A Czech Movie with Unknown Title

I saw long time ago a Czech movie that was extraordinary. I think it was made in the sixties or seventies.

Unfortunately I don't know the title - I don't know the director, either. I watched it on TV sometime in the 80's. It was a Saturday night, I was visiting some friends - the movie was on a Bulgarian channel, so it was dubbed in Bulgarian. The original soundtrack was still audible, Czech and Bulgarian words were flowing together. None of us knew Czech or Bulgarian, only a bit of Russian, which could have helped, maybe. Fortunately for us, there were English subtitles.

I thought it was a movie by Forman - however it seems that it is made by another Czech filmmaker. I did a search on the imdb, with no luck at all.

It is about a group of very old people, living in a small town - they prepare the celebration of 50 or 60 years since high school graduation.

As they are very old, there are all kind of comic situations. Four of them prepare a piece of chamber music for the event, only each one has his own habits, his own ideas... One of these folks is a difficult person, always giving hard time to the others.

Actually he hopes to meet at the celebration his love from the high school years. He had got married with another girl - and life went on, not particularly bad, while not particularly happy, either. And he would like to see his old girlfriend - he does not know very well what he would say to her, but he hopes somehow that a kind of miracle would take place, and his life would find suddenly a sense.

The day of the event comes - only the old flame is no more - she had died a couple of months ago.

Our fellow leaves the party, as he does not want his tears to be seen. One of the other classmates comes and hugs him, let's have some fun - let's dance and sing in the park, barefoot.

But the militiaman can give us a fine!

He will not, come on. Let's do it!

And, yes, the miracle takes place - the old nasty guy starts to smile.

And meanwhile I found the title! I asked on imdb and I got this response:

It is a legendary Czech TV film from 1980 called Nezralé maliny (Unripe raspberries), directed by Frantisek Filip and written by Jirí Hubac. It´s a real jewel among tv works of that time. Information about it is unfortunately very rare anywhere.

(karel-capek)

(Filmofilia)