BD 52 Coach to Vienna

[What A Disgrace]

March 28

In the final days of World War Two, a young Czech widow is abducted by two deserting German soldiers and forced to ferry them to the Austrian border. Unbeknown to them, she is plotting a brutal revenge for the recent killing of her husband by Wehrmacht forces.

Banned even before its release (and remained unseen for over twenty years), Karel Kachyňa’s powerful and often harrowing film takes a humanist approach to war. Controversially, it rejected traditional notions of ‘evil Germans’ and ‘good Czechs’ and instead explores notions of guilt and vengeance, and how war degrades everyone in such violent times.

Coach to Vienna is presented from a glorious new 4K restoration and makes its world premiere on Blu-ray.

• Coach to Vienna (Kočár do Vídně, 1966) presented from an HD transfer of the new 4K restoration by the Czech National Film Archive.
• It's Not Always Cloudy (Není stále zamračeno, 1950): Karel Kachyňa’s long unseen feature-length, semi-documentary graduation film, co-directed by Vojtěch Jasný.
• A Projection Booth audio commentary with film historians Mike White, Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger.
• Trailer.
• Image gallery.
• 20-page booklet featuring a new essay on the film by writer Jonathan Owen.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• World premiere on Blu-ray.

[charal]

Oddly Peter Hames has this film listed as a 1957 film [CZECHOSLOVAK NEW WAVE, p.70] rather than 1965/66. It was released in 1966 and other sources list it as a 1966 film (including Hames in the booklet enclosed in THE EAR). Does anyone know when this film was actually made? I understand it was banned initially.

[swo17]

Wasn't the domestic banning of Czech films largely a thing that started after the Soviet invasion in 1968?

[MichaelB]

Wasn't the domestic banning of Czech films largely a thing that started after the Soviet invasion in 1968?

It certainly increased markedly after August 1968, but The Party and the Guests and Daisies both ran into official trouble long before (as did others) - the former wasn't released at all for a couple of years (and was only released in the first place thanks to the abolition of censorship during the Prague Spring), while the latter was given a severely restricted release.

(The latter was common practice in Warsaw Pact countries with films that were considered ideologically troublesome, but not dangerous enough to be ban-worthy, and carried on into the 1970s and 80s - in Poland, Andrzej Wajda's Man of Marble and Krzysztof Kieślowski's No End were given tiny releases with deliberately limited advertising, although Man of Marble became such a huge word-of-mouth hit that cinemas were packed regardless.)

Although in general the problem wasn't the risk of films getting banned but the risk of them not being made in the first place. And even after they'd been greenlit, filmmakers would devise stratagems to dodge official scrutiny. For instance, Miloš Forman shot Black Peter entirely on location not just because it helped the overall feeling of authenticity that he wanted but because there was much less chance of Barrandov Studio apparatchiks keeping a day-to-day eye on what he was up to - and he also realised very early that making comedies also helped slip material past the authorities that they might well have vetoed in a more serious context.

[swo17]

Interesting context. Do you know what the earliest films were to be outright banned? Was this happening as early as the 1950s like the original question suggests?

[MichaelB]

Czechoslovak cinema in the 1950s was ruthlessly controlled and centralised, so the challenge was getting the films made at all - they tended not to get banned because anything contentious wouldn't have been filmed in the first place.

But in the case of this particular film, you can very easily debunk the "shot in 1957" story by asking yourself whether lead actress Iva Janžurová looks as though she was in her mid-teens or mid-twenties, and I reckon the answer's glaringly obvious. And it also seems that Janžurová was given that lead role because she'd impressed Karel Kachyňa and Jan Procházka so much when she played a smaller role in their 1965 film Long Live the Republic!, and so they were actively looking for a vehicle for her. So I assume that's down to a straightforward typo - according to the Czech National Film Archive, it started shooting in 1965 and was completed in 1966.

(Looking at Hames' text in its original context, I reckon the "1957" claim happened because the very next film to be cited in that paragraph was The Cranes Are Flying, which was unquestionably made in 1957 - it's the kind of typo that can be surprisingly hard to spot.)

[charal]

Thanks Michael. By the way it’s good to see more classic Czechoslovak films coming to blu Ray but I’m still disappointed no Evald Schorm films have surfaced from our friends at SR. COURAGE FOR EVERYDAY would be an excellent introduction to his work for those uninitiated.

[MichaelB]

Are there HD masters available?

[ryannichols7]

SpoilerShow

more great cover art from second run

[What A Disgrace]

You can preorder this in the USA from Diabolikdvd.

I'm cheap, so my copy will be shipping with Candyman 4K.

[Bikey]

"The HD presentation is wonderful showing subtle grain while there is depth and pristine contrast. This looked absolutely marvellous on my system.[...]
Karel Kachyna's COACH TO VIENNA is such a brilliant, mysterious Czech gem. [...] I really enjoyed this Second Run Blu-ray package from the unexplained circumstances of the plot to the edifying commentary, documentary and included booklet. This has our highest recommendation!"

DVD Beaver review

[Bikey]

COACH TO VIENNA currently just £13.99 at Amazon Uk
https://amzn.to/388gCCF

[Finch]

Slant Magazine review

Like Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Silence de la Mer, though, Coach to Vienna challenges our preconceptions of the Nazi soldier, particularly Hans, who makes a point of telling Krista that he’s from Austria, not Germany, and means her no harm. He even removes the Nazi insignias from his uniform at one point, and while that’s to help avoid detection from the fastly encroaching Russian Army, it’s symbolic of the filmmakers’ desire to humanize the man.


The decision to set the film entirely within a labyrinthine Czech forest adds to the underlying tension between Krista and her captors. The environment being symbolically shrouded in the fog of war not only gives the film the feel of a twisted fairy tale, but heightens the sense of hopelessness and inescapability of the situation for all parties concerned.

Hans may want to flee his dire circumstances, but the brutal determination of both Krista and Günther, as well as the Czech resistance fighters who arrive later in the film, effectively prevent anyone from escaping undamaged. As such, Coach to Vienna is ultimately less about the physical violence of war than its propensity for emotionally crippling and psychologically warping those whom it touches, breeding distrust, bitterness, and alienation to such a degree that it leaves everyone in its path with no sense of moral direction.

(...)

Second Run’s transfer of a 4K restoration by the Czech National Film Archive is impressive. Much of Coach to Vienna consists of close-ups and tight mid-shots, so the extreme detail in faces is particularly helpful in a film where so much is gleaned from tiny shifts in expression. There’s nary a sign of scratches or blemishes, and the even grain distribution gives the transfer a nicely textured, film-like look. The audio presentation is equally strong, with clean dialogue and a well-balanced mix that boasts terrific fidelity and a nice separation of sounds.

(...)

The audio commentary included here is a lively and fruitful conversation between film historians Mike White, Samm Deighan, and Kat Ellinger. The trio do an excellent job of balancing aesthetic analysis and historical context, discussing Kachyňa’s ability to create a disorienting sense of time and space and contextualizing the film with other Czech New Wave war films from around the same time, such as Closely Watched Trains and The Shop on Main Street. One of the most fruitful through lines in their discussion is the importance of the Czech novel The Good Soldier Švejk, whose influence looms over countless Czech films from the 1960s. The disc also comes with Kachyňa’s feature-length graduation film It’s Not Always Cloudy and a 20-page bound booklet with an essay by Czech cinema specialist Jonathan Owen, who makes a compelling argument for the film’s moral complexity and the importance of co-screenwriter Jan Procházka in his many collaborations with Kachyňa.

[Bikey]

"The narrative follows a simple and traumatic course with a powerful and mythic intensity. [...] This new transfer from a 4K restoration gives full force to the film's remarkable imagery"
Peter Hames reviews Kachyňa's COACH TO VIENNA (and uncovers a David Lynch connection) in the latest Sight and Sound Magazine

[charal]

I watched it for the second time last night (without subtitles, which makes for a better audio-visual experience). This transfer is one of the best SR has put out to date. It looks like it was filmed recently rather than over 50 years ago. It came as a shock after seeing THE DEVIL’S TRAP (which unfortunately couldn’t be restored from the original elements).

[Finch]

Cineoutsider

[black&huge]

anyone think another label will pick this up for a stateside release? debating whether I should wait and see or just get this release

[ryannichols7]

anyone think another label will pick this up for a stateside release? debating whether I should wait and see or just get this release

it's region free and you're supporting the best (at least in this poster's opinion!) boutique label in the world. the fact that they made this release a priority and gave it some great extras is very worthy. it won't look any better than this 4K restoration AND it's just as cheap from Diabolik or Orbit as any stateside release would be. there's literally very reason to choose over second run ever, I'd say. even if I pick up a title that they did from Criterion or Kino (Cremator, Diamonds of the Night, the Janscos), it's always a double dip to help encourage the American labels to pick up more of these amazing films Second Run curates and releases. as much as may try and champion something as incredible as The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, people in the states won't clamor for a second run release like they will a criterion one, so of course I hope criterion or someone releases it. but since you know about second run and know how good they are, no reason to pick otherwise!

[black&huge]

okay, okay you've convinced me!! plus their encoding seems to look consistenly good? that would also win me over considering any other label could use the same resto but shit the bed with their encode

[swo17]

Their encoding is on par with Criterion's. Which is to say that they need to hire David Mackenzie, but they're still worth supporting. Furthermore, this is not a title I see being on anyone else's radar anytime soon

[Bikey]

"A striking and sometimes eerie viewing experience... COACH TO VIENNA is quite the discovery with its worldwide Blu-ray debut from Second Run. The presentation looks gorgeous.[...] There's always something magical about watching monochrome scope films in pristine presentations, and this one's no exception."
Mondo Digital review