The End of August at the Hotel Ozone

This film (drama)Also known asKonec srpna v Hotelu Ozon，is aCzechoslovakiaProducerwomen sex，At1967Released in year 。The dialogue language isCzech，Current Douban rating7.4(For reference only)。

◎Synopsis The 1976 official competition film at Cannes, its imagination shock the world. Pavel Juráček, a genius director of the Czech New Wave film movement, is hailed as "the true soul of the Czech New Wave film revolution." As one of the most unique playwrights in the entire Eastern European film renaissance movement, he created several films that hold an important place in the history of Czech Eastern European cinema. The black-and-white film "The End of August at the Hotel Ozone" was produced in 1967. It is the second collaboration between screenwriter Pavel Juráček and director Jan Schmidt, two geniuses who represent the Czech New Wave of the 1960s. At that time in Eastern Europe, some filmmakers with political retribution hopes wanted to awaken people's awareness and resistance to totalitarianism through the screen. However, constrained by the barriers of the system, they found it difficult to use realism, resulting in a large number of science fiction, fairy tale, symbolic, or mystical films. Juráček and Schmidt belong to this camp. The story begins after a war that nearly destroyed all humanity, with eight young girls led by an old woman appearing in the mountains, journeying in search of food and perhaps surviving men, hoping to become "mothers of the new world." The apocalyptic panic caused by the competition for nuclear stockpiles between East and West is a natural symbol of this film, but unlike most apocalyptic films that first present images of desolate lands and ruins and dress characters in armor and masks, making them robot-like— in "The End of August at the Hotel Ozone," the earth is full of vitality, plants are growing wildly, and animals are everywhere. The eight girls are also healthy and strong. They live in a nature that is saturated to the brink of overflowing, but they see no people; what their ancestors left for them are bullets, explosives, and gasoline. The film emphasizes that they have lost certain recognized aspects of "humanity" because they detached from society and civilization before they were mature enough to understand. There are some very brutal shots in the film— which animal rights activists would surely find unbearable— such as actually cutting open a cow like a pack of wolves, or smashing the head of a dog that desperately wishes to follow them with a rifle butt. The old woman, who has experienced civilization, teaches them how to use language, writing, cups, and guns, but cannot make them civilized people because they have lost society. In the second half of the film, they meet a lonely old man living on a farm, from whom they see many remnants of civilization, such as a television that can no longer play, an old newspaper, and a mechanical gramophone. They are only interested in the gramophone— here the film seems to imply that there is no necessary connection between music and civilization. Eventually, the old woman dies of illness, and the girls coldly prepare to leave the old farmer behind, taking the gramophone with them. The old man realizes that they are ungrateful and devoid of human emotions, and he is shot by the girls. The film is filled with symbols and metaphors, allowing everyone to provide their interpretations. Additionally, its black-and-white imagery is sharp with exquisite composition, and the transitions from wide shots to close-ups of faces are clean, decisive, and seamless. Judging by both content and aesthetics, this is a profound classic. In fact, the filmmakers mentioned above, who bravely intervened politically under totalitarianism, became disoriented between the roles of revolutionaries and artists. Originally, they had to use symbols, imagery, and deconstruction to present their themes; however, the themes were eventually subverted by the forms, and their later works became straightforward experimental images, though still exquisite, now feel like castles in the air.