The Ear

It took twenty years for Karel Kachyňi’s work to see the light of day. At the time of its creation, this political satire was simply too severe for the communist government in Czechoslovakia. This is hardly surprising: The Ear unearths layers upon layers of systemic filth, and all it takes is one night with a couple returning home after a communist party event. He is a senior party official, she is the daughter of a bar owner. It begins with lost keys and ends with mutual accusations and growing paranoia. Is there someone eavesdropping on their argument? Or is the entire country suffering from collective schizophrenia? Kachyňi’s film’s ambiance resembles Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but its tone is more reminiscent of Ryszard Bugajski’’s Interrogation. Incidentally, The Ear competed with the latter for the Palme d’Or in 1990. These are two equally excellent dramas about surveillance – as part of the festival, we highlight the one that has not yet found a large audience in Poland.

Igor Kierkosz

Karel Kachyňa (1924–2004) was a Czech director and screenwriter whose career spanned five decades. He made his best-known films, such as Long Live the Republic! (1965) and Coach to Vienna (1966), together with screenwriter Jan Procházka. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 these politically critical works were withdrawn from distribution, while his most famous film, The Ear (1970), didn’t even have its premiere until 20 years later. From that point on he was mainly directing films for children and historical films, the most notable of which are the Holocaust films Forbidden Dreams (1986) and The Last Buttefly (1990).