...and the Fifth Horseman Is Fear

I remember seeing this film when I was much younger and was so taken / moved by it that I've been trying to find it to own. The depiction of the main character's descent into near madness by the evil Nazi occupiers is probably one of the finest performances ever! This movie should DEFINITELY be taped and released as soon as possible.

The Fifth Horseman is Fear is one of those remarkable classics of the Czech so-called New Wave film making, until it was suppressed by the Communist government (and this film, incidentally was banned there). This is one of my most favorite films and I have been waiting and waiting for it to become available (it used to be distributed by Orion Films). Finally, the DVD was issued, and I discovered that one of the key scenes is omitted. This scene, the protagonist's visit to a Nazi brothel (in the course of his search for morphine for the wounded resistance fighter) was one of the original highlights of an already wonderful film. So what happened? Was it censored in the copy that the DVD people used? If anyone has any information about this or as to how I can find the "real" thing, I'd be grateful.

Superlative camera angles for a Sixties film! Zbynek Brynych is one of the most important Czech directors after Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel and animator Jiri Trnka. The film is about the Nazi Holocaust while it is never openly stated in the film. The confiscated property of the Jews sent to concentration camps and a chimney emitting black smoke are the only close indirect indicators of the main subject. I couldn't spot the word Jews in the English subtitles. The visuals did show the Swastika in a casual manner on printed matter. The use of a young boy and the ominously empty streets are the highlights of the director's creativity. There are two different sequences of two different men on a bicycle--the differences speak volumes, even though the location is the same one. Varied reactions of the building's inhabitants, who knew each other, in the final sequence are amazingly well-captured by the director and his incredibly talented cinematographer Jan Kalis.

I saw this movie when I was a teenager and it's stayed with me ever since. Why it has never been digitalized for VHS and/or DVD is a mystery to me. This movie captures the true essence of horrible Nazi atrocities without today's special effects or computer graphics and is able to communicate it's primal message to the viewer with the best acting, directing and film noir that I've ever seen. Strangely, the film (titled "The Fith Horseman is Fear" for American audiences) leaves you with a sense of hope and is somewhat uplifting - I strongly recommend it and hope that this message helps attract enough attention for someone to format it for home viewing.

A prophecy in Zechariah 6: 1-3 mentions red horses, black horses, white horses, and grey horses riding out into the world with no real mention of their riders. But in Revelation 6:2-7 in a description of the Apocalypse the riders are given some characteristics: the white horse has a rider with a bow who "went out conquering and to conquer"; the rider of the red horse takes peace from the earth and is given a great sword; the rider on the black horse has a balance and illustrates the calamitous rise in prices of scarce and necessary food; and the rider of the pale horse's name is Death.

Any type of war engenders cruelties. But when hope is displaced by fear, survival is surely threatened. As a fellow doctor tells Dr. Braun, in search of morphine to abate the pain of a wounded man on whom he has operated "We have up to 20 Jewish suicides a day - we manage to save most of them." Certainly a society that has placards proliferating everywhere admonishing "Inform promptly and accurately and insure your own safety," along with the 44811 informer number to call would not give much cause for hope. But Dr. Braun does not seem to give up hope completely - even when all is dark he says "A man is as he thinks - you can't change that." And yet Dr. Braun is assailed by fear also. More than once we hear martial music without seeing a band and Dr. Braun also sees a man with some sort of van who is there one moment and gone the next. Do we see what we fear most? It's hard to tell.

I found the musical score very intriguing - starting off before the opening credits was a brass fanfare, merging into flutes and then saxophones (and/or other reed instruments) and then back to brass and flutes throughout the opening credit sequences against a backdrop of massed notices on walls. The succession of one type of instrument being replaced by another was continued throughout the film.

I was limited to what the different wall placards were saying by occasional subtitles. It would have been interesting to know if the placards dealt with more than just informing. There was one word seen repeatedly - it seemed to start out "PYSA" or "PYHLA" or perhaps "PYKASRA" - the font type made it difficult to decipher . . . and my Czech is rather minimal, ah no . ..

The film music ends much as it began with brass playing to images of trains, then flute and then brass with images of cars then more flutes followed by piano with views of crowds and then ending with the brass section again.

"Death's a trifle if it's not my own."

But Dr. Braun carries on as best he can - "A man is as he thinks - you can't change that."