Episode 339: Closely Watched Trains (1966)

The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth

Film Reviews, Film Interviews, Film History, Tv & Film

4.8 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2017

⏱️ 154 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We kick off the first annual "Czechtember" with a look at the most-easily accessible films of the Czech New Wave, the charmingly disarming 1966 film Closely Watched Trains (AKA Ostre Sledované Vlaky or Closely Observed Trains). Co-written and directed by Jirí Menzel and based upon Bohumil Hrabal's novella, the film stars Václav Neckár as Milos Hrma, a young man from a family of eccentrics. Not wanting to work too hard, he gets a job at the local railway station where he's mentored by the earthly Hubicka (Josef Somr) and Nazi-sympathizer Zednicek (Vlastimil Brodský).

Samm Deighan and Jonathan Owen (author of Avant-garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties) join Mike to discuss Menzel's subversive film and the way it plays with "sex comedy" themes against the backdrop of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:04.5	Christopher Media. Let's make some noise.
0:07.4	Work makes a man of you.
0:09.8	Sex makes a man of you.
0:12.1	And that was the one way of becoming a man he was most anxious to try.
0:18.4	And he tried.
0:23.6	And he tried. And he tried.
0:25.6	And he tried.
0:28.6	And he tried.
0:30.6	Now, from the company that brought you,
0:32.6	Dear John, comes closely watch trains. Closely watched trains continue the New York Times, is superior and unique.
1:08.0	It shows cinematic ingenuity, comic brilliance, and a charming and poignant comprehension of the psychology of sex.
1:18.6	Life went on to say that the scene depicting the seduction of a girl telegrapher is surely one of the great comic erotic sequences in film history.
1:31.3	You're just a lot of you. Welcome to watch for.
1:53.3	Closely watch train.
2:06.7	Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Back with me once again is Ms. Sam Deegan.
2:14.3	Hello. Also joining us this week is Mr. Jonathan Owen. Hello, good to be here. We kick off Czech Timber with perhaps one of the most easily accessible films of the Czech
2:17.8	new wave, Yeri Menzel's closely watched trains, or if you're in the UK, closely observed
2:23.3	trains. The film tells the tale of Miloš Verma, a young man who comes from a family
2:28.4	of odd characters, including his grandfather, who tried to mesmerize the Nazis as they rolled
2:33.2	into town, only to be crushed by a tank.
2:36.2	Not wanting to work too hard, Milosh has gotten a job working at the local train station.
	...

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