Jiří Menzel
Birthday: Born in 1938-02-23 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]
Deathday: 2020-09-05
Jiří Menzel (Czech: [ˈjɪr̝iː ˈmɛntsl̩] was a Czech film director, theatre director, actor, and screenwriter. His films often combine a humanistic view of the world with sarcasm and provocative cinematography. Some of these films are adapted from works by Czech writers such as Bohumil Hrabal and Vladislav Vančura. Menzel, a member of the Czech New Wave, became internationally famous in 1967, when his first feature film, Closely Watched Trains, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His controversial film Larks on a String was filmed in 1969, but was initially banned by the Czechoslovakian government. It was finally released in 1990 after the fall of the Communist regime. The film won the Golden Bear at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival. Menzel was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film again in 1986 with his dark comedy My Sweet Little Village. In 1987, he was a member of the jury at the 37th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1989 he was a member of the jury at the 16th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1995 he was a member of the jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival. He would be conferred with IIFA Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2013.
TV Credits
Hospoda
Character: MUDr. Prášek - psychiatr
Hospoda is a Czech television comedy series which premiered on TV Nova. From 1996 to 1997, 52 episodes were aired....
Pražský písničkář
Character:
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Příběhy slavných
Character: Self
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Krásný ztráty
Character: Self
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Vyprávěj
Character: Professor Sládeček
Vyprávěj je český televizní retroseriál vyráběný v koprodukci České televize a společnosti Dramedy Productions. Natáčení začalo v roce 2009 a první díl s názvem Od začátku byl uveden na programu ČT1 v pondělí 31. srpna 2009. Seriál je uváděn v týdenní periodicitě a stopáž každého dílu je cca 52 minut. Děj se odehrává v Československu a je zasazen do skutečných historických událostí, které ovlivňují příběhy jednotlivých postav. Dobovou atmosféru autoři navozují ukázkami z dobových Československýc...
Movie Credits
Closely Watched Trains
Character: Dr. Brabec
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot....
Larks on a String
Character: Convict
In post-WWII Communist Czechoslovakia, several characters considered bourgeois are sentenced to work in a junkyard for rehabilitation. Among them is a young man who pines for a female convict....
Operation Dunaj
Character: Oskar
Operation Danube was the cover name for the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968. The fleet of Polish tanks which arrive to liberate their neighbor, ostensibly threatened by a counter-revolution, includes the old tank nicknamed Ladybird, which is the last to leave the barracks....
Sechse kommen durch die Welt
Character: Soldat
The King of Malabunt has won another war, after decorating himself and his three wooden marshals, he dismisses his army with a low wages. One of his soldiers protest this and is thrown into jail, but he swears to someday return and take all the wealth of the king....
Pocta V+W
Character: Self
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Capricious Summer
Character: Arnoštek
Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest...
Ferat Vampire
Character: Dr. Marek
A doctor is shocked when his beloved colleague Mima signs a contract with foreign car manufacturer Ferat, in order to work for them as a rally-driver. A scientist convinces him that human blood is being used as fuel for Mima's ever winning car, but does that really work?...
The Cremator
Character: Dvorak
In 1930s Prague, a Czech cremator who firmly believes cremation relieves one from earthly suffering is drawn inexorably to Nazism....
The Apple Game
Character: MUDr. Josef John
Sarcastic comedy about the Czechoslovakia of the seventies. A young gynaecologist can't figure out whether to get serious with a young nurse or to stay casual with his married lover. Things get complicated when both women don't want to play his game anymore....
Those Wonderful Movie Cranks
Character:
Returning home to Prague, the magician Pasparte, an owner of a circus caravan, meets his dying colleague who entrusts his beautiful daughter Aloisie to his care. In Prague they all take up their lodgings at the house At Blue Fish in which they intend to arrange the programs. The firm is owned by widow Evzenie with whom Pasparte shares flat and bed. Evzenie is jealous of Aloisie therefore Pasparte sends Aloisie as a housewife to the single man Jakub Kolenatý who earns his living by photographing ...
Ceiling
Character:
The young Marta has made a break in her medical education to fully invest in her career as a model. We follow her for a day in her life, almost completely without hearing her voice. It is seldom that Marta gets the space to speak, instead she is mostly subject to the voice of others....
The Return of the Prodigal Son
Character: Jirí
Engineer Jan Sebek (Jan Kacer) is undergoing treatment in a mental home after his unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide. His therapist, via discussions both with the patient and with people who know him, tries to find out what made the young and seemingly satisfied man decide to end his own life. Jan's pretty wife Jana (Jana Brejchová) claims not to know about anything but she is conducting an affair with a family friend, almost publicly and with the blessing of her parents....
A Place in the Crowd
Character: (segment "Jak se kalí ocel")
A film in five episodes, all based on an attempt to show the life of young people today, their feelings and relationships, their behaviour in public and private life....
Minden szerdán
Character: János - államtitkár
Stephen, living in a troubled family, breaks into a grocery store and wreaks vandalism. He is sent to a reform school. Later he works in a cleaning brigade and accidentally meets József Draskóczi, who denounced him. Draskóczi lives in an unloving, troubled atmosphere with his barren daughter and cynical son-in-law, ascetic about his youthful communist beliefs. He feels responsible for Istvan's fate, offering him a human voice and love. Despite his daughter's hysterical jealousy, he sends Istvan ...
Searching
Character:
Michal's father and his friends are stigmatized by their war experience and the post-war social deformations in which they took part either directly, or watched them cowardly and in silence. They are trying to repress their feelings of guilt and justify their behavior to the young generation with memories of their heroic war feats. Michal, however, does not want to have anything to do with their problems. He subconsciously perceives the unpleasant atmosphere in the family as well as his father's...
Pearls of the Deep
Character: Cyclist (segment "Smrt pana Baltazara")
A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression and the versatility of the movement’s directors. Based on stories by the legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal, the shorts range from the surreally chilling to the caustically observant to the casually romantic, but all have a cutting, wily view of the world....
Volejte Martina
Character:
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If a Thousand Clarinets
Character: Schulze
A military base. An awkward soldier. A statue of Bach. And suddenly all guns in the area change into music instruments. Great mystery is immediately found by TV station. And soon the military base becomes a stage for huge TV show....
Martin Speaking
Character:
The second installment of children's stories investigator Dr. Martin. The film has two stories:...
Private Torment
Character:
A worker steals bits and pieces of building materials from work to construct a new home for himself and his girlfriend. When he discovers that she’s having an affair with his boss, he devises one elaborate plot after another to murder the rival, each time with pathetic results....
The Gentle Barbarian
Character: Doktor
A commemorative and essayistic meditative piece on the Prague quarter Libeň during the 1950s....
Too Loud A Solitude
Character: Professor
An elderly paper-crusher branded a fool in Prague secretly stashes condemned books, preserving their contents and extrapolating from them eccentric scenarios of wit....
Hearty Greetings from the Globe
Character: Dr. Jánský
Two aliens stir up trouble on Earth in order to study humans. Misunderstandings ensue....
Straw Hat
Character:
Slacker Maurice Fadinar wasted his whole inheritance and the only way out of this situation, as it seems, to marry Helen Nonankur - daughter of a wealthy farmer. At the last meeting with his mistress in a nearby forest Fadinar's horse eats straw hat which belongs to a married lady, spending time in the company of young and hot Lieutenant Emil. Emil literally puts a knife to Maurice throat - or the lady will get back the exact same hat immediately, or he will arrange such a scandal that no weddin...
Joint Venture
Character: Prof. Adamec
Prague 1994, hotbed of international profiteers. Here you can still find buyers for discarded everyday objects, here you can still buy cheap houses - provided you can find a Czech straw man. Joint venture, a rogue comedy in which everyone believes they are smarter than the other and everyone hopes to win their dirty game at the other's expense....
Bohumil Hrabal „Takže se stalo, že...“
Character: self
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Daddy
Character: Self
This film is a documentary-style look at the life of the beloved Czech actor, Zdeněk Svěrák....
Fandy ó Fandy
Character:
Little kids, little worries, big kids, big worries, sighs many a parent often. This is no different for the mother of eighteen-year-old Frantisek, who has just graduated from high school without much glory and is about to start his first job. Fandy is still full of boyish dreams, yearns for a career as a rowing representative, competes with a friend for the favor of an admiring girl and is generally stubbornly opposed to taking life seriously....
Signál
Character: Prokeš
Two young technicians, Filos and Kája, come to a small village that is a bit cut off from the rest of the world in order to find the best place to install a new station for the reception of a cell phone signal. Their arrival understandably arouses a feeling of expectation among the locals, especially when they learn of the interesting financial reward for the owner of the land on which the transmitter will stand. A fight flares up in the village over this reward, and all weapons, those permitted...
Passing Fancy
Character:
The main character of the story which takes place in the twenties in Budapest is the poet Dr. Rácz György, who returns after ten years of absence. In a café he meets his former friend Lajos, who has just broken up with his lover, Márta, because of the wife of professor Büchler. The transiently formed, rootless Rácz gets entangled into the sophisticated, complicated love affairs of bored or tired ladies....
Koportos
Character: A pap
Balog Mihály, the Gypsy man from Szabolcs works in Budapest. That is where he is notified that his young wife died. Again he behaves differently from his fellow-men in the Koportos Gypsy settlement: he wants to give a beautiful, rich burial ceremony to his wife....
Heart Tremors
Character:
The general practitioner Balla and his wife abandoning her higher education begin their common life in the small mountain village in the hope of quick enrichment and return to the capital. Despite Éva and Emma, the two school mistresses longing for love and Demeter, the dove-keeper obsessed with a desire for flight life is boring in the country....
Dr. Hrabal
Character:
A film impression about Bohumil Hrabal - an encounter with the man and his literary work. The film was shot in places well known and close to the writer: in Prague and small Czech towns. In addition to Hrabal, it features director Jirzi Menzel, who talks about his collaboration with the writer....
More Than Words
Character: Self
TV miniseries "More than words explores the possibilities and ways of behavior in non-verbal communication, primarily movements, gestures and ways of expression, but also the causes and roots of their origin. The series also explores the most interesting changes in the development of different cultures, including tattooing, scarring and body painting. Series also deal with the language of deaf and blind people, different universal languages, laughter, whistling and other peripheral phenomena ass...
Dita Saxová
Character: Herbert Lagus
A beautiful, underachieving, 18-year-old orphan considers various suitors, ponders philosophy, and takes a young girl under her wing....
The Wolf from Royal Vineyard Street
Character: Self
The film tells the life story of its director, Jan Nemec, one of the most known and important filmmakers of Czech New Wave....
Everything I Like
Character: Vasek
A film about the uncertainties faced by a man in post-Communist Slovakia, his relationship with a teenage son and English teacher girlfriend who's soon to return home to England....
Nobody Will Laugh
Character:
A successful art historian who has trouble telling people difficult truths, finds himself in an inescapable situation when a small lie quickly gets out of hand....
All My Loved Ones
Character:
Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prague in the early years of World War II and the eventual destruction of his family as the Nazis rise to power. The storyline focuses heavily on Jewish-Czech Silberstein family members. Drama was filmed on the real events as a tribute to Mr. Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as th...
Courage for Every Day
Character: Jarduv kolega
A passionate communist worker is discouraged by the changing political climate and the failure of his peers to live up to his ideals....
Teddy Bear
Character: Romanuv otec
Jirka, Roman, and Ivan have been friends since school. Today they are about 35 and, although they went into different fields, their friendship has lasted. Each of the three friends hides a secret, and their lives change radically when the secrets come out. How will the three friends stand up to the tests they are forced to face? Will their friendship survive?...
To Make a Comedy Is No Fun
Character: Self
Documentary feature about Czech director Jiří Menzel, featuring Menzel himself as well as Miloš Forman, Emir Kusturica, István Szabó and others....
Hotel for Strangers
Character: Pot-boy
A gifted poet checks into a Gothic hotel in hopes of meeting the woman with whom he has long been enamored. He is surrounded by a variety of offbeat characters like the hefty homosexual cook, shadowy clerks, snooty waiters, and valets prone to violence. He finally meets the woman of his dreams only to lose her and ultimately meet with tragedy....
The Little Apocalypse
Character: Stan
An unknown Polish writer can't publish his novels, so his ex-wife decides to help him and get some of the profit for herself. She finally finds a publisher, but there's a strange single condition that could cost the writer his life....
The Sunken Cemetery
Character: Doktor Javorski
Ivan, in his early forties, returns, after many years of absence to his native town - a typical Middle - European small town in Northern of Croatia. His roaming through Europe left him in a rather distraught state and he is now in search for his identity and peace of mind. As a child of five, he was, literary taken from his birth-place and now - bereft of his parents and family, he will try to solve the puzzling event of his childhood. Thus, in this place where so many unusual things have happen...
How to Deserve a Princess
Character: dvorní malíř
A fairy tale of three brothers who try to save a princess kidnapped by an evil wizard....
The Interpreter
Character: Ali Ungár
80-year-old Ali Ungar comes across a book by a former SS officer describing his wartime activities in Slovakia. He realises his parents were executed by him. He sets out to take revenge but finds instead his 70-year-old son, Georg, a retired teacher. Georg, who had avoided his father all his life, decides to find out more about him and offers Ali to be his interpreter....
Crime in the Night Club
Character: Klaun
A black comedy set in a Prague cabaret....
Zimní víla
Character: Komorí
...
30 Maidens and Pythagoras
Character: profesor matematiky Ludolf
A musical starring Jiří Menzel (whose part is sung by Achilles Michailidis) as a math and physics teacher employing innovative teaching methods....
Daisies
Character: Jan (voice)
Two teenage girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world around them....
Blue Planet
Character: Štěpán Pavlík
A young engineer, Štěpán Pavlík, dreams of becoming a cosmonaut....
Bulldogs and Cherries
Character: Waiter
The dreaded Italian mafioso, Marian Labuda, will also be convinced. Mafioso Carmello was guilty of the principles of his organization when he tried to fool the boss and earned a death sentence. The convict runs away from the killer through Vienna to Prague, which his Austrian colleague in crime recommended as a safe hiding place. None of them knows that the Czechs learned so much tricks under real socialism that a seasoned Italian professional is not enough to watch....
Defendant
Character: obhájce Frantisek Horácek
Managers at the construction of a big hydro plant are accused of having embezzled money....
CzechMate: In Search of Jiří Menzel
Character: Self
An epic exploration of the Czechoslovak New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 70s, structured around a series of conversations with one of its most acclaimed exponents - Closely Observed Trains director Jiří Menzel....
The Elementary School
Character: Gynecologist MUDr. Kalaban
The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women....
Franciska vasárnapjai
Character: államtitkár
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