El velador

The aftermath of the film sixties in full swing. Although the subjective narration does not achieve the same sharing and mastery as in Herz's masterful The Cremator, the excellent Jiří Hrzán, who portrayed the character of a lifelong loser and mature child who is married to foolish dreams, gives the film enough persuasiveness. The strange "maturing" of one prison guard may be done by Renč in a clumsily distressed way at times, but the development of the main character and some truly impressive compositions replace all the negatives. From a formal point of view, a lot could be criticized, as well as the fact that the film only benefits from the legacy of classics of one of the peak decades of Czech film. However, this hardly changes anything about the fact that The Guard is something of a dusty inconspicuous gem, which definitely belongs to the golden fund of Czech cinema. Although Josef Vildomec does not achieve the disturbing eccentricity of Fuks’s Roman Kopfrgingl, his strange lability and brutality, which in the end escalates into truly tragicomic puffiness, has internal logic and sufficient drama... Vildomec's transformation perfectly captures the deep complexity. (22.09.2005)

In one documentary dedicated to the life story of Jiří Hrzán, the narrator mentioned that at the beginning of his theater career, Hrzán was supposed to appear on stage in an insignificant role. However, he turned it into such an exhibitionist performance that he practically stole the show for himself and caused outrage in the lead actor. Overnight, a new star was born. This memory came to mind as I watched his acting concert in the role of the guard. That is because the success of the film stands or falls with Hrzán. The screenplay has significant flaws. It wanted to be a parable about how an ordinary, easily manipulable village fool, exposed to the influence of the external environment and in a position where he can abuse his power, gradually turns into a tyrannical monster. However, this is not The Cremator 2 because the potential message is successfully disrupted by comedic elements and side motives, such as an escaped recidivist who openly makes fun of the guard, or the motif of an unequal romantic relationship, appropriately punished. The screenplay simply lacks the proper punch, but even so, it is an interesting and in many respects provocative film, and a testimony to the high level of Czech cinema of its time. Overall impression: 80%. (12.02.2013)

One of the last reverberations of the Czech New Wave, already when the normalization regime was beginning to fully tighten its claws and the purges among filmmakers were gradually taking on their monstrous proportions. In places, the directing is rather inept, sometimes even slapdash, but the premise and the script, perfectly mapping the decline of the character of one domineering young man (in Jiří Hrzán's precise grasp), is so great that these flaws can be overlooked. It was Ivan Renč's feature debut, but his parable was so bold and so against the wishes of the approvers of the time that it was also his last feature film. (30.09.2013)