This was Menzel's third feature film, after his triumphant debut with "Closely Observed Trains" and the decidedly odd "Crime in the Night Club." While "Trains" and four subsequent Menzel films were taken from the works of Bohumil Hrabal, this one derives from a novel by Vladislav Vancura, another major Czech writer. Although from an aristocratic family Vancura became a Communist, and was murdered by the Nazis as part of their reprisals for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the Final Solution and "Protector" of Bohemia and Moravia. Another, very different Vancura novel was "Marketa Lazarova", set in the violent Middle Ages: the film version by Frantisek Vlacil has been voted the best Czech film ever. I can't agree, as for me it's not even Vlacil's best. Try "Adelheid", "Shadow of the Ferns", "Smoke on the Potato Fields," "Shadows of a Hot Summer" and "Valley of the Bees" (also set in the Middle Ages) instead.
"Capricious Summer" (so called because it keeps raining) is Menzel's first colour film. It centres around three middle-aged loafers, a retired major, a priest and Antonin, owner of the small lake which is an open-air swimming pool where they spend their time. They're played by Frantisek Rehak, Vlastimil Brodsky and Rudolf Hrusinsky, all Menzel favourites. Their dull lives are transformed for a while by the arrival of a travelling tightrope-walker and magician (Menzel himself) and his lovely young partner Anna. Antonin manages to spend the night with Anna, but years of boredom and disenchantment with his wife Katerina seem to have left him impotent, and all he does is massage Anna's legs and feet (a clever shot suggests at first that he's doing something else.) Katerina, who's even more overweight than Antonin, finds out about the tryst and, thinking the worst, goes off to Menzel's caravan to form a menage a trois with him and Anna. The magician soon gets as tired of her in three days as Antonin has been for years, and to the latter's despair she returns home. The priest and the major both fancy Anna, the major having an lustful eating scene with her that reminds us of Finney and Joyce Redman in "Tom Jones," but neither of them gets anywhere with Anna. She and Menzel leave, and the same old life resumes.
Many small Czech towns and villages are delightful, but not the one shown here, The part of it we see, near the visitors' caravan, has no proper road, and the locals are pretty vile. A bunch of drunks nearly tear off the priest's ear lobe, and one nutcase causes Menzel to fall off his tightrope and damage his back. Smalling-2 is right to praise the period atmosphere and to find the film Chekhovian (Vancura, like Chekhov, was a doctor.) As with other Menzel films this one is rather sexist, with Anna being remarkably compliant and accommodating: by the time he made "I Served the King of England" he was filling the screen with naked beauties. However, at 74 minutes this film doesn't outstay its welcome, and there's a sense of wasted lives and missed opportunities which I found affecting.
"Capricious Summer" (so called because it keeps raining) is Menzel's first colour film. It centres around three middle-aged loafers, a retired major, a priest and Antonin, owner of the small lake which is an open-air swimming pool where they spend their time. They're played by Frantisek Rehak, Vlastimil Brodsky and Rudolf Hrusinsky, all Menzel favourites. Their dull lives are transformed for a while by the arrival of a travelling tightrope-walker and magician (Menzel himself) and his lovely young partner Anna. Antonin manages to spend the night with Anna, but years of boredom and disenchantment with his wife Katerina seem to have left him impotent, and all he does is massage Anna's legs and feet (a clever shot suggests at first that he's doing something else.) Katerina, who's even more overweight than Antonin, finds out about the tryst and, thinking the worst, goes off to Menzel's caravan to form a menage a trois with him and Anna. The magician soon gets as tired of her in three days as Antonin has been for years, and to the latter's despair she returns home. The priest and the major both fancy Anna, the major having an lustful eating scene with her that reminds us of Finney and Joyce Redman in "Tom Jones," but neither of them gets anywhere with Anna. She and Menzel leave, and the same old life resumes.
Many small Czech towns and villages are delightful, but not the one shown here, The part of it we see, near the visitors' caravan, has no proper road, and the locals are pretty vile. A bunch of drunks nearly tear off the priest's ear lobe, and one nutcase causes Menzel to fall off his tightrope and damage his back. Smalling-2 is right to praise the period atmosphere and to find the film Chekhovian (Vancura, like Chekhov, was a doctor.) As with other Menzel films this one is rather sexist, with Anna being remarkably compliant and accommodating: by the time he made "I Served the King of England" he was filling the screen with naked beauties. However, at 74 minutes this film doesn't outstay its welcome, and there's a sense of wasted lives and missed opportunities which I found affecting.