Closely Watched Trains
(Ostre sledované vlaky)

Screening on Film

Directed by Jiri Menzel.
With Václav Neckár, Jitka Bendová, Libuse Havelková.
Czechoslovakia, 1966, 35mm, black & white, 92 min.
Czech with English subtitles.

Possibly the best known and most commercially successful film of the Czech New Wave, this first feature from then twenty-eight-year-old Jiri Menzel, is a comic, humanistic look at a pubescent railway trainee caught in the midst of World War II. Focusing primarily on the naïve protagonist’s efforts to lose his virginity, this is an offbeat, ironic and tender work, perfectly balanced between comedy and tragedy. In critic Tom Milne’s words Menzel’s film "celebrates a whole universe of frustration, eroticism, adventure and romance." 1967 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.