If I tell you that The Hop-Pickers (original Czech title: Starci na Chmelu) is sometimes known as Hop Side Story, that’ll give you a flavour of what’s going on in this quirky film from 1964, often described as Czechoslovakia’s first musical (there are other claimants, also from 1964).
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is also a useful steer, since this is an ensemble piece full of young men and women who, when not picking hops out on a collective farm, are singing and dancing their way through first love, to a soundtrack that’s a wild mix of Soviet choral, jazz, skiffle, pop, twangy guitar and wafts of music influenced by Vyacheslav Mescherin’s space-pop/loungecore hybrid.
In the background a trio of black-clad dudes with electric guitars appear now and again to comment on the action, which is in essence a tussle between studious Filip and hot-stuff Honza (Jack in the English subtitles), Honza almost invariably shirtless, over who’s going to win the hand, heart and lips of Hanka, who reckons she’s a high-tone gal too good for the hoi polloi.
There’s also an ideological struggle going on, both on the screen – Filip is relentlessly criticised because he’s a loner, a “noxious individualist” rather than a team player – and at a meta level, over whether the film is toeing the communist party line or giving it the finger.
It is shot through with something familiar from Western musicals of the time: youthful optimism. And its looks, pastelly and beautiful, are faintly reminiscent of the style of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, another gorgeous artefact from 1964, though its arc was from optimism to doom.
The Czech Wikipedia page tells us the songs were hits in their day and they’re catchy, poptastic kinds of things, with exuberant ensemble dance numbers reminiscent of the stuff you used to see going on behind Tom Jones when he did big TV specials in his first flush of fame. Finger-clicks, slinky hips, Fosse-inspired.
It’s the Square Sixties then, though all the kids come across as pretty hip compared to the two useful adult authority figures, motherly Jana Amosa (Irena Kacírková) and the man referred to only as the Chairman of the JZD (the unified agricultural cooperative), played by Josef Kemr as a meek party fellow traveller.
No one on the farm likes Communism though no one ever quite says it out loud, but it’s there all the way through like a whisper. When, for example, Filip quotes Seneca to Hanka, hoping to get in her pants via the tactical deployment of Stoic philosophy, every line is in essence a criticism of the Party’s anti-individualist politics. And the way that the good/bad line between the negatively individualist Filip and sexy but bullying Honza is smudged lends a plausible deniability to both their characters. And there’s always Jana and the JZD guy in the background, ready to pop up when required to restate the party line.
Vladimír Pucholt is a likeable Filip, Milos Zavadil a lusty Honza and Ivana Pavlová a plausible prize two young dudes might fight over. The film is a memorial to its director, Ladislav Rychman, and remains hugely popular in its home countries (Czechia and Slovakia now). There’s even been a stage version this millennium, which doubtless helped encourage its digital restoration in 2016. (Go for the new Second Run version if you can get it – their stuff is always good.)
It’s camp, cheesy, quirky, charming and a massive curio, a relic of a bygone age and a glimpse of life inside a bubble where every cultural utterance is parsed for its “real meaning” by audiences hungry for change. It’s also a lot of fun.
The Hop-Pickers – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024