Like the avant-garde of other countries, Czech filmmakers of the inter-war period also produced several city symphonies, such as Prague by Night (Svatopluk Innemann, 1928) and Aimless Walk (Alexandr Hackenschmied, 1930). In 1934 Otokar Vávra (1911–2011) contributed to this cycle of films with Living in Prague.
In Vávra’s Prague portrait, the influence of Ruttmann’s Berlin (1927) and Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) is almost tangible. The Czech filmmaker’s variation on the city symphony concept adapts many of the motifs and editing techniques introduced and established by Ruttmann and Vertov quite literally, including the one-day time span, the suicide scene from Berlin, or the fire department from Man with a Movie Camera, relocated in Prague. However, the film is not a simple copy of its famous predecessors. Vávra had studied architecture and the film juxtaposes, often by means of low-angle shots, the old and classical buildings of Prague to its new and modern architecture. After World War II Vávra would become one of the co-founders and teachers of the Prague Film Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts.
Eva Hielscher
further reading
Liehm, Antonín J., Closely Watched Films: The Czechoslovak Experience (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016).
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