Movies by Jan Werich

The Golden Fish

The Golden Fish

A poor fisherman catches the golden fish that promises him to fulfil three wishes if he sets her free again. He does so and the fish fulfils two of his three wishes. However, she refuses to fulfil the third one, the last one in which the fisherman’s wife wants to be equal to God.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen

The 20th century's first man lands on the moon and discovers - that Baron Munchausen has already beaten him to it, along with Cyrano and characters from Jules Verne's lunar-landing novel. The Baron spirits the young cosmonaut by horse-drawn ship back to an ancient "Earth", where they insult a sultan, rescue a princess, fall in love with the princess, and then as a trio have further experiences in a world of pastel colors, ornate dreamlike settings, and the inevitable angry disrupters of peacefulness and love.

Medvěd

Medvěd

The Good Soldier Schweik

The Good Soldier Schweik

Adapting Jaroslav Hasek's raucous satirical novel, and also bringing Josef Lada's equally famous illustrations to garrulous puppet life, posed Trnka one of his biggest creative challenges. Trnka himself felt that the final episode was the most artistically successful, but there's much to enjoy in all three, not least the way that the lackadaisical layabout Svejk's own self-serving anecdotes are realized through cut-out animation.

Czechoslovakia: Portrait of a Tragedy

Czechoslovakia: Portrait of a Tragedy

Uspořená libra

Uspořená libra

When the Oak Leaves Fall

When the Oak Leaves Fall

The story is a celebration of the cleverness and wit of the simple peasant Čupera, who triumphs not only over the demon of alcohol, but also over the bureaucratically persistent and thorough devil. The hell that the farmer goes through during the withdrawal process is stylized as a shantytown, a galley with a prison and a dehumanized night club.

Tears the World Can't See

Tears the World Can't See

Balada z hadrů

Balada z hadrů

Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka – Z Hatvanu na hranice Haliče

Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka – Z Hatvanu na hranice Haliče

Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka – Švejkovy nehody ve vlaku

Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka – Švejkovy nehody ve vlaku

Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka – Švejkova budějovická anabase

Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka – Švejkova budějovická anabase

Jan Werich: Když už člověk jednou je…

Jan Werich: Když už člověk jednou je…

The World Belongs to Us

The World Belongs to Us

One of the few European films of the 30s to criticize the Nazis, even if they couldn't be directly named due to censorship: Gangsters with gray hats stir up trouble in what is obviously the Sudetenland.