Larks on a string (1969)

Larks on a string (dir. Jiri Menzel) is a warm and parodical film about what happened to some intellectuals in Czechoslovakia during the 1950. We see philosophers, writers and musicians consigned to a garbage heap. Rather than the usual image of slave-like labor, we see the characters playing cards, discussing Kant or flirting with female prisoners. The image we get from the film is that the totalitarian state contains many loopholes, the small ways in which characters do their best to live their own lives despite the external conditions. In this sense, the film bears a resemblance to films such as The Firemen's ball (which I have reviewed on this blog), battling a repressive system (and censors) with sly humor. It is a cheerful film with some drastically amusing scenes (a proxy wedding where a man "weds" his fiancé's grandmother, because the fiance is in prison). For all this, it wasn't a film that I found particularly interesting or striking.