The Junk Shop 1965

Bohoušek Ivo Gübel runs a cluttered junk shop where a parade of peculiar customers and eccentric coworkers drift through the day. He daydreams about winning a car in a new contest and finds a strange kind of inspiration in the chaos around him. He spots Mařenka on the floor above, airing a carpet and looking scantily clad, and he imagines her stepping into famous paintings like the Mona Lisa as if the ordinary world could be transformed by imagination.

A homely old woman with a mustache, Cleo, bursts in outraged that she is offered only one crown for the love letters from her former suitors. She insists she was once a famous beauty and deserves more money for her letters, spinning tales that blur the line between memory and vanity. Hedvicka shows up and weighs herself at 100 pounds on Bohoušek’s scale, only for Bohoušek to be told (and offended) that she thinks he weighs 364 pounds. He defends Hedvicka as lovely and playfully draws circles on the fabric of her shirt, a remark she takes as an affront and rebukes him for.

Cleo returns, lamenting again that her letters are worth so little, and she proclaims she was a celebrated circus dancer admired by many men. In a sudden moment she hurls a knife toward Bohoušek, and the shop’s tense mood finally pushes him to eject her, giving her five crowns to leave him alone. A woman arrives with her son, angrily searching for a balance sheet her son lost in the store, and the two become entangled in a vast pile of Cleo’s old love letters, making it hard for her to locate her missing boy.

Hanta and an older coworker then cut up statues of Jesus Christ, angels, and other martyrs for their boss, trading vulgar stories that make the statues’ eyes roll. The younger man jokes that he always expects the “angels” to bleed, while the older one replies, “That only happens the first time.” The search for Pepicek continues as the barbed chaos spills outward, and Bohoušek is furious that his staff has damaged sacred imagery.

The barroom moment arrives when Hanta visits the place again, calming the matron who is angry about being accused of pregnancy by quoting excerpts from a romance novel titled The Baron’s Desire. Meanwhile Bohoušek’s cat escapes and bites thirty kids, drawing animal control into the scene and escalating the tension in the junk shop.

The angry mother finally finds Pepicek and scolds him to go back and help locate the missing balance sheet, tightening the knot of responsibilities around everyone in the shop. Bohoušek sits alone in his room, humming O Sole Mio and stacking the fragments of the angel statues, reflecting on the hollow point of his existence. He confesses a pity for Hanta’s roguish nature, insisting he will never be a true artist like his rival, and suggests his provocative act is a mask for meaninglessness.

Hanta exits the scene and staggers toward the main hall’s mechanical sign, trying to hit it with a few hopeful blows as the day’s chaos finally starts to wind down.