and I Served the King of England (2006) all being directed by Menzel and based on works by Hrabal.

## Reception[edit]

The film premiered in Czechoslovakia on 18 November 1966.[7] Release outside Czechoslovakia took place in the following year.

### Critical response[edit]

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Closely Watched Trains "as expert and moving in its way as was Ján Kadár's and Elmar Klos's The Shop on Main Street or Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde," two roughly contemporary films from Czechoslovakia. Crowther wrote:

> What it appears Mr. Menzel is aiming at all through his film is just a wonderfully sly, sardonic picture of the embarrassments of a youth coming of age in a peculiarly innocent yet worldly provincial environment. ... The charm of his film is in the quietness and slyness of his earthy comedy, the wonderful finesse of understatements, the wise and humorous understanding of primal sex. And it is in the brilliance with which he counterpoints the casual affairs of his country characters with the realness, the urgency and significance of those passing trains.[8]

Variety's reviewer wrote:

> The 28-year-old Jiri Menzel registers a remarkable directorial debut. His sense for witty situations is as impressive as his adroit handling of the players. A special word of praise must go to Bohumil Hrabal, the creator of the literary original; the many amusing gags and imaginative situations are primarily his. The cast is composed of wonderful types down the line.[9]

In his study of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Peter Hames places the film in a broader context, connecting it to, among other things, the most famous anti-hero of Czech literature, Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk, a fictional World War I soldier whose artful evasion of duty and undermining of authority are sometimes held to epitomize characteristic Czech qualities:

> In its attitudes, if not its form, Closely Observed Trains is the Czech film that comes closest to the humour and satire of The Good Soldier Švejk, not least because it is prepared to include the reality of the war as a necessary aspect of its comic vision. The attack on ideological dogmatism, bureaucracy and anachronistic moral values undoubtedly strikes wider targets than the period of Nazi Occupation. However, it would be wrong to reduce the film to a coded reflection on contemporary Czech society: the attitudes and ideas derive from the same conditions that originally inspired Hašek. Insofar as these conditions recur, under the Nazi Occupation or elsewhere, the response will be the same.[5]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 95% based on 20 reviews, with an average score of 7.80/10.[10]

## Awards and honors[edit]

The film won several international awards:

* The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, awarded in 1968 for films released in 1967[11]
* The Grand Prize at the 1966 Mannheim-Heidelberg International Filmfestival
* A nomination for the 1968 BAFTA Awards for Best Film and Best Soundtrack
* A nomination for the 1968 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures
* A nomination for the 1967 Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film

## See also[edit]

* Czechoslovak New Wave
* List of submissions to the 40th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
* List of Czechoslovakia submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

## References[edit]

Notes

1. ^ "Big Rental Films of 1968", Variety, 8 January 1969 p 15. Please note this figure is a rental accruing to distributors.
2. ^ "The 40th Academy Awards (1968) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-11-12.
3. ^ a b Hames, Peter. The Czechoslovak New Wave. Second Edition, 2005, London and New York, Wallflower Press.
4. ^ Český hraný film IV./Czech Feature Film IV. (1961-1970). Prague: Národní filmový archiv. 2004. pp. 339–344. ISBN 80-7004-115-3.
5. ^ a b c d Hames.
6. ^ Taussig, Pavel (2010-05-07). "Ostře sledované vlaky". instinkt.tyden.cz (in Czech). Empresa Media. Archived from the original on 2012-03-29. Retrieved 2011-07-08.
7. ^ "Ostře sledované vlaky". Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze (in Czech). POMO Media Group. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
8. ^ Crowther, Bosley (1967-10-16). "Closely Watched T/rains (1966)". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
9. ^ Staff writer (1966). "Ostre Sledovane Vlaky". Variety. Retrieved 2011-10-07.
10. ^ "Closely Watched Trains - Rotten Tomatoes". www.rottentomatoes.com. 1966-11-18. Retrieved 2023-09-02.
11. ^ "Closely Watched Trains" Wins Foreign Language Film: 1968 Oscars

Bibliography

* Hames, Peter. The Czechoslovak New Wave. Second Edition, 2005, London and New York, Wallflower Press.
* Škvorecký J. Jiří Menzel and the history of the «Closely watched trains». Boulder: East European Monographs, 1982

## Further reading[edit]

* Menzel, Jiri & Hrabal, Bohumil (1971) Closely Observed Trains. (Modern Film Scripts.) London: Lorrimer

## External links[edit]

* Closely Watched Trains at IMDb
* Closely Watched Trains at AllMovie
* Closely Watched Trains an essay by Richard Schickel at the Criterion Collection
* Closely Watched Trains on Criterion Channel

* v
* t
* e

Czechoslovak New Wave

Czech Directors|

* Miloš Forman
* Jiří Menzel
* Věra Chytilová
* Jaromil Jireš
* Ivan Passer
* Jan Němec
* Evald Schorm
* Pavel Juráček
* Hynek Bočan
* Jaroslav Papoušek
* Antonín Máša
* Jan Schmidt
* Drahomíra Vihanová

Slovak Directors|

* Juraj Jakubisko
* Dušan Hanák
* Juraj Herz
* Štefan Uher
* Elo Havetta

Directors associated with New Wave|

* Karel Kachyňa
* František Vláčil
* Vojtěch Jasný
* Zbyněk Brynych
* Oldřich Lipský
* Ján Kadár
* Elmar Klos

Frequent Collaborators|

* Milan Kundera
* Bohumil Hrabal
* Ester Krumbachová
* Jaroslav Kučera
* Miroslav Ondříček
* Frank Daniel

Key films|

* Diamonds of the Night  (1964)
* Loves of a Blonde (1965)
* Intimate Lighting (1965)
* Daisies (1966)
* Closely Watched Trains (1966)
* The Firemen's Ball (1967)
* The Cremator (1969)
* Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Related|

* CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel
* FAMU
* Barrandov Studios
* Prague Spring
* Praška filmska škola

* v
* t
* e

Jiří Menzel

Films directed|

* "The Death of Mr Balthazar" in Pearls of the Deep (1966)
* Closely Watched Trains (1966)
* Crime in a Music Hall (1968)
* Capricious Summer (1968)
* Larks on a String (1969)
* Who Looks for Gold? (1974)
* Seclusion Near a Forest (1976)
* Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (1979)
* Cutting It Short (1980)
* The Snowdrop Festival (1984)
* My Sweet Little Village (1985)
* The End of Old Times (1989)
* Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin (1994)
* I Served the King of England (2006)
* The Don Juans (2013)

Works about|

* CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel (2018 documentary)

* v
* t
* e

Academy Award for Best International Feature Film

1947–1955
(Honorary)|

* 1947: Shoeshine – Vittorio De Sica
* 1948: Monsieur Vincent – Maurice Cloche
* 1949: Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio De Sica
* 1950: The Walls of Malapaga – René Clément
* 1951: Rashomon – Akira Kurosawa
* 1952: Forbidden Games – René Clément
* 1953: No Award
* 1954: Gate of Hell – Teinosuke Kinugasa
* 1955: Samurai, The Legend of Musashi – Hiroshi Inagaki

1956–1975|

* 1956: La Strada – Federico Fellini
* 1957: Nights of Cabiria – Federico Fellini
* 1958: My Uncle – Jacques Tati
* 1959: Black Orpheus – Marcel Camus
* 1960: The Virgin Spring – Ingmar Bergman
* 1961: Through a Glass Darkly – Ingmar Bergman
* 1962: Sundays and Cybèle – Serge Bourguignon
* 1963: 8½ – Federico Fellini
* 1964: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – Vittorio De Sica
* 1965: The Shop on Main Street – Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos
* 1966: A Man and a Woman – Claude Lelouch
* 1967: Closely Watched Trains – Jiří Menzel
* 1968: War and Peace – Sergei Bondarchuk
* 1969: Z – Costa-Gavras
* 1970: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion – Elio Petri
* 1971: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Vittorio De Sica
* 1972: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – Luis Buñuel
* 1973: Day for Night – François Truffaut
* 1974: Amarcord – Federico Fellini
* 1975: Dersu Uzala – Akira Kurosawa

1976–2000|

* 1976: Black and White in Color – Jean-Jacques Annaud
* 1977: Madame Rosa – Moshé Mizrahi
* 1978: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs – Bertrand Blier
* 1979: The Tin Drum – Volker Schlöndorff
* 1980: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears – Vladimir Menshov
* 1981: Mephisto – István Szabó
* 1982: Volver a Empezar ('To Begin Again') – José Luis Garci
* 1983: Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman
* 1984: Dangerous Moves – Richard Dembo
* 1985: The Official Story – Luis Puenzo
* 1986: The Assault – Fons Rademakers
* 1987: Babette's Feast – Gabriel Axel
* 1988: Pelle the Conqueror – Bille August
* 1989: Cinema Paradiso – Giuseppe Tornatore
* 1990: Journey of Hope – Xavier Koller
* 1991: Mediterraneo – Gabriele Salvatores
* 1992: Indochine – Régis Wargnier
* 1993: Belle Époque – Fernando Trueba
* 1994: Burnt by the Sun – Nikita Mikhalkov
* 1995: Antonia's Line – Marleen Gorris
* 1996: Kolya – Jan Svěrák
* 1997: Character – Mike van Diem
* 1998: Life Is Beautiful – Roberto Benigni
* 1999: All About My Mother – Pedro Almodóvar
* 2000: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – Ang Lee

2001–present|

* 2001: No Man's Land – Danis Tanović
* 2002: Nowhere in Africa – Caroline Link
* 2003: The Barbarian Invasions – Denys Arcand
* 2004: The Sea Inside – Alejandro Amenábar
* 2005: Tsotsi – Gavin Hood
* 2006: The Lives of Others – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
* 2007: The Counterfeiters – Stefan Ruzowitzky
* 2008: Departures – Yōjirō Takita
* 2009: The Secret in Their Eyes – Juan José Campanella
* 2010: In a Better World – Susanne Bier
* 2011: A Separation – Asghar Farhadi
* 2012: Amour – Michael Haneke
* 2013: The Great Beauty – Paolo Sorrentino
* 2014: Ida – Paweł Pawlikowski
* 2015: Son of Saul – László Nemes
* 2016: The Salesman – Asghar Farhadi
* 2017: A Fantastic Woman – Sebastián Lelio
* 2018: Roma – Alfonso Cuarón
* 2019: Parasite – Bong Joon-ho
* 2020: Another Round – Thomas Vinterberg
* 2021: Drive My Car – Ryusuke Hamaguchi
* 2022: All Quiet on the Western Front – Edward Berger

* v
* t
* e

Czechoslovak submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

* Lemonade Joe (1964)
* The Shop on Main Street (1965)
* Loves of a Blonde (1966)
* Closely Watched Trains (1967)
* The Firemen's Ball (1968)
* The Cremator (1969)
* Days of Betrayal (1973)
* Lovers in the Year One (1974)
* Circus in the Circus (1975)
* One Silver Piece (1976)
* Dinner for Adele (1978)
* Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (1979)
* Love Between the Raindrops (1980)
* The Divine Emma (1981)
* The Assistant (1982)
* Incomplete Eclipse (1983)
* The Millennial Bee (1984)
* Scalpel, Please (1985)
* My Sweet Little Village (1986)
* Forbidden Dreams (1987)
* A Hoof Here, a Hoof There (1989)
* Vojtech, Called the Orphan (1990)
* The Elementary School (1991)

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF

National|

* France
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* United States
* Czech Republic

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