Jaromír Hanzlík at the KV IFF: “I am touched, thank you for your warm welcome.”
This year, the award for a lifetime contribution to cinematography goes to actor Jaromír Hanzlík. He personally introduced his film from the mid-Sixties.
“I am touched, thank you all for your warm welcome,” said Jaromír Hanzlík to the packed Municipal Theatre in Karlovy Vary.
Jaromír Hanzlík celebrated his 70th birthday in February, and was commemorated as an important figure of Czech acting by this year’s Karlovy Vary film festival, held for the fifty-third time. During the closing ceremony on Saturday, Hanzlík received an award for his artistic contribution to Czech cinematography. He was remembered not only in his starring roles; on the contrary, the organisers selected a less popular film, which denotes Hanzlík’s early acting career – the film Searching from the year 1965, directed by Jan Čuřík and Antonín Máša and depicting the atmosphere of the 1960s.
“It was my second film,” admits the actor.
He was only seventeen when he starred in the film with mature self-confidence alongside more experienced colleagues (Jiří Pleskot, Jiřina Jirásková, Jana Brejchová, Vladimír Šmeral, Miroslav Macháček). The black-and-white film, which is notable for the graphic austerity of its visual concept, compiled several miniatures depicting the generational conflict between the parental generation and adolescent offspring.
Jaromír Hanzlík as the apathetic Michal in Searching
Jaromír Hanzlík played the character of the young Michal, an almost apathetic and unperceptive seeming youth, who particularly grates on his father’s nerves. Communication between them is strained. Michal makes it abundantly clear that his is not at all interested in his father’s self-exploring considerations.
His almost ostentatious lack of interest is perhaps an expression of his immaturity, perhaps the search for a pose, perhaps a defiant response to the heavily felt hypocrisy, the contradiction between words and actions. His defiance takes on the form of absolute passivity. Apart from occasional reproaches, he refuses to say anything and withdraws even further into the shell of passive observation.
Reflection of the young Sixties generation
Hanzlík demonstrates his acting formability, with splendid vocal and mimic expression of annoyance from the constant mentoring, his tiny gestural quivering denotes elements of unease and the possible semblance of disinterest – note at least the glint of playfulness when he handles his father’s pistol. Michal’s character is certainly formed by the overall directing concept and Hanzlík is actually a mere obedient executor: this may be why we find so much simulation and lifelessness in it. Michal was to portray certain characteristics of the adolescent generation to such an extreme degree that the generalising position almost rids him of his own identity in the sense of the unrepeatability of one psychic mechanism.
Censorship and lack of viewer interest
Even during its filming, Searching met with the disfavour of censorship. Individual versions of the screenplay were approved over the course of 1964, and after certain delays the film was shown in cinemas, and forced to undergo modifications two years later, in April 1966. The censors repeatedly objected that the story sounds hopeless and that its characters are in a state of permanent moral and political crisis. As Lukáš Skupa writes in his book Vadí – nevadí. Česká filmová cenzura v 60. letech (Matters – Doesn’t Matter. Czech Film Censorship in the 1960s), more than 400 (!) takes from various scenes were allegedly omitted. The crushing effect of the testimony was thus smoothed out, blunted, but not suppressed. Yet the film did not appeal to audiences of the time: less than a hundred thousand viewers went to see it. For comparison, another film of the same era: Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde, which opened this year’s Karlovy Vary festival to commemorate the director, reported twenty-two times more viewers.
Today, we can look at Searching as a testimony to the time of its creation, about how artists perceived their place in society and to what extent they were associated with the ongoing political turmoil, which in just a few years would ripen into the revivalist illusions of 1968.
Bloudění, CZ 1965, 79 minutes
Director: Antonín Máša, Jan Čuřík
Screenplay: Antonín Máša
Starring: Jaromír Hanzlík (Michal), Jiřina Jirásková (Michal’s mother), Jiří Pleskot (Michal’s father), Vladimír Šmeral, Jana Brejchová, Miroslav Macháček, Jan Kačer, Nataša Gollová, Jiří Adamíra, Ladislav Mrkvička, Jiří Hrzán, Taťána Fischerová
Premiere: 1 April 1966
