World Film Locations Prague

By Marcelline Block

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-027-6

Contents

Maps/Scenes,
Scenes 1-8 1913 – 1984, 10,
Scenes 9-16 1988 – 1998, 30,
Scenes 17-24 1999 – 2002, 50,
Scenes 25-32 2003 – 2005, 70,
Scenes 33-39 2005 – 2008, 90,
Scenes 40-46 2008 – 2012, 108,
Essays,
Prague: City of the Imagination Marcelline Block, 6,
Picturing Prague: The Old Jewish Cemetery Mark Podwal, 8,
Barrandov Studios: The Continent’s Answer to Hollywood Ila Tyagi, 28,
From Prague Abroad to Abroad in Prague Henri-Simon Blanc-Hoàng, 48,
Film Projections of the Prague Spring Oana Chivoiu, 68,
The Presence of the Past in Prague Kristiina Hackel, 88,
The Cinema of Prague during World War II Peter Demetz, 106,
Backpages,
Resources, 124,
Contributor Bios, 125,
Filmography, 128,

CHAPTER 1

PRAGUE

City of the Imagination

Text by MARCELLINE BLOCK

DUBBEDCapital of the 20th Century by Sayer, Prague is a preferred filmic location. In 1850, Bohemian scientist JE Purkyne introduced his ‘Kinesiscope’, antecedent to the magic lanterns in Proust’s Combray and Bergman’s Magic Lantern: An Autobiography. Krízenecký’s short films, made with a Lumière Cinématographe, screened at Prague’s 1898 Architecture/Engineering Exhibition.

From magic lanterns to Ripellino’s Magic Prague – recalling Golden Lane’s goldsmiths/alchemists – enchantment is central to the City of Dreams: Bio Ponrepo, founded in 1907 by magician Viktor Ponrepo, became a National Film Archive theater. Art nouveau Lucerna (‘Lantern’) Cinema, created by the Havel family, operates, since 1909, in Lucerna Palace. Edith Piaf concerts in Dahan’s La Vie en Rose (2007) were shot at Lucerna.

Faustian Student of Prague (Wegener, 1913) – ‘first’ horror movie – features Prague Castle’s Royal Summer Palace. Švankmajer’s surreal Faust (1994) shows pedestrian Prague locations (Old Town, the metro …).

A precursor to neorealism, Junghans’ Such is Life (1929), depicts a washerwoman, foregrounding locations including Charles Bridge, utilizing documentary aesthetics and montage.

Innemann’s Prague Shining in Lights (1928) presents the modern metropolis at night in a film commissioned by a power company.

A foundational experimental film, Hackenschmied’s Aimless Walk (1930) predates his Prague Castle (1931), exploring the relationship between the beaux-arts disciplines of architecture and music, already examined in Valéry’s Eupalinos, ou l’architecte (1921).

Machatý’s 1926 Kreutzer Sonata (from Tolstoy) shows Wilson Station – today, Main Train Station. Machatý’s (in)famous Ecstasy (1933) – exemplar of ‘Czech lyricism’ – featuring nude Hedwig Kiesler (before becoming Hedy Lamarr in Hollywood), filmed at Barrandov terraces. Despite winning Best Director at the 1934 Venice Film Festival, Ecstasy was condemned by the religious establishment, censored in the US.

Barrandov Studios – Central Europe’s most sophisticated – built in the early 1930s by Czech president Václav Havel’s relatives, was the studio for French poetic realist director Duvivier’s 1936 Golem. According to legend, 16th century Rabbi Judah Loew manufactured the titular monster with the Vltava’s clay to protect Prague’s Jews. Golem‘s opening sequence foregrounds Šaloun’s statue of Loew at New Town Hall.

Goebbels used Barrandov for propaganda during World War II, building new soundstages – still operating today. Harlan’s popular Nazi film, The Golden City (1942), renders Prague evil. In 1945, the film industry was nationalized (until the fall of communism in 1989). Prague Film Academy (FAMU), Europe’s best film school, opened in 1947.

Vávra’s Silent Barricade (1949) filmed at Holešovice and Troja Bridge (now Bridge of the Barricade Fighters), commemorating the 1945 Prague Uprising and Soviet Army liberation.

Shot in Prague and Terezín, 1949’s Distant Journey, first Czech Holocaust film, directed by Alfréd Radok – founder of Prague’s Magic Lantern Theater and influential for the New Wave – was banned for decades.

Fric‘s period comedy, The Emperor’s Baker/ Baker’s Emperor (1951; also called The Emperor and the Golem), starring Jan Werich, uses Prague Castle and Stairs to incarnate Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II’s court.

During the 1960s ‘thaw’, groundbreaking films by FAMU graduates including Vera Chytilová, Miloš Forman, Jaromil Jireš, Jan Nemec, and Ivan Passer often incorporate Prague’s cityscape, experimenting with ideas and style, going further than simply opposing the communist ideology of socialist realism in artistic representation. The Czechoslovak New Wave (1963-1968) is prefigured by Vlácil’s White Dove (1960), whose titular bird, lost in Prague’s turreted skyline, is a symbol of alienation and freedom.

New Wave films The Shop on Main Street (Klos/Kadár, 1965, with Slovakian locations) and Menzel’s 1966 Closely Watched Trains, shot near Prague (Lodenice), received Foreign Language Film Oscars. Forman’s 1964 Audition – ‘first’ New Wave film – features Semafor Theatre. The Hundred-Spired City, including Josefov, appears in flashback visions in Nemec’s haunting debut, the Holocaust film Diamonds of the Night (1964). Forman’s 1965 Loves of a Blonde‘s heroine arrives at her lover’s parents’ Karlín apartment. The 1966 New Wave ‘manifesto’ omnibus film, Pearls of the Deep, adapted from author Bohumil Hrabal’s stories, depicts Palác Svet: Automat Svet, frequented by Hrabal, as setting of Chytilová’s The Restaurant the World; Jireš’ Romance features Kino Dukla. Jireš’ banned anti-communist The Joke (1969), scripted with Kundera, depicts, among other Prague locations, a Wenceslas Square May Day parade/celebration.

The August 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion – captured in Nemec’s Oratario for Prague – crushed the Prague Spring and ‘Czech Film Miracle’ (New Wave). Chris Marker’s 1977 A Grin without a Cat documents the funeral of Jan Palach who, in January 1969, self–immolated to protest the Soviets. Marker’s Prague is initially frozen in silence.

In 1969, Forman, among other cineastes, fled abroad; New Wave filmmakers who remained, such as Chytilová, were often prevented from filming. Over 100 films were banned. Prolific Czech filmmaker Fric, with 85 films to his credit, passed away shortly after the Soviet invasion.

In 1985, Menzel’s My Sweet Little Village, contrasting life in Krecovice with that in the Mother of Cities (including Vinohrady and Wenceslas Square) was nominated for the Foreign Language Oscar.

Prior to the 1989 Velvet Revolution, Forman returned to film Amadeus (1984) in Prague, resemantized as 18th century Vienna. Charles Bridge and Dlouhá street – where Kafka resided at no. 16, ‘House of the Golden Pike’, from 1915 to 1917 – are reimagined as Lublin in Yentl (Streisand, 1983). Soderbergh’s 1991 Kafka was made in early post-Soviet Prague. David Hugh Jones’ adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial (1993) was also filmed there – unlike Welles’ 1962 The Trial (shot in Paris, Rome, Zagreb).

Post-1989 examples of Prague playing itself onscreen include Kotcheff’s 1995 Hidden Assassin‘s action scenes on rooftops and bridges; Jan Sverák’s Oscar-winning Kolya (1996), on the eve of the Velvet Revolution; Mandragora (Grodecki, 1997), a nightmarish rendition of Prague’s sex trade, negating the ‘City of Dreams’ moniker; Prague Duet (Simon, 1998), examining family secrets from the Nazi era, filmed in the Old Jewish Cemetery and elsewhere; Prague (Madsen, 2006), where a marriage collapses against the backdrop of Old Town Square and its 15th century Astronomical Clock; in Menzel’s 2013 Don Juans/Skirt Chasers, filmed at Vinohrady Theatre and Lesser Town Hall, an opera company performs Mozart’s Don Giovanni (which premiered in Prague in 1787). Prague doubles as Communist Moscow in Ridley Scott’s production Child 44 (2014).

Intriguing Prague, with versatile and multiple iterations onscreen, allows the cinematic imagination to soar above its turreted skyline, then dive down alleyways/riverbanks and cobblestoned curves, through dreamy moonlight or glorious sunsets.

CHAPTER 2

SPOTLIGHT

PICTURING PRAGUE

The Old Jewish Cemetery

Text by MARK PODWAL

THE DOCUMENTARYHouse of Life: the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (Allan Miller, 2007), which I wrote and executive produced (Miller also served as co-producer), narrates the story of Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery (Starý zidovský hrbitov) in Josefov (the Jewish Quarter), including its myths as well as its history. Here, as many as 100,000 members of the city’s once-vibrant Jewish community are buried, layer upon layer, covered by the 12,000 tombstones still remaining. Nearly three quarters of a million people the world over visit the cemetery annually. In House of Life, the American actress Claire Bloom voices stories of iconic rabbis and celebrated philanthropists as well as legends such as that of the Golem, the mythical figure created from the clay of Prague’s Vltava River to protect the city’s Jews. The only place where Jewish children could play, during the German occupation in World War II, was in the cemetery. Under the communist regime, lovers surreptitiously met each other on its grounds. Both the cemetery as well as the film demonstrate the resoluteness of a people determined to honor their past as well as uphold the lessons of history.

While growing up, the Golem legend held great fascination for me; this led, two decades later, to my creating the illustrations for Elie Wiesel’s The Golem: The Story of A Legend (1983). Since I had illustrated that book and continued drawing and painting that subject, I was invited to exhibit my work at the Jewish Museum in Prague. Moreover, I yearned for years to make a film about the legend of the Golem. I approached Steven Spielberg with the idea – but there was no interest on his part. However, it was quite obvious that Prague’s Jewish Quarter was more than only the setting for Golem tales, and this became evident when I first visited Prague in 1996. Each time I returned to Prague, its Old Jewish Cemetery became increasingly interesting to me. Since its founding in the 15th century, this graveyard has seized the imaginations of generations of authors and visual artists, such as in the novel Bech at Bay (1999), in which John Updike writes that its ‘tombstones [are] jumbled together like giant cards in a deck being shuffled’ (p. 4). Children’s author Maurice Sendak also featured its tombstones in his 1988 Dear Mili. Indeed, the Old Jewish cemetery has been called ‘the Westminster Abbey of the Jewish People’ (Arno Parik, Curator of the Prague Jewish Museum).

In 2003, I decided to tell the story of the Old Jewish Cemetery in a documentary instead of trying to find interest for a feature film about the Golem. Two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Allan Miller (From Mao to Mozart [1980]) agreed to collaborate on this project. Coincidentally, Miller, who had directed November’s Children: Revolution in Prague (1991), had a film crew in Prague at our disposal.

Although at first we weren’t quite sure how to film the cemetery’s story, we soon concluded that it should be told by guides, conservationists, rabbis, historians, and curators, as they were all dedicated to commemorating and maintaining this incredibly unique historical site. The fairy-tale like settings of Prague’s Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture form a spectacular background while the tombstones’ own symbolic iconography add unique visuals. Graves, as many as twelve layers deep, recall the crowded conditions of the former Jewish ghetto.

Numerous legends abound about the cemetery, particularly regarding Rabbi Loew (Judah Loew ben Bezalel, also known as the Maharal of Prague, 1520-1609), whose statue by Ladislav Šaloun stands at Prague’s New Town Hall. Though best remembered as the Golem’s creator, the earliest legend documented about Rabbi Loew actually concerns the cemetery. Loew’s tombstone supposedly made space to accommodate his grandson’s grave. It is said that the immense wealth of the ghetto’s great benefactor, Mordechai Maisl, came from two magical dwarves. The oldest surviving synagogue in all of Europe is Prague’s nearby Old-New Synagogue (Altneuschul), which was, according to myth, built by angels. (In actuality, it was constructed by masons who were building the neighbouring St Agnes Convent). It is believed that the name of the synagogue comes from a legend according to which stones of the Old-New Synagogue were carried by angels from the Temple in Jerusalem destroyed in 70 AD. The stones were loaned on condition that they be returned when the Temple is rebuilt after the coming of the Messiah. Curator Arno Parik offered me the unique opportunity, for which I am most grateful, to visit the Old-New Synagogue’s attic, considered the resting place of the Golem. Climbing the iron rungs of the Old-New Synagogue to its attic is extremely dangerous. By chance, my visit occurred during a restoration of the approximately 700-year-old synagogue. The construction scaffolding at the time allowed a climber safer passage. Among those who have ventured to the attic was the renowned journalist Egon Erwin Kisch of Prague, who, upon entering the attic in 1910, wrote, ‘This is truly a place to create and bury the Golem … If the clay figure is buried there, it will remain until Doomsday’ (Kisch is cited in Joseph Wechsberg, Prague: The Mystical City, p. 39). Although I took photographs during my visit to the attic, the pictures somehow disappeared soon after being developed. There are more tales than stones in the Old-New Synagogue, which I discuss in my book for children, Built by Angels: The Story of the Old-New Synagogue (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009). Although almost everything around it has been effaced by time’s ravages, the Old-New Synagogue in Prague continues to greet all who wish to pray there.

CHAPTER 3

LOCATION

THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE/ DER STUDENT VON PRAG (1913)

Royal Summer Palace (Queen Anne’s Summer Palace), Prague Castle, Prague 1 – Hradcany

THE WORLD’S FIRST feature-length horror film, The Student of Prague is set in what was then one of the chief cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The film’s plot, a retelling of the story of Faust, follows Balduin, a dissatisfied university student who makes a deal with a dark figure named Scapinelli: Balduin will receive love and wealth in exchange for Scapinelli possessing Balduin’s soul. In the next scene, the newly wealthy Balduin rescues a drowning countess from a nearby river and becomes obsessed with her. Later at a party at the Count and Countess’s lavish residence, Balduin leads the Countess to the balcony to confess his love for her. This balcony is in full view of Prague Castle in the distance and the castle exerts a brooding and ominous presence over the scene as a wandering girl named Lyduschka (Lyda Salmonova) scales the home’s walls to witness the Countess rejecting Balduin’s overtures. The other encounter between Balduin and the Countess takes place in the city’s Jewish Cemetery, a sinister location for two potential lovers, made even more so when Balduin’s ghostly double, conjured by the Mephistophelean Scapinelli, appears and scares the Countess off. Exterior scenes like these are rendered claustrophobic by columns and graves, and the film ends in the claustrophobic interior space of Balduin’s room where he shoots his double — only to see that the bullet kills him. This first horror feature manages to render the Prague exteriors as eerie and unsettling as the interiors that frame the action. Lance Lubelski

CHAPTER 4

LOCATION

AIMLESS WALK/BEZUCELNÁ PROCHÁZKA (1930)

Na Porící and Tešnov – Nové Mesto (New Town), Denisovo/Tešnov Railway station (now demolished)

AIMLESS WALK is a short film. A man rides on a tram along Na Porící from New Town to the suburb of Liben. There is no story. There is no conflict. There are no obstacles for the man to overcome. He simply takes a journey that seemingly has no point, no significance, no meaning. The man, the camera and the audience see much on this journey. Cars and wagons flit by. Trees blur. Buildings, streets, fields and people blend. In the distance, a moment of familiarity of almost recognition of a distant spire, a far away landmark. Then, it is gone. The man continues on his journey. The past, forgotten. Our eyes linger for seconds on the martial monument of Austria atop Denisovo/Tešnov Railway Station. The relatively long take jars us from the hypnotically rhythmic journey. Once the station is gone, we return to our journey of flashing images. The other passengers on the train, bored, care little or nothing about the life and lives they are passing by. The man reaches Liben, where he makes his way to the Vltava and stares at the inky-black water, and walks through muddy streets strewn with detritus. Children play along the river, while a man shovels coal next to it. New Town is filled with cobblestone streets criss-crossed with tram tracks and lined with streets. Once the man passes the long-since-demolished Denisovo, he is in District 8. Still Prague, but a Prague of towering chimneys spewing smoke into the greyladen skies. It is a journey from the charm of the old-world to the reality of an industrialized city. Edward Eaton

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