When the Cat Comes

This is probably one of the best movies ever made. And it is not excellent because of the acting or the production, after all it is one example of the early czech cinema and the spring revolution. The film is important for story it tells. This is a exemplary evaluation of human behavior as observed by an estranged cat, who is only capable of watching human beings by what they really are. I have tried to get a copy of this film for decades (I watched first time as a 12-year-old kid and again in College in the early 1970s). A gem!!!

In a small town in Czechoslovakia, the old story teller Oliva (Jan Werich) likes to plant fantasy in the brains of the children. Presently he tells the story of his former love and her magic cat, which wears glasses, to the class of the beloved and romantic teacher Robert (Vlastimil Brodský). When someone takes the glasses off, the cat shows the real feelings and personality of the person: red for those in love, purple for the hypocrites, yellow for the unfaithful and gray for the dishonest. Then, a coach arrives in town, bringing a magician (Jan Werich), the beautiful Diana (Emília Vásáryová) and the magic cat. The real feelings of the mostly selfish population are exposed, generating confusion, and the evil school director (Jirí Sovák) and the school janitor (Vladimir Mensik) decide to eliminate the cat. The students of Robert join forces to save the cat and the job of their teacher.

This beautiful and fantastic fable about human behavior is timeless and very original. The story has a great moral lesson in the end without being corny, and is highly recommended for all audiences. In Brazil, it is only available in a rare VHS. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): 'Um Dia, Um Gato' ('One Day, A Cat')

Note: On 12 June 2010, I saw this magnificent film again on DVD.

In a small town, Jan Werich is an amiable storyteller who tells the children about a fabulous cat who wear sunglasses. When his eyes are uncovered, anyone he looks at has their nature revealed by the color they turn. Up shows the cat, and raises havoc among the adults, particularly Jirí Sovák, the smarmy bureaucrat who understands everything, once it's dead.

It's one of those wobbly fantasies of the 1960s like THE SEVEN FACES OF DOCTOR LAO who attempt to exalt the honesty of children -- not that I saw much of that as a child. There are lots of special effects which nowadays look like director Vojtech Jasný and his staff got their hand on an optical printer for the first time. At the time, I'm sure this movie was pretty much state-of-the-art for Eastern Europe. It hasn't aged particularly well, but there's little doubt it will still appeal to children in its insistence that they and truth matter.

The Cassandra Cat was one of the cutest films of the Eastern Bloc Cinema; the film was created in 1963, five years before Prague Spring erupted, It tells the story of a Strange Cat that arrived in a Small town, and that Cat made many people crazy, I know that this movie was funniest. I love it, and the Actor who plays Diana. Her name was Emília Vasaryová she so beautiful, and I know that this movie was the best and I loved it; good performance and many characters are Charming; I know that many people didn't watch this movie, but I recommended it to watch because this film was beautiful and cute.

"The romance between Robert and Diana has a swooning roundelay feel and Vásáryová is a gorgeous stunner in her crimson one-piece dress, whereas Brodský is an all-too hangdog nonentity that their mismatch involuntarily betrays a self-pleasing masculine fantasy. But Svatopluk Havelka's accompanying score is a lush orchestral phenomenon, WHEN THE CAT COMES is more a musical fantasy than a straight-faced parable about human nature. Plus the implementation of children as the ultimate symbol of conscience is again, an over-simplified ideal that seems more farcical than its intention in its end result.

That said, Jasný's film is a testimony of the ceaseless wellspring that generates Czechoslovak New Wave movement, the imaginings, the innovations, the forms of expression, and the pursuit of aestheticizing, which is different from other motion pictures elsewhere in the world at that time. Its mentality may sometimes err on the side of naivety and rigidity, which creates a unique situation where the overflowing creativity clashes with an ideological stasis, a fascinating geopolitical aspect of the movement."

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