Closely Watched Trains () is a 1966 Czechoslovak coming-of-age comedy film. Directed by Jià ÂàMenzel, it is one of the best-known films of the Czechoslovak New Wave. It was released in the United Kingdom as Closely Observed Trains. It is a story about a young man working at a train station in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II. The film is based on a 1965 novella by Bohumil Hrabal. It was produced by Barrandov Studios and filmed on location in Central Bohemia. Released outside Czechoslovakia during 1967, it received widespread acclaim and won the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 40th Academy Awards in 1968. Nowadays the movie is assessed as one of the finest works of the Czech New Cinema.
The young Miloà ¡ Hrma, who comes from a family of misfits and malingerers, becomes an apprentice train dispatcher at a small railway station during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia near the end of the Second World War. Lanska, the middle-aged, balding stationmaster, is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder who has a kind wife, but is envious of train dispatcher HubiÃÂka's success with women. The railway station is periodically visited by Councillor ZednÃÂÃÂek, a Nazi collaborator who spouts optimistic propaganda at the staff, despite the German retreat on all fronts.
Miloà ¡ is in a budding relationship with the pretty young conductor MÃ¡à ¡a. HubiÃÂka presses for details, including how she is in bed, but the couple have only progressed to kissing, and Miloà ¡ is still a virgin. She invites Miloà ¡ to spend the night with her at her uncle's place, a photography studio. MÃ¡à ¡a is eager for intimacy, but Miloà ¡ is very uncomfortable with the situation—the uncle is awake in the next room, and the connecting door will not completely close—and ejaculates prematurely. Angered, MÃ¡à ¡a gets up and sleeps elsewhere. The next day, he slits his wrists in a bathtub at a brothel, but is saved. A young doctor at the hospital explains to Miloà ¡ that ejaculatio praecox is normal at his age, recommending that he "think of something else", such as football, and seek out an experienced woman to help him through his first sexual experience.
During the night shift, HubiÃÂka flirts with the young telegraphist, ZdeniÃÂka, and imprints her thighs and buttocks with the office's rubber stamps, before becoming intimate with her. The next morning, her mother sees the stamp marks and complains to HubiÃÂka's superiors.
Meanwhile, Miloà ¡ seeks the help of nearly everyone around the station, without much success. When he tries HubiÃÂka, the older man confides to him that he and other partisans are planning to destroy a large ammunition train as it passes the station the next morning. He instructs a willing Miloà ¡ to signal the train to slow down, and he will drop a bomb onto the train from a semaphore gantry. That night, an attractive resistance agent, code-named Viktoria Freie, delivers the time bomb. Apparently HubiÃÂka has prearranged for Viktoria to spend the night with Miloà ¡. They have sex, and Miloà ¡ gains confidence in himself.
The next day, as the ammunition train is only minutes away from the station, trouble strikes. HubiÃÂka is trapped in a disciplinary hearing, overseen by ZednÃÂÃÂek, over his antics with ZdeniÃÂka. Miloà ¡ takes the bomb, climbs the gantry and drops the bomb onto the roof of a train car. However, he is spotted and shot from the train; he falls onto the roof of a car.
When ZednÃÂÃÂek determines ZdeniÃÂka was not coerced in any way, he winds up the hearing by dismissing the Czech people as "nothing but laughing hyenas" (a phrase actually employed by the senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich). Then, just around a bend in the track, the train blows up. MÃ¡à ¡a, who has been waiting to speak with Miloà ¡, picks up his uniform cap, which has been blown to her feet by the powerful winds from the blast.
The film is based on a 1965 novella of the same name by the noted Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, whose work Jià ÂàMenzel had previously adapted to make The Death of Mr. Balthazar, his segment of the anthology film of Hrabal stories Pearls of the Deep (1965). Barrandov Studios first offered this project to the more experienced directors Evald Schorm and VÃÂra Chytilová (Closely Watched Trains was the first feature film directed by Menzel), but neither of them saw a way to adapt the book to film. Menzel and Hrabal worked together closely on the script, making a number of modifications to the novel.
Menzel's first choice for the lead role of Miloà ¡ was VladimÃÂr Pucholt, but he was occupied filming Jià ÂàKrejÃÂÃÂk's Svatba jako à Âemen. Menzel considered playing the role himself, but he concluded that, at almost 28, he was too old. Fifteen non-professional actors were then tested before the wife of Ladislav Fikar (a poet and publisher) came up with the suggestion of the pop singer Václav Neckáà Â. Menzel has related that he himself only took on the cameo role of the doctor at the last minute, after the actor originally cast failed to show up for shooting.
Filming began in late February and lasted until the end of April 1966. Locations were used in and around the station building in LodÃÂnice.
The association between Menzel and Hrabal was to continue, with Larks on a String (made in 1969 but not released until 1990), Cutting It Short (1981), The Snowdrop Festival (1984), and I Served the King of England (2006) all being directed by Menzel and based on works by Hrabal.
The film premiered in Czechoslovakia on 18 November 1966. Release outside Czechoslovakia took place in the following year.
Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Closely Watched Trains "as expert and moving in its way as was Ján Kadár's and Elmar Klos's The Shop on Main Street or Miloà ¡ Forman's Loves of a Blonde," two roughly contemporary films from Czechoslovakia. Crowther wrote:<blockquote>What it appears Mr. Menzel is aiming at all through his film is just a wonderfully sly, sardonic picture of the embarrassments of a youth coming of age in a peculiarly innocent yet worldly provincial environment. ... The charm of his film is in the quietness and slyness of his earthy comedy, the wonderful finesse of understatements, the wise and humorous understanding of primal sex. And it is in the brilliance with which he counterpoints the casual affairs of his country characters with the realness, the urgency and significance of those passing trains.</blockquote> Varietys reviewer wrote:<blockquote>The 28-year-old Jiri Menzel registers a remarkable directorial debut. His sense for witty situations is as impressive as his adroit handling of the players. A special word of praise must go to Bohumil Hrabal, the creator of the literary original; the many amusing gags and imaginative situations are primarily his. The cast is composed of wonderful types down the line.</blockquote>
In his study of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Peter Hames places the film in a broader context, connecting it to, among other things, the most famous anti-hero of Czech literature, Jaroslav Haà ¡ek's The Good Soldier à  vejk, a fictional World War I soldier whose artful evasion of duty and undermining of authority are sometimes held to epitomize characteristic Czech qualities:
<blockquote>In its attitudes, if not its form, Closely Observed Trains is the Czech film that comes closest to the humour and satire of The Good Soldier à  vejk, not least because it is prepared to include the reality of the war as a necessary aspect of its comic vision. The attack on ideological dogmatism, bureaucracy and anachronistic moral values undoubtedly strikes wider targets than the period of Nazi Occupation. However, it would be wrong to reduce the film to a coded reflection on contemporary Czech society: the attitudes and ideas derive from the same conditions that originally inspired Haà ¡ek. Insofar as these conditions recur, under the Nazi Occupation or elsewhere, the response will be the same.</blockquote>On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 21 reviews, with an average score of 7.80/10.
The film won several international awards: