Starci na Chmelu

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 … Read more