Giulietta, Romeo e le tenebre

Jiri Weiss's 1960 film Romeo, Juliet and Darkness is a wholly convincing, tightly controlled account of the human costs of despotism. The story takes place against the background of the Nazi occupation of Prague, and more specifically the horrible repercussions visited upon the population after the assassination of Heydrich, the leading Nazi in Czechoslovakia. A young man, in his final year at school, takes in and shelters in the attic of his mother's house a Jewish girl of the same age, going to great pains both to conceal her presence and to find food for her. Weiss's direction is superb, with particularly good establishment of the atmosphere of the flats where most of the action occurs. Watching the move now, one almost feels one is present in the Prague of 1942, the movie being particularly effective at showing how routine life goes on under even the most harsh of political circumstances. The two young actors in the lead roles both give excellent and very moving performances. There are also a range of vividly-drawn characters in the background. At least two things make the film noteworthy, looking at it from today's perspective. First, the film is almost wholly free of any propagandistic elements, presumably quite an achievement given the time and place of its production. The film, with its emphasis on a humanistic depiction on the trials of ordinary people, points towards the Czech New Wave films which would appear five or six years later. Second, Weiss's direction is such that the film is simultaneously vivid and yet understated, the relative absence of histrionics making it all the more absorbing. The denouement is very powerful indeed, making the film (available on DVD in the UK) one that is very worthwhile seeking out. I bought the DVD not knowing what to expect; I ended up watching a masterpiece.

Here we have a love story set in a quadrangled apartment block in Prague during the Second World War, as background the real life assassination of cruel Nazi despot Reinhardt Heydrich, and the resultant inhuman reprisals. By coincidence, a young Jewish refugee, Hanka, arrives at the apartment block a day after her contacts have departed, totally alone, she is befriended by Aryan teenager Pavel who stows her away in a storeroom up in the rafters where he usually develops photos.

There's something very curiously appealing about the motif of the isolated ethereal and quiet Jewess, Hanka in this movie is reminiscent of Rowena in Sir Walter Scott's famous novel Ivanhoe; though speaking in ethnic terms is somewhat of a betrayal of the love between Hanka and Pavel: he points out that terms like Aryan are "their language".

I think that innocence is the prevailing theme, the setting a rather barren and lonely one for such a pretty flower. In my corner of the world teenagers video-message each other home-brew pornography, watch videos of beheadings on the internet and play vandal-simulation computer games. In the world that Jirí Weiss has created/resurrected, the lovers discuss moving to the North Pole, as a day there lasts six months of the year. For them it is a magic place heard of only in books, instead of a place which a group of idiots race to in a four-by-four on television (if you don't teeth with that popular culture reference, consider yourself fortunate).

What's quite realistic in the movie is the way in which love thrives on reliance. Hanka is dead without Pavel, who sells off prize possessions in order to keep her fed. This in counterpoint to modern times, and my corner of the world, where a woman needs a man, as they say, like a fish needs a bicycle, and often romantic love exists, if at all, as a knowing post-ironic pretence rather than as an enveloping universe or the velvet swaddle that it can be. An analogy of Hanka and Pavel's love in the movie is of a binary system, two stars orbiting around one centre of gravity, alone together in vastness. By the by Pavel identifies Proxima Centauri as binary, whereas in fact it is nearby Alpha Centauri which is binary.

Hanka is so curious, she has mysterious aquiline features, and a feeling of comfortable fatalism, if that isn't too odd a thing to say, which is shown in material terms by the ease with which she wears her Star-of-David-tagged overcoat. If you've ever held a small bird you will know this feeling of fragility, hollow bones and feather contribute to a feeling that you're holding a fragile almost-nothingness in your hands. There's something of that in spritely Hanka. I think Pavel is a great and interesting Romeo, he's so gentle and kind, but really powerless, which you can see when a false alarm happens and he almost disintegrates.

The ethnic tensions in the movie are worth exploring, Prague was historically a multicultural city and contained a sizable population of ethnic Germans (Aryans) and also German-speaking Jews. It's therefore not unusual to find a lady in the movie who is Czech by nationality but also speaks fluent German and has taken up with a German Wehrmacht officer. This population of German speakers lived under considerable threat, naturally viewed as collaborators (with varying degrees of accuracy), an end to occupation a threat as much as a relief. Indeed after the war the controversial Beneš decrees realised that threat and initiated the forced exile of the majority of the German-speaking population.

There's potentially profit to be gained from comparing this to another Eastern European WWII city under siege, Lwow from Zulawski's The Third Part of the Night (1971). Zulawski's film is all blanched nausea, surreal, fractured, like a fever dream. Romeo, Juliet and Darkness by contrast is more benign, chary of showing violence, sedate and making good use of suggestion and implication, for example the lingering thought of the night-time of six months (which is basically the Heydrich incident). Despite the very innocent and unassuming nature of both the filming, characters and the subject, I think the movie speaks loudly of love and tolerance, and should be commended.

For my friend Claire.

A love story, wartime thriller, and social commentary set during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Artfully shot in black and white, and undergirded by a strong musical track, it explores the risks of sheltering a Jewish fugitive whose a life might be saved (or might not), but where the lives of many bystanders are thereby put in peril.

Fritz Lang's earlier US-made "Hangmen Also Die" dealt with the same historical event (the assassination of occupation head Gen. Heydrich), but his was a more kinetic and extroverted treatment compared to Weiss' more personal, introspective, and poetic view. In a sense, this is the Anne Frank story moved from Amsterdam to Prague.

Set during World War II in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, a young man in Prague shelters a Jewish girl, knowing that in trying to save her life he is putting the lives of all those around him in grave danger. Events are complicated further with the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich the top Nazi leader who ruled over Czechoslovakia with an iron fist. His killing leads to brutal reprisals by the Nazi authorities meaning that Jews and those who shelter them find themselves under even greater scrutiny and peril.

I was surprised to learn after watching this one that it was made some time before the Czech New Wave began. It is clearly a very forward-looking and bold film for its time. Completely convincing and realistic at all times, it is in essence a doomed love story with the backdrop of the European Holocaust hovering darkly always in the background. As such it is quite a depressing story but to tell it any other way would be to ignore the horror of the facts of the time. Despite the historic events involving the Heydrich assassination, the approach taken to the narrative is a highly personal one, with the events rarely going beyond the apartment block in which the characters live. Acting is strong across the board, with Daniela Smutná as the girl and Ivan Mistrík as the boy who tries to help her, both especially good. This is a strong film in many ways and one of the chief ones being that you understand why everyone acts the way they do, even if certain characters act despicably. But fear and oppression has a way of bringing out the bad in many of us, but also the good in some too. This highly impressive war drama should be more widely seen.