Updates, Live: Rediscovering an Old Movie: Kapelusz Pana Anatola

It all started this morning with a question a friend put on a discussion list: is anyone who remembers Mr. Anatol's Hat? A movie made sometime by the end of the fifties, a comedy that we were not even sure of the country of origin: it could have been a Czech movie, or a Polish one, or even a Soviet film.

Actually I hadn't seen the movie, but I was remembering the title, as some girl had once asked me (it was in the sixties, and we all were teenagers), hey Pierre, are you a dreamer like Anatol?

I was also remembering the poster as it was hanging in front of some Bucharest theaters, and that was all. I knew that it was a comedy, I was sure that it was a Soviet movie (and I was wrong), and I was vaguely sad for missing it.

Well, the friend today was definitely sure that Mr. Anatol's Hat wasn't a Soviet film. He remembered it to be either Czech or Polish and told us the plot: Anatol, a chemist on the loose, is hanging around carrying with him a pharmaceutical balance; he enters coffee shops and small restaurants and keeps weighing cakes, steaks, and stuff: innocent plays; to his surprise he finds then small money in his hat: innocent bribes; a sitcom, very tasted by the kids we were.

Based on this story I thought it was a Czech production. As nobody else knew more, I decided to make a search to see if the movie could be found on youTube.

First of all, I needed the exact title: as the movie had been screened in Bucharest, I knew only the Romanian title (Palaria lui Anatol - The Hat of Anatol). So I found an online Romanian - Czech dictionary which led me to Klobouk Anatola.

From here I found the exact title (in Czech), Klobouk Pana Anatola, and the synopsis. Only the synopsis was in Czech, a language from which I know just a couple of words:

Satyrická komedie, první ze série o příhodách malého poctivého úřednička pana Anatola. V tomto filmu si pan Anatol koupí nový kloubouk, aniž by tušil, že onen kloubouk je poznávacím znamením zlodějské tlupy. Pan Anatol samozřejmě netuší, proč se mu dějí různé podivné okolnosti, a svým chováním přispěje k dopadení celé zločinecké bandy.

I tried a reverse translation, but I wasn't able to get a decent result.

I looked then on imdb, using the Czech title, and so I found Kapelusz Pana Anatola: it was made in 1957 and it was a Polish movie! This was not the only surprise. The plot was also very different from what my friend had told us. He actually mixed two movies, taking the title from the first, and the story from the second! Anatol was not a chemist, rather a bank clerk, and he was not carrying any balance at all. Also he was not hanging around through coffee-shops and restaurants: he was using instead the bus every morning to go from home to the bank where he worked.

But here is the synopsis, as I found it on imdb:

Anatol Kowalski works in a bank. He loves his old hat but one day he looses it in a bus. He decides to buy a new one, so he goes to the store and chooses a beautiful Italian hat. The next day as he is going by bus to work, he finds a splendid watch in his pocket. The next day he finds another new watch in his pocket. The guy goes to the police station where Lt. Zaremba explains him the mystery: because of the hat he is taken for someone else who is part in a scheme with stolen watches.

No wonder that the German title of the movie was Der Gangsterhut!

And after that I found the movie on youTube. It is naturally spoken in Polish and it has no English subtitles. That's it:) Enjoy!