Ecce homo Homolka

A beautifully filmed holiday day of a city family. The parrot exactly in the style of the 1960s gave an unstylized and faithful presentation of the lives of "ordinary" people. The acting performances have already been recorded in the annals of Czech film - the archetypal beer drinker Josef Šebánek, chubby battle-ax Helena Růžičková, the whipped anorexic František Husák, the irresistible loving mother Marie Motlová and the cute kids performed by the young Formans... Many well-crafted and written situations and dialogues represent one of the best satirical portraits of traditional smudges on the Czech character. One of the best Czech comedies and another stone in the unique mosaic of the 1960s... (15/02/2004)

A terrifying, almost unwatchable horror film, like everything else with Papoušek’s signature under it in the sixties. Sheer brilliance in its description of "everyone else" in all its weak-willed, pathetic, meek, and self-abasing horror. A scene excellently crammed with small-town artifacts. Every time someone prompts nostalgia after a while, they see in it well-dressed men in ties, women in dresses sitting half in their seats, children playing with hula hoops, and neighbors greeting each other with a tip of the hat. Two-thirds of the people, however, have always looked like this, lived like this, and then fallen into oblivion. Anyone who sees themselves in this even a tiny bit has reason to weep. PS: the most beautiful women the Czech cultural scene has ever had to offer – Yvonne Kodoňová, Věra Křesadlová or Věra Chytilová – were all around the Czech New Wave, by the way. To spend an autumn afternoon with them in a convivial conversation over a bottle of wine... Dream, boy, dream. (14/10/2018)

I got to this movie very late, but I did get to it eventually. This is truly a beautiful example of the Czech nature. It's sad, but even after almost 50 years, nothing much has changed. We Czechs all have so many things to say, but we barely communicate with each other. Some of the lines are great, but the dark tone towards the end is pretty harsh. (26/06/2014)