Le Château des Carpathes

Oldrich Lipsky made comedies the way comedies should be made - by a manic genius with a unique and recognisable but still quirky and unpredictable imagination, a director's eye for visual humour and bizarre images, a writer's love of language and of plot twists that are either so unlikely or so obvious that either way you'd never expect them. Clever and unashamedly silly, with a great feeling for both surrealism and slapstick, colourful and in spite of everything very slick, with acting and dialogue deadpan and hilariously serious one minute, totally over the top the next. Very Czech, or rather very Czechoslovakian since he made his films between the 60s and the 80s in that now long gone totalitarian police state, but generally set in another time, even when set (as in this case) in the same place. This isn't even his best film, but it's well worth tracking down.