Capricious Summer (Jirí Menzel, 1968)
Cast: Rudolf Hrusinský, Vlastimil Brodský, Frantisek Rehák, Mila Mysliková, Jana Preissová, Jirí Menzel. Screenplay: Vladimír Kalina, Jan Libora, Jirí Menzel, Václav Nývlt, based on a novel by Vladislav Vancura. Cinematography: Jaromír Sofr. Production design: Oldrich Bosák. Film editing: Jirina Lukesová. Music: Jirí Sust.
Jirí Menzel's Capricious Summer has an obvious and acknowledged debt to the films of Jean Renoir, particularly A Day in the Country (1936), which Menzel cited as one of his earliest film-watching experiences. But it also resonates for me with some of Ingmar Bergman's early comic (or less serious) films like Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and even Wild Strawberries (1957), with their treatment of the country as a failed retreat from everyday cares. The focus of Menzel's film is on three middle-aged men whose summer idyll is blighted by the caprices of the weather, a source of constant complaint, especially from Antonín, who runs a riverside bathhouse whose business is affected by the rain. And then one day a traveling magician/tightrope walker comes to town, accompanied by his lovely assistant, Anna. Immediately, Antonín, a bluff, cigar-smoking type, and his friends Major Hugo, a retired military man, and Roch, a clergyman, are attracted to Anna in their varying ways. Antonín's wife, Katerina, on the other hand, finds delight in countering her husband's infatuation with Anna by flirting with the tightrope walker (played by Menzel himself). These dalliances are wrapped in a good deal of dialogue, in which the three men constantly spar with each other over matters relating to their own particular spheres of interest: commerce, philosophy, and warfare. There's a little action: Roch is set upon by a gang who want to thwart his relationship with Anna and has his ear partly torn off -- Antonín sews it up, using a fishhook as a needle. But mostly it's a low-key character study with moments to be smiled at, as evanescent as a summer shower.