Larks on a String

Jitka relaxes on some scrap metal

Production on Larks on a String (Skrivánci na niti) started during the Prague Spring, an eight month period in Czechoslovakia when political liberalisation under the rule of new Communist First Secretary Alexander Dubček looked set to transform the country. It was not to be. By August 1968 the experiment was over, Soviet tanks were rolling in to the Czech capital and Dubček had been deposed. Also kicked into the long grass was any chance of distribution for Jiří Menzel’s now completed film, which wasn’t seen until 1990, after communism collapsed. Menzel is a master of straight-faced satire. In Closely Observed Trains he used a story about Nazis during wartime to comment on the … Read more