Jirí MenzelFilmography

I Served the King of England

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ivan Barnev, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Martin Huba, Marian Labuda

Synopsis: Despite the 1997 death of longtime friend and Closely Watched Trains collaborator Bohumil Hrabal, 1960s-era Czech New Wave filmmaker Jirí Menzel enters into a postmortem collaboration with the famed author in this pitch-black comedy detailing the shrewd rise of an ambitious waiter. All diminutive Read More

Martin Fric, A Classic of Czech Film

Teddy Bear

Actors: Tana Vilhelmova, Klara Issova, Jiri Machacek, Ivan Trojan, Natasa Burger

Synopsis: Referred to in one publication as the Czechoslovakian equivalent of The Big Chill, acclaimed writer-director Jan Hrebejk's ensemble comedy-drama Teddy Bear (AKA Medvidek, 2007) observes the nuptial relationships of three long-acquainted male buddies who appear to have everything: affluent OB-GYN Read More

Relatives

Actors: Sándor Csányi, Ildiko Toth, Oleg Tabakov, Karoly Eperjes, Erika Marozsán

Synopsis: A virtuous man discovers just how deep corruption can run, and how easy one can succumb to it, in this satiric comedy-drama from Hungarian filmmaker Istvan Szabo. When a scandal brings down the attorney general of a small but prosperous community near Budapest, Istvan Kopjass (Sandor Csanyi), a Read More

Ten Minutes Older: The Cello

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Amit Arroz, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Mark Long, Alexandra Staden, Dominic West

Synopsis: Eight master directors of world cinema combine forces for this omnibus film that focuses cumulatively on the subject of time. Bookended by cello interludes, Ten Minutes Older: The Cello presents just one parameter to each of its filmmakers: no final entry can be more or less than ten minutes long. Read More

Velvet Hangover

Actors: Jaroslav Boucek, Jaroslav Brabec, Véra Chytilová, Sasa Gedeon, Jiri Krejcik

Franciska Vasarnapjai

Synopsis: Though Hungarian politics play a key role in providing the backdrop for this account of a young woman's life, the real focus is on the long-term romance between the woman and her married lover. The tale begins just before the outbreak of WW II. Franciska is a country girl working in a mansion. One Read More

Ma Je Pomsta

Synopsis: A middle aged divorced man goes through male menopause in this Czech melodrama. Karl is the man and the lovely Klara is his daughter. She is attracted to her father and demonstrates this trying to begin an affair with a fatherly-looking college professor. He rejects her and the despondent girl Read More

The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin

Crew: Director

Actors: Gennady Nazarov, Zoya Buryak, Vladimir Ilyin, Alexei Zharkov, Valery Zolotukhin, Zinoviy Gerdt

Synopsis: A satirical look at Stalinism and Soviet bureaucracy, the movie is based upon a previously banned Russian novel by Vladimir Voinovich. Ivan Chonkin, an uncomplicated man with a taste for sex, is a soldier assigned to guard a broken down airplane in Red, a tiny rural village. Unbeknownst to him Read More

Joint Venture

Actors: Michaela Kuklova, Gregor Bloeb, Nina Franoszek, Jirí Menzel, Jan Novotny

Synopsis: This Austrian comedy, with an Austrian and Czech cast, looks at international business in East Europe. Eva is a hotel bar dancer. When the eighty-something Japanese businessman Harada asks her to marry him and front a business deal that would allow him to buy property in Prague, Eva readily Read More

La Petite Apocalypse

Actors: Jirí Menzel, André Dussollier, Pierre Arditi, Anna Romantowska

Synopsis: In this cynical comedy, an renowned, out-of-work, unpublished "underground" writer from formerly Communist Poland is driven to unusually desperate measures in order to get his work published. Stan (Jiri Menzel) has been living in the attic apartment of his ex-wife's home, which he shares with a Read More

Vsetcko Co Mam Rad

Actors: Juraj Nvota, Gina Bellman, Zdena Studenkova, Jirí Menzel

Synopsis: When the people in your life are just too treacherous to deal with in a straightforward manner, the temptation to yield to them and to become involved with the problems of relative strangers, which seem more solveable, becomes overwhelming. This is what Tomas (Juraj Nvota) has done for some time. Read More

Zebracka Opera

Crew: Director

Actors: Josef Abrhám, Marian Labuda

Synopsis: Unlike any other opera, the so-called Beggar's Opera is not just one composition, but a lineage of adapted compositions, beginning with the original hugely successful 1728 political satire written by Englishman John Gay. Composers and writers have penned variations on it ever since. The most Read More

Konec Starych Casu

Crew: Director

Actors: Marian Labuda, Jaromir Hanzlik

Synopsis: This bedroom farce takes place at a large country estate in the period between the two world wars. It has been rented by Stoklasa (Marian Labuda) a somewhat uncouth but very wealthy businessman, who hopes to buy it. He and his family and staff have settled down comfortably when they are visited by Read More

Utekajme, Uz Ide!

Actors: Marian Zednikovic, Zuzana Bydzovská, Milan Lasica, Andrej Hryc, Slavka Sabova

Synopsis: A family who struggles to get by uses their neighbor's luxury apartment while he is away in this delightful situation comedy. Sysel (Marian Zednikovic) lives with his wife and two children in a one-room flat. While practicing his karate moves one day, Sysel accidentally kicks a hole in the wall Read More

Vesnicko Má Stredisková

Crew: Director

Actors: Janos Ban, Marian Labuda

Synopsis: Jiri Menzel of Closely Watched Trains fame directed the sweet little Czechoslovakian comedy/drama My Sweet Little Village. The life's blood of the titular community is a collective farm. Marian Labuda is the farm's truck driver, and also the partner-protector of Janos Ban, who is the village Read More

Prague

Crew: Director

Felhojatek

Actors: Jirí Menzel, Mari Kiss, Cecilia Esztergalyos

Synopsis: In a charming comedy set in the 1920s, Czech director Jiri Menzel gives an inspired rendition of a bemused, confused Dr. Gyorgy Racz who returns to Budapest after a long absence and comes across Lajos Nemeth (Miklos Tolnay), an old friend in deep trouble. Lajos has several women on a string, or Read More

Slavnosti Snezenek

Crew: Director

Actors: Rudolf Hrusínsky, Jaromir Hanzlik, Jiri Schmitzer, Petr Cepek, Zdenka Hadrobolcova

Synopsis: Acclaimed Czech director Jiri Menzel has pulled off another successful collaboration with writer Bohumil Hrabal in this light, sometimes saucy farce about two warring hunting factions in a small village and how they end up in a rousing, comic showdown. The village community is made up of a broad Read More

Szivzur

Actors: Gábor Máté, Dorottya Udvaros, Jirí Menzel, Judith Pogany, Juli Basti

Synopsis: A young doctor and his attractive wife have settled in a village of eccentrics that houses two school marms longing for a good relationship with a man, an elderly woman who intermittently pretends to be dying, a veterinarian with an alcoholic wife, and other odd characters. To top everything off Read More

Buldoci a Tresne

Actors: Marian Labuda, Rudolf Hrusínsky

Synopsis: In this weak parody of gangster movies, Carmello Mushillo (Marian Labuda) is a low man in the hierarchy of Mafia dons, and when he angers the head honcho, he has to flee for his life to Prague with two companions. His flight through various locales and involvement with some petty criminals provide Read More

Upir Z Feratu

Actors: Jirí Menzel, Dagmar Veskrnova, Petr Cepek, Jana Brezkova, Jan Schmid

Synopsis: In a plot that needed a transfusion somewhere mid-stream, a vampire-mobile is the car of the hour for Madam Ferat, who uses its fanged gas pedal to draw blood from the foot of the driver as he, or she, accelerates -- for the car "runs" on blood. A physician begins to investigate the strange car Read More

Koportos

Actors: Lajos Szabó, Jirí Menzel

Synopsis: A bereaved gypsy from the city travels to the country to bury his beautiful young wife. He promises the priest some raffia baskets for his services, but the man is met with resistance by his own people for wanting to give his wife an elaborate funeral. The widower is robbed by the man who delivers Read More

Postriziny

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jiri Schmitzer, Magda Vasaryova, Jaromir Hanzlik, Rudolf Hrusínsky

Synopsis: Short Cut is a comedy revealed more in the acting and witty dialogue than in the simple premise of the story itself: how the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal was born. Actually, the story is, in many ways, the writer's conception. The setting is a small town where Hrabal's father Francine (Jiri Schmitzer Read More

Minden Szerdan

Actors: Janos Ban, Tibor Szilagyi

Bajecni Muzi S Klikou

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Rudolf Hrusínsky, Jirí Menzel, Blazena Holisova, Vladimir Mensik

Synopsis: This 1978 film, set in 1907, is a tribute commemorating the 80th year of Czechoslovak filmmaking. Among the accomplishments of Czechoslovak filmmakers of the period are, the improvement on the Lumière camera and the creation of a commercially viable indigenous cinema years before Berlin. Read More

Hra o jablko

Actors: Jirí Menzel, Evelyna Steimarova

Synopsis: Since he works many hours in the maternity ward of a Czech hospital, the comic couplings of a young doctor take place in whatever out-of-the way spots he can find. Sometimes he has a few free hours, and he takes his women to a secluded spot. Some of these spots have become legends: once he took Read More

Na Samote U Lesa

Crew: Director

Actors: Josef Kemr, Zdenek Sverak, Daniela Kolarova, Ladislav Smoljak

Synopsis: In this film, a couple, after seeing the lovely job a friend of theirs has done in converting an old mill house into a cozy mansion, moves into an old farmhouse after persuading the current owner, an old man, to leave. When they arrive, he appears to be preparing to leave, but it soon becomes Read More

Kdo Hleda Zlate Dno

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jan Hrusínský, Julius Pantik

Synopsis: When he returns to Prague from a stint in the Army, Lada does not seem to fit in anywhere, and he cannot get the hang of the system of deliberately underperforming on the job. His girlfriend tries to keep him in the city with a variety of stratagems, but he eventually takes a job as a truck driver Read More

Skrivánci na niti

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Rudolf Hrusínsky, Vaclav Neckar, Vlastimil Brodský, Leos Sucharipa, Jitka Zelenohorska

Synopsis: It is little wonder that this film was withheld from release by the communist government of Czechoslovakia from 1969 to its release in 1990 at the Berlin Film Festival. What's amazing is that it was made at all and that, having been made, it survived to be shown. The story concerns the Read More

Spalovac Mrtvol

Actors: Rudolf Hrusínsky, Vlasta Chramostova, Ilja Prachar

Synopsis: A man in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia works as a cremator of dead bodies. He believes he is doing the souls of the dead a favor because of his beliefs in Tibetan religion. A Nazi convinces the man he has German blood in him and that his wife and children are Jewish. By now the man has been Read More

Dita Saxová

Actors: Krystyna Mikolajewska, Josef Abrhám, Dana Syslova

Synopsis: A young Jewish girl survives her stay in a Nazi concentration camp and later finds difficulty adjusting to postwar life in an orphanage sponsored by an international organization. What little money she comes across she spends on her friends. When she meets a sickly young girl, she takes the Read More

Capricious Summer

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Rudolf Hrusínsky, Vlastimil Brodský, Frantisek Rehak, Jana Drchalova

Synopsis: The Czechoslovakian Capricious Summer is based on a novel by Jan Libora. The plot focuses on three middle-aged vacationers at a summer resort. The tourist's plans for rest and relaxation are messed up when a circus tightrope walker and his toothsome daughter arrive on the scene. Director Jiri Menzel Read More

Nyvrat Ztraceneho Syna

Actors: Jan Kacer, Jana Brejchova, Jirí Menzel

Synopsis: The mind of a man whose life is apparently running smoothly but who attempts suicide is delved into in this sincere movie. The story catches up with him during his treatment at a mental health clinic which grants him short passes away, but to which he must return. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Read More

Closely Watched Trains

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Vaclav Neckar, Jitka Bendova, Vladimir Valenta, Libuse Havelkova, Josef Somr

Synopsis: Czech director Jiri Menzel's Closely Watched Trains (Ostre sledovane vlaky) was the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1967. In the story, based on Bohumil Hrabal's novel of the same name, Vaclav Neckar plays a Czech railroad worker during the Nazi occupation. He Read More

Pearls of the Deep

Crew: Director

Actors: Ferdinand Kruta, Alois Vachek

Synopsis: Five directors team up for this drama that strings the stories together in one 105-minute Czech feature. "Mr. Baltazar's Death" is directed by Jiri Menzel. Jan Nemec directs "The Imposters" in which two elderly men nearing death keep themselves alive by telling each other lies about their careers. Read More