I think This is the Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Comrade! International Romances in Czechoslovak Co-productions (Those Born in 1921 /1957/, May Stars /1959/ and Interrupted Song /1960/)

SKOPAL, Pavel. I think This is the Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Comrade! International Romances in Czechoslovak Co-productions (Those Born in 1921 /1957/, May Stars /1959/ and Interrupted Song /1960/). In Workshop Der Lange Weg nach Hause. Ein filmhistorisches Symposium über das Heimkehren aus dem Krieg. 2012.

Basic information

• Original name: I think This is the Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship, Comrade! International Romances in Czechoslovak Co-productions (Those Born in 1921 /1957/, May Stars /1959/ and Interrupted Song /1960/)
• Authors: SKOPAL, Pavel (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: Workshop Der Lange Weg nach Hause. Ein filmhistorisches Symposium über das Heimkehren aus dem Krieg, 2012.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Conference abstract
• Field of Study: Literature, mass media, audio-visual activities
• Country of publisher: Germany
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/12:00058572
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords in English: socialist cinema; co-productions; romance films; prisoners of war
• Tags: rivok

Abstract

For international co-productions in general, and for the Czechoslovak co-productions during the 1950s in particular, border-crossing romances represent essential nourishment for the narrative engine. I have chosen the three headlined Czechoslovak co-productions – which had been the only three co-productions situated to the period of World War II and produced in Czechoslovakia till 1960 – to point out how much were the love plots determined by the ideological lines separating the actual or potential lovers. In Those Born in 1921, a Czech young man drawn to Germany for forced labour falls in love with a German nurse. He denies participate in his friends escape to home and elects to stay with his love instead. She is arrested, however, and the Czech guy is left with a German communist, a member of resistance movement. May Stars signals a romance between a Czech girl and a young Russian officer who just liberated her village – a possibility of romance is suggested just to be erased afterwards together with the officers home address. Just the love between a Slovak soldier, serving first in the German army and then in the Czechoslovak Army Corps, and a Georgian nurse is guided to the happy end: the Slovak, first imprisoned by the Soviet army, proves his loyalty and bravery and substitutes his Georgian friend – and the nurses brother – who was killed on the Western front. I want to argue that the stories of love between members of two nations was influenced by the concepts which were inevitably dragged into the field of potential interpretations: collaboration, betrayal, gratitude, and, above all, the dynamic of the relation between two nations as occupied, liberated, doomed, redeemed, colonised, (un)equal.

Links

• GAP409/11/0586, research and development project: Name: Komparativní výzkum filmové kultury ve východním bloku, 1945-1970

Investor: Czech Science Foundation, Cinema Culture in the Eastern Bloc, 1945-1970 - A Comparative Study