Catalogue of Czech Television Programmes
Television film in two parts, by the investigative journalist and scriptwriter Josef Klíma, based on his detective novel of the same name. A man unjustly sentenced twenty years ago to life imprisonment for murder is suffering behind bars while the real murderer, member of the smart set, is living in the glare of popularity and public recognition. Ellis, a Czecho-American, visits the seriously ill prisoner, with the intention to obtain presidential pardon for him. During her visit she learns the truth about the murder, committed at the time of the totalitarian regime. Apart from suspense and surprising twists, the story offers a gripping retrospective glance of the atmosphere in Prague of the 1980s, prior to the Velvet Revolution, when goods of practically all sorts were in short supply, and as the Czech currency was inconvertible, illicit money-changing thrived. University student Peter Liška becomes one of the links in the chain of fraudsters and wheeler-dealers. As a result, he lacks neither pals nor money, and indulges in all life’s delights to his heart’s content. Everything is fine – until Peter finds his accomplice and best friend Paul in a pool of blood. Frightened that the police might arrest him as a suspect, he decides to go it alone and track the murderer down himself. The unexpected unravelling of the case conveys well the absurdity of some aspects of the transformation of the communist into a “new-age capitalist” society. The finale strongly resembles the current reality of our society.
HD | 78´, 80´ | © 2011
director(s): Jitka Němcová
producer(s): Czech Television
scriptwriter(s): Josef Klíma
director of photography: Martin Šec
cast: Kristýna Liška-Boková, Václav Jiráček, Ivan Trojan, Jana Hlaváčová, Simona Stašová, Vlastimil Harapes, Dana Morávková, Milan Šteindler, Tomáš Hanák, Petr Čadek, Martin Štěpánek and others
rights available: TV, Video, Internet
original language: Czech
subtitles available: English