Vilém Brož

The House of the Five Squirrels

Josef Houbička, the owner of the U pěti veverek apartment building in Malostran, is a kind and forgiving good man who allows himself to be ruthlessly oppressed by his proud wife, Filoména, and secretly fixes her problems with the tenants. He lends rent money to two poor painters and bribes offended maids just to keep the house quiet. He would like to restore the old soap factory in the house, but Filoména promotes more profitable garages. And since neither of them wants to back down, Houbička eventually leaves the house after one of the arguments. He makes friends with the innkeeper Pulec, who runs the not-so-prosperous inn At the Leaky Jug...

Mist on the Moors

Mist on the Moors examines fates of just about a few people. Their stories are outlined in a short space of time and are a symbolic representation of the drama of life, struggle for justice, human cognizance and the healing power of love. One of the most important components of the film is the nature, which ceases to be a mere stage for its plot—it serves almost as an autonomous plot agent. The movie landscape is a precisely defined and localized one. Only the South Bohemian ponds can serve as the right environment for development of such earthy and typically human stories as we encounter in the Mist on the Moors.

Happy Journey

Filmed during the Nazi occupation, this panoramic drama set in a Prague department store follows the divergent destinies of four female coworkers, each of whom seeks happiness in a different way.

Nocturnal Butterfly

Venice Film Festival 1941

Grandmother

"Grandmother" is a highly romanticized autobiographical novel by a Czech 19th century writer, Bozena Nemcova. It's a classical, compulsory reading in Czech schools, about a wise, working-class woman, happier in her simplicity and good heart than the nobles whom she serves.