All My Good Countrymen 1969

In this patient, scene-rich drama set in a small Moravian village, a quiet, almost timeless world gradually gives way to the sweeping, harsh changes of history. Beginning in 1945, the story unfolds with a sense of innocence and camaraderie that threads through daily life, where children play near fields and even a discovered land mine becomes part of a rough, communal rite. The opening sequence paints a landscape of beauty and resilience: after a tense night of danger, villagers gather in the pub, dancing and drinking, and when dawn breaks, they drift to sleep beneath a tree, the sun rising on a place that feels untouched by time. Očenáš, the village organist, embodies this early mood as a steady, faithful presence in a community that knows each other’s strengths and flaws.

By 1948 the mood begins to tilt as a political change sweeps in. The Communist takeover brings loudspeakers, propaganda, and rationing, and the villagers watch as four of their own—František, a weary, stubborn farmer; Plécmera, a photographer; Bertin, the postman; and Zejvala, a local resident—are portrayed as traitors of sorts to the old order. The town’s disdain for them grows as a landowner is dispossessed to make way for a collective, and his wife removes images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in a moment of bitter protest. In one stark exchange, a landowner curses the new regime while a looting, unyielding collective moves in to claim “what they can.” The scene is underscored by a chilling exchange from the new authorities: “Don’t worry! We will show you what we can do!” This moment marks a turning point where the town’s everyday life becomes entangled with the coercive machinery of the state, and the loom of fate tightens around the characters who once seemed secure.

In 1949 the violence of the new order intensifies. Bertin is shot as he and his betrothed, Machačová, are pictured preparing their wedding clothes. A funeral follows, and police move quickly to arrest those deemed responsible. František, the noble farmer, leads a crowd to demand that the police release the wrongly accused—among them the priest. The organist [Očenáš] faces death threats and, urged by his wife, withdraws from the political fray, while the photographer’s wife seeks a higher status and a larger home, pressing her husband to fill the vacancy left by Očenáš. The social fabric of the village is unthreading at speed, and the atmosphere grows tense with the sense that loyalty to the old order is being replaced, piece by piece, with loyalty to the new regime.

The year 1951 brings a more intimate reckoning with guilt and memory. [Zášinek] returns home drunk and haunted by the ghost of his ex-wife, a Jew who died in a concentration camp. The specter’s forgiveness unsettles him, and a later afternoon soiree features a haunting, feverish dance with the ghost. At the same time, [Machačová], now known as “the merry widow,” appears with the town thief, Jořka, who is expected to report to prison that day. After a fateful sequence of events, he pours acid on his foot and dies, returning a stolen clock to its owner only to collapse in the snow. The year ends with a stark, hallucinatory vision at a pub and a brutal death by a loose bull, leaving the village grappling with guilt, memory, and the consequences of moral compromises.

Autumn 1951 glimpses a deeper spiritual disarray. The parish church becomes a stage for confession and a night of reckless revelry, where a painting sequence shifts from vague shapes to a frenetic, almost ecstatic dance. [Zášinek] reappears as a symbol of torment, and his unquiet path ends with his death in a grim, almost sacrilegious accident, a stark reminder of how personal guilt mirrors communal guilt.

The narrative widens again in 1952 as František’s father notes the erosion of strength with age. A town hall meeting reveals the redoubled zeal of the regime, as loans are proposed and applauded by the few who support it. The crowd’s silence—unusual and telling—speaks volumes about a community deciding whom to trust. František steps forward to speak against the mounting loans and the fear-saturated climate, but repression follows. He is arrested, and the authorities press for signatures against him, even as the villagers resist, their solidarity tested in a new, coercive way.

In 1954 the complex moral economy of the village shifts again as a previously corrupt official who had stolen from the seized house returns, only to be dismissed as a disgrace. František himself has escaped from prison but is frail, his health ebbing as the weight of time and politics presses down. By 1955 he has regained some strength, buying a horse and resuming work, his stubborn endurance captured in the narrator’s question: “Which can bear more, a man or a horse? A man, because he has to.” The film emphasizes the cost of labor and the resilience of a man who refuses to surrender to force.

The tide turns decisively in 1957 as the village, still devoted to František, confronts the regime’s attempt to coerce harvest declarations. František refuses to bend, and when required to persuade others, he stands firm. All but František sign, signaling a bitter fracture within the community and a moment when conscience collides with coercion.

By 1958 the village’s transformation is complete on the surface, even as the emotional core remains. František is brought to take over the original landowner’s home, now a symbol of the regime’s reach. A carnival procession—villagers wearing animal heads—passes by, and though the crowd is initially soft and forgiving, the encounter grows increasingly dark as the photographer and his wife are drawn into the festivities and the photographer collapses with a heart attack, the crowd’s merriment turning to tragedy. The earlier optimism of collective leadership is displaced by an unsettling, animal-like devotion to power. The final image of the year is stark: the blunted joy of communal dance gives way to a chilling realization that “soon all the people will be gone and all that will be left are the animals.”

In the Epilogue, the village returns to the past through memory. Očenáš comes back to a changed world: the photographer is now blind and out of power, František has died, and the social order has re-centered around those who remained in power. The photographer’s line—“the best people go and the blackguards stay”—cuts sharply through the twilight of memory. [Očenáš] visits František’s family, and his daughters recall the farmer’s last words: to “listen to the workers in the fields” and to believe that “things will be better when they begin to sing again.” The ride home on a bicycle becomes a quiet, elegiac meditation on consequences and responsibility. As the countryside recedes, the question lingers: have we built our beds ourselves, or have we allowed others to shape them for us? The closing image lingers on the land itself, a living memory of a village that has endured, resisted, and finally confronted the costs of the changes that defined an era.