Jacques D. Rupnik, a Social Studies teaching fellow, is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Sorbonne. Paris, France, and a research associate at the Russian Research Center.

The extraordinary Czech literary and cinemagraphic "new wave" of the 1960s was a product of, as well as a contributing factor in, the struggle to change a regime that had been introduced in Czechoslovakia in 1948, and which obstinately refused to undergo any transformations after Stalin's death. The Czechs, unlike the Poles and Hungarians in 1956, did not experience even a brief period of destalinization. The artists of the '60s challenged the Zhdanovian ideological norms imposed on any creative activity. Instead of "socialist realism" that portrayed a prison labor camp as a "pioneering project in the building of socialism," Czech artists presented their perception of reality: a devastating attack on the Stalinist system.

Thus when the miracle happened, and the reformist streams of the initially Party-controlled Prague Spring of 1968 overflowed into a nationwide tide of unrest, the intellectuals, and writers in particular, were, by their past experience, often best equipped to help wipe out the Stalinist garbage accumulated over 20 years. Overnight the Prague literary journal Literarni Listy became the most avidly read paper in the country and its contributors, the spokesmen for popular aspirations (an understandable situation in a country where no legal means of opposition were available, writers and journalists had access to the media recently freed from censorship). The philosopher Ivan Svitak was calling for workers' councils while Martin Vaculik, the author of The Axe (Harper and Row), published his famous 2000-word manifesto, a political program for the whole country, which was greatly to anger Mr. Brezhnev.

If the Czech intellectuals played such a prominent political role during the Dubcek era, they also became one of the most exposed targets of the repression that followed the Russian invasion. Their films were banned, their works removed from libraries along with those of Sartre, Graham Greene and Aragon. Among the officially published translations. Russian works dominate; curiously, perhaps only Raymond Chandler can rival Sholokov or Fadeev. In cinemas only Russian war movies, American westerns and second rate French and Italian comedies are available.

As in every dictatorship, only music considered ideologically harmless can flourish. Today, cultural life in Czechoslovakia is apparently the most repressed and sterile in Eastern Europe.

What then happened to all the "bright young men and women" who made the new wave of the 1960s possible?

Antonin J. Liehm's Closely Watched Films is to my knowledge the most up to date comprehensive study of Czech cinema available in English. Avoiding the technical, pseudo -professional jargon usually associated with film criticism, he presents an illuminating analysis of the origins of Czech film's new wave of the 60's. With regard to the difficulties of filmmaking in the 1950s, Liehm says that "with the consolidation of a dictatorship that proved to be military-bureaucratic rather than revolutionary, it became increasingly clear that the liberation of the film from the dictates of the market meant its subjugation to the dictates of the state." In the West directors are permanently torn between giving way to their creative instincts and submitting to the demands of producers, and viewers, since in the last instance, the very existence of film depends on its box office success. The situation is different with a nationalized film industry as in Czechoslovakia, where the previewer (the censor) and the producer are the same person, i.e. the Party establishment. This also explains why directors in Czechoslovakia were almost forced to become involved in politics since their chances of making films depended so much on political conditions. But Liehm's book is not a long and dreary story of the artists' struggle against censorship. He shows how the post-Stalinist state, affected by the "disintegration" of the official ideology (including the dogmas of "socialist realism") ended up preferring strictly non-political art, while art in general and film in particular were playing an eminently political role as demystifiers of ideologies. In this global perspective of subtle interplay of politics and culture, Liehm sees the history of post war Czech film from the point of view of generations.

The "golden age" of the 1960s is, for Liehm, the culmination of a long process which depended on political conditions, and resulted in a close relationship between four generations of directors who, despite the differences in their outlooks and techniques, were animated by a strong feeling of solidarity. Both elements account for the richness and the diversity of the Czech film production.

Milos Forman (Loves of a Blonde, 1965) and Ivan Passer (Intimate Lighting, 1965) rejected any theoretical approach to reality. Theirs is one of close, almost microscopic observation; they find "in that microcosm of human action a portrait of the social reality as a whole" This accounts for the political dimension of a film with an apparently nonpolitical subject, such as Firemen's Ball, 1968. Others, like Jaromil Jires (The Joke, 1968) preferred social analysis and political generalizations, while Chytilova's Dazies or Nemec's Report on the Party and the Guests are philosophical tales in the Voltairian sense of the word.

Although having different philosophical and esthetic approaches to filmmaking, they all shared a common attitude toward actors (Forman and Passer introduced the use of non-professional actors) that is best defined by the director Jiri Weiss: "To me an actor is what five divisions of the Soviet army are for Sergel Bondartchuk (Soviet director, author of the gigantic film version of War and Peace). And a conversation between a man and his wife is more interesting to me than the battle of Borodino. The miracle of cinematography is the reconstruction (or, if you will, the construction) of human life. Film magnifies human "fleas" to superhuman proportions, and a tremor of the lips or the eye's loving glance is more powerful than a cannon shot."

The "ideal" conditions of the 1960s, freeing Czech directors from commercial constraint and political pressures as well, account in part for the emergence in Czechoslovakia of a dozen first class film directors of international recognition (winning two Oscars for The Shop on Mainstreet, by Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos, and in 1968 for Mencl's Closely Watched Trains). When the Russian tanks rolled in and put an end to the Dubcek experiment of "socialism with a human face," Czech film directors, as well as many other people, were faced with the following choice: emigration abroad or "internal emigration." For most of the directors who stayed, the "normalization" meant no longer being allowed to shoot the kind of films they wanted. Sometimes they had to agree to film according to the expectations of the new regime. Thus Jaromil Jires, who revealed his extraordinary talent with The Cry (1963), and confirmed it with The Joke (1968), (a powerful critique of Stalinism), and with his surrealistic tale Valerie and her Week of Wanders (1969), last year completed a new movie about the construction of the Prague subway, with a heavy emphasis on the Soviet technological assistance.

These personal tragedies are only one aspect of the incredible mediocrity now ruling over Czech film production. The tone was set by Miroslav Muller, a hardliner and the current cultural watchdog of the Czech Communist Party. He tried his own talent and wrote the screenplay of a new film directed by K. Stekly (who is well in his 70s and the only director who agreed to do the job). The film is called The Enemy at the Wheel and is supposed to be an allegory on the 1968 events. The story goes something like this: a gang of cab drivers (former intellectuals and criminals) arrange the firing of a manager and the foreman of a garage, both devoted communists. The foreman's wife is seduced by her former lover, recently returned from emigration, who intends to take her with him to the capitalists. But, thanks to Providence, the airport is closed (because the Russian Antonovs carrying tanks are just landing). The overjoyed foreman, immediately recognizes the sound and shouts gratefully, "It's them!" Then, as the script indicates, the noise of the engines swells to a crescendo and "grows into an optimistic chorus of heavenly voices." Even Zhdanov would have considered this as sabotage of "socialist realism."

The alternative for those who refuse to be these kinds of "engineers of human souls" as comrade Stalin used to put it, was to leave the country and continue their film careers in the West, especially in America where the chances to make films were best (Forman, Passer, Kadar and Weiss now live in New York). All found themselves caught in the following dilemma: to continue the kind of work they used to do in Czechoslovakia that won them international fame or to adopt the style of filmmaking of their adopted country.

What made the "discreet charm" of Czech films of the 1960s in the West was a certain atmosphere, their simplicity in the observation of everyday life, of ordinary people, a subtle sense of humor combined sometimes with social satire. This required a deep and almost subconscious knowledge of a place and people and feelings. These qualities are impossible to transport to a new reality. In other words, it is impossible to make "Czech" movies in America. Ivan Passer's recent Law and Disorder just doesn't work when it tries to be a "Czech film" about ordinary Brooklyn shopkeepers and cab drivers, because Passer is not "equipped" by his experience to do this kind of film. This problem is not confined to Czech directors. Antonioni's Zabriskie Point is a failure in the sense that it sees America through European eyes, picking out and reproducing certain superficial stereotypes. Alain Resnais spent two years in New York, with all material means at his disposal desperately trying to make a European film about America. Finally he decided to go back to Paris, and shot a successful movie. Stavisky Only perhaps the genius of Milos Forman transcended this difficulty; his Taking Off is certainly the best European film made in America, about America; and again, he reached the universal through microscopic observation of the most particular. Besides this exception, that proves the rule, the uprooted artist is inevitably driven to the other alternative: to try to become an American artist. This again is a difficult enterprise, since if the point is to make American movies many Americans would seem far better equipped to do this than Czech emigres. Certainly, Roman Polansky has proved the contrary; having started with the very Polish Knife in the Water, he has managed to become one of the best Hollywood directors with Chinatown. For most directors some kind of balance between the two alternatives has to be found. Milos Forman may perhaps come close to achieving this with his new One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (starring Jack Nicholson and to be released in the fall).

The future of Czech film directors in America is a different story from the future of Czech cinema. Some of the best have left the country (the last to leave was Jan Nemec who arrived in Paris last summer, after six years of not being allowed to shoot). Those who stayed are on the blacklist, and to be blacklisted in Prague--as well as in Hollywood in the fifties--means to lose the possibility to do creative work for many years. Ivan Passer once related how eager he was to start shooting his first American movie, Born to Win (1971). He said that filmmaking had one thing in common with athletics: you have to practice, keep in shape, keep in touch with the craft. Thus to lose the possibility to shoot for many years is a total disaster for a director. And even if in ten years (to be optimistic) a "thaw" comes in Prague, and new conditions for art appear, it is too late, you can't just pick up where you left off; times have changed and film with it. And for those outside the country it would be too late, too, since in the mean time they may have become American directors, cut off from the realities of their country of origin.