The „Provisional Liberty“ of Colour and Widescreen: The Czech

Co-Productions with the „West“, 1957-1969

The title of the paper refers to the first Czech post-war co-production with a “Western”
country. The movie had two titles: it was called In Currents in Czechoslovakia, while the
French partner Le Trident distributed the movie as La Liberté surveillée – Provisional Liberty.
In one of the most conservative Czechoslovak magazines, a reviewer complained about the
fact that the title asked for a “political” reading:

“... in the atmosphere of the prejudiced attitudes, the title evokes thoughts following the
line of the hostile propaganda. ... Hopefully, it is not late to give a proper name to the movie
about sportsmen’s friendship.”
(Tvorba, October 1957)

In the context of the practice of the co-productions that crossed the Iron Curtain, the
averted connotations of the title are insistently returning. In the cooperation with the
“capitalists”, the stakes were rather high for the involved subjects: for the film industry and
its leaders, for the state and the party bodies, and for the filmmakers. Such a relationship
promised better creative conditions and economic results and it might have strengthened
the director´s international recognition as well (as the directors of the “New Wave” succeeded,
despite various ramifications of the projects). At the same time, however, the participants could
have burried their professional carriers forever (as it happened to the director of Provisional
Liberty, Vladimir Vlcek).

The topic of the co-productions inside the Soviet bloc generally and of the East-West cooperation
specifically was mostly neglected in the debate on the strategies of the post-war European film
industries (with the significant exception of Marc Silberman´s study on the East-German–French co-
productions of the 1950s). My paper is focused on certain practices that we can recognize
behind the nine movies that the Czech film studio Barrandov made with a Western partner
in the 1950s and 1960s. I intend to take the co-productions as a production practice that was
highly specific and rather exceptional, but that gives, right for its limitary status, a chance to
disclose the logic of the system and of the power relations that had been asserted among
the ideological centre of the communist party bodies, the film industry, and the filmmakers.
A more specific argument that I want to follow is based on the striking fact that all the
related movies were shot either in widescreen format or on the expensive Eastman-color
film stock that was inaccessible for most of the indigenous production. Consequently, I want
to argue that the film stock and the technical equipment became a nodal point where the
ideological, economical and artistic interests crossed and which aroused willingness to enter
the fragile collaborations with the West.

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To give you a basic framework of the topic, I will start with an overview of the co-produced
movies:

Dědeček automobil (Grandfather of Cars; Alfréd Radok, 1956): a French cast

V proudech (Provisional Liberty; Vladimír Vlček, 1957): a co-production with Le Trident
(France)
31 ve stínu (Ninety Degrees in the Shade; Jiří Weiss, 1965): Raymond Stross Production,
England
Dýmky (The Pipes; Vojtěch Jasný, 1966): Constantin Film, Germany
Hoří má panenko (The Firemen´s Ball; Miloš Forman, 1967): Ponti Film, Italy
Těch několik dnů... (A Matter of Days; Yves Ciampi, 1968): Telcia, France
Touha zvaná Anada (Adrift; Ján Kadár - Elmar Klos, 1969): MPO Production Inc., United
States
Tělo Diany (Diane´s Body; Jean-Louis Richard, 1969): Renn Production, Carla Films Paris,
France
Ovoce stromů rajských jíme (Fruit of Paradise; Věra Chytilová, 1969): Elisabeth Films
Brusel, Belgium
Skřivánci na niti (Larks on a String; Jiří Menzel, 1969): Taurus Film, Germany

The co-productions as a political order

The collaborations with the French company Le Trident and the French artists in the mid-
fifties were a result of the governmental resolution from November 1955 that asked the
Ministry of Culture to intensify the cultural relations with France. The resolution was an
outcome both of the general release in the relations between the two political blocs that
had become obvious since 1954 and of the recovery in the Czech-French relations. The
ministry was explicitly ordered to co-produce a movie with France and the administration of
the State Film subsequently asked the director Alfréd Radok to cast French actors.

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The first real co-production, Provisional Liberty, was presented by the film studio Barrandov
and by the director Vlček as a governmental order with a more specific assignment – to
make the first Czechoslovak widescreen movie. The project was in line with the strategic
plans of the Ministry of Culture to extend “the scale of the cultural services for the year
1956”, which announced a slightly liberalized attitude to the distribution offer. In the
moment when Provisional Liberty reached the screens in May 1958, however, both the
international political relations and the internal cultural policy had been strongly changed.
The events in Hungary in autumn 1956, the Berlin crisis, and, finally, the eleventh congress of
the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in June 1958 resulted in a strong turn of the cultural
policy. The reviewers shot down both the movie and any possible co-productions with the
West. The review for the most prominent Czech film journal Film and Time described the
picture as “unbelievably primitive, stupid, with no logic or sense”.

The situation had nullified any chance for a co-production with a Western country till 1962,
when the establishment of the Communist Party critically evaluated the situation of the film
production, complained that no achievements at the international film festivals had been
reached, and formulated a provisional framework for the co-productions with the “West”:

“The co-productions with the socialist countries are all about the brotherly cooperation,
mutual discoveries, and the exchange of experience. In the case of the capitalistic countries,
we are interested in the support of the progressive forces, in influencing the countries, and
also in the exploitation of the possibilities to distribute movies to the inaccessible regions.”
The resolution created a limited space for the eight co-productions that followed in the
1960s, starting with Ninety Degrees in the Shade.

The co-productions and the Economic “Side-Effects” of the Cultural

Policy: exportability, higher production values, shared expenditures
The film industry had to operate in the limits pre-established by the official cultural policy
that had been defined by the bodies of the Communist Party and of the government. Within
these borders and in the late sixties even a few steps behind them, the economic results
were “only at the first place”. The State Film had to fulfil the financial plan and, at the same
time, to keep the number of the movies from the “capitalist” countries below a pre-defined
limit. The co-productions represented a suitable chance how to solve the riddle: the movies
with higher production values and a better chance at the international markets could be
itemized as the indigenous production.
And, at the same time, the foreign partners secured the otherwise unattainable values:
the hard currency and, consequently, the technical equipment and the precious colour
material, the attractive exteriors, the distribution in the Western markets, and, potentially,
artistic recognition, festival awards, and satisfying creative conditions for the young directors
of the New Wave (Jasný, Forman, Chytilová, Menzel) and their older companions (Weiss,
Kadár and Klos).

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An internal material of The State Film summarized the rules that were applied to the co-
productions as follows:
- in the case of Ninety Degrees in the Shadow: the western producer provided the film
stock and four English actors; The Czechoslovak State Film kept all the distribution
rights for the so-called “people democratic countries”, while the co-producer had to
pay a share from the receipts in his territories.
- The Pipes: the contribution of the co-producer was strictly financial (450 000 marks) –
the money paid the fees of the foreign actors and the expenses of the shooting
abroad; the Czechoslovak State Film had exclusive rights for the “people democratic
countries” and the co-producer Constantin for some of the western countries, the
rest was shared on a fifty-fifty basis.

The description aptly covers the main economic incentives of the co-productions:

- the State Film kept the usual “East bloc” market that would hardly be exceeded by
the “national” production, and sometimes even had a share in the additional
markets.

- even if the incomes were roughly limited to the same countries as usually, the
production values and, consequently, the attractiveness of the product were
incomparably higher thanks to the widescreen format and the high-quality colour
film stock:

- the widescreen format: three of the above-listed co-productions were widescreen

(Provisional Liberty, Ninety Degrees in the Shade, The Pipes). The adaptation of the
cinemas to the spectacular format was prohibitively expensive for the State
enterprise and offered experience that was still rather scarce for the viewers in
Czechoslovakia: Between the first ever Czechoslovak widescreen movie Provisional
Liberty finished in 1957 and the next Western co-production The Pipes in 1965, only
thirty four “national” productions were made in the format, which is, on average, five
features a year.

- the main attraction was the colour, however: because of the shortage of dollar
exchange, to shoot on the high-quality Eastmancolor instead of the notoriously
unreliable East-German Agfa/Orwo was either an exceptional privilege or a
contribution of a Western co-producer. Miloš Forman remarked in the relation to The
Firemen´s Ball that he had shot on Eastman: “only the oldest and the most prominent
directors ... have got the East-German colour stock Orwo. ... Ponti´s money gave us
the chance to buy a high-quality film stock from the West.” The bitter comment fits
well to the period before 1967. In 1965, the only two colour movies of the year were
co-productions with the Soviet Union and East Germany. Out of the six movies shot
in colour in 1966, the only one made fully in Eastmancolor was the co-production
with Constantin – The Pipes.

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Different Cultures, Different Industries: The Limits of the Alliance
The commercial interests of the “Western” partner brought potentially risky and subversive
elements into the game. A project could have been diverted by the co-producer towards the
supposedly trans-national production values represented either by the idiom of the popular
generic European cinema or by the spicy elements the mode of the European art cinema was
associated with so often.
Three very different projects represent the destabilizing shifts that were made in the
direction unacceptable either for the regime or for the filmmakers.

Provisional Liberty was not originally planned as a co-production and the first indigenous
versions of the script offered a revisionary version of a socialist drama about a group of
apprentices in a factory. The script was essentially changed by the French scriptwriters,
however: the new version introduced a group of French canoeists visiting Czechoslovakia; a
petty theft of a machine component in the factory was substituted by a mysterious robbery
and a murder; instead of a confused juvenile delinquent which returns to the redeeming
embrace of the collective, Robert Hossein plays a part of an enigmatic robber; his forthright,
philosophizing rival in love had been changed to a self-sacrificing and rather stuffy model of
a socialist man; and instead of the self-confident, straightforward girl who the men fight for,
Marina Vlady plays an infatuated young woman nearly-seduced by the decadent side of the
Western life that Robert Hossein represented. And the attractive long takes of Paris, Prague,
Slovakian mountains and villages presumably supplied the travelogue-like imagery.
In the result, the movie was harshly criticized and the director Vlček, awarded by the Stalin´s
prize in 1953, had been pushed away since 1957. A few years later, he left Czechoslovakia
for France.

The second example is Vojtěch Jasný´s movie The Pipes that represented a kind of crossover
between the popular and the “art” idioms of the European cinema and fitted well to the
strategic portfolio of the production company Constantin. The widescreen movie based on
Ilya Ehrenburg´s short stories wanders through attractive sets (London, the Alps, an English
castle) and popular genres (melodrama, German/Austrian Heimat films, erotic comedies).
These elements were intersecting with the “auteurist” touch through the person of the
director (who was internationally recognized for his work with colour cinematography in
When the Cat Comes) and through the reflexive approach to the genres. The status of an “art
movie” was affirmed by the presence of The Pipes in the competition in the Cannes film
festival. A conflict between the director and the company emerged when Constantin forced
Vojtěch Jasný to repeat the casting of the popular romantic comedy The Gripsholm Castle
and to cast actors that fitted better to the prevalent model of the popular European co-
productions: the Danish singer Gitte Haenning, Nadja Tiller, her husband Walter Giller, and
the Czech star Jana Brejchová. As a result of the disagreement, Jasný denied continuing with
the shooting and the movie finally consisted of three instead of the planned four short
stories.

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The last example is the notorious story of Miloš Forman´s picture The Firemen´s Ball: the
Italian producer Carlo Ponti was annoyed after the first screening, complained about the
slow tempo, the poorly looking erotic scene, the political slant, the weak commercial
potential. When his proposal to cut the movie down to 50 minutes and make it a first
instalment of a two-chapter movie was declined, he abused a provision in the contract and
withdrew his investment. Forman and the picture were “rescued” by the French producer
Claude Berri who bought the rights for the movie.

Besides these disagreements on the production values of the movies, however, there was
a more general risk involved in the cooperation with the co-producers from the West. In the
atmosphere of loosening the ideological control over the film industry in the late 1960s, the
interest of the Western investors in the Czechoslovak “miracle” of the New Wave and the
promise of lucrative conditions met with a strong interest of the directors. The
representatives of the Barrandov studios complained about the long negotiations of the
directors with the Western partners which blocked their potential work on the indigenous
projects (Carlo Ponti was perceived as the most predatory hunter out on the beat). In the
worst case, the directors could have been engaged in foreign projects where Barrandov
would have had profit neither of money nor of prestige.

The competition for the directors of the “New Wave” was finally “resolved” by the Soviet
invasion in 1968 and, above all, by the ideological turn and the conservative counter-attack
against the liberalism of the late 1960s which started in August 1969. Some of the young
generation, as Forman, Jasný or Passer, left the country, and the rest was dismissed for a few
years.

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Conclusion:
I believe that an extensive collaborative international research on the East-West co-productions could
supply the missing dimension to the topic of the (West)European co-productions of the 1950s and
1960s that has been well covered by the work of Tim Bergfelder, Anne Jäckel or Mark Betz.
My case study intended, however, to use the co-productions as a point which offers an
expedient position for an insight into the mechanisms and ideological and economic limits of
the socialist film industry. The co-productions served to various goals of the regime, the film
industry and the directors. The contradictions among the intentions of these subjects were
resolved according to their respective power positions that had significantly changed during
the covered period of thirteen years. We could grasp, however, the general reasons that had
motivated the cooperation on the Czech side, and most of them would not be exclusive for
the conditions under a communist regime at all: the wider distribution, the shared
expenditures, the higher production values. Specific features are, of course, the power
relations among the bodies of the communist party, the industry and the filmmakers.
I want to point out, however, the role of the material shortage and technical backwardness
of the regime that had significantly determined the interest of all the subjects in the co-
productions. Apart from the black-and-white widescreen movie Ninety Degrees in the Shade,
all of the co-produced movies were shot on Eastmancolor – which was an absolutely
exceptional material till 1967 and rather precious henceforth. Besides, Provisional Liberty
was the first Czechoslovak widescreen movie at all.
The economic, competitive and artistic merits that the technical equipment brought to the
industry and the filmmakers are obvious. It was the interest of the communist leaders in the
prestige and the symbolic meaning of the competitive film products, however, which gave
the decisive impetus to the co-productions. The shortage of a quality film stock and the slow
adaptation to the widescreen format were a disadvantage both for the domestic self-
affirmation of the regime and for the international competition. Consequently, it was the
“capitalist” equipment that allowed the regime to present the widescreen colour movies as
an attribute of the process of modernization at home and that brought a significant part of
the modern cinema of the Czechoslovak New Wave to the international market.
If we shift our attention from the transformations and hybridizations of the stylistic, narrative,
generic and star systems as they were analyzed along the axis Europe/Hollywood,
we can glimpse various strategies of overwriting at the level of technology. The failure of the
effort of the Soviet bloc to offer competitive colour, widescreen or 3-D systems led to the
attempt to appropriate the Western technology, first, as an expression of the socialist
modernity, and, then, as the tool for the modern art cinema of the Czech New Wave. In both
cases, the connotations of the material and of the technology were supposed to be
suppressed to an invisible, un-significant supplement to the socialist system of values in the
1950s, or, to the artistic vision in the 1960s.