PRAGUE – Director Marie Poledňáková has many successful films to her credit, including the comedy of the century. Unfortunately, she suffered a stroke in 2016 and later other health problems were added. Today we commemorate the first anniversary of her death.
Marie Poledňáková, real name Marie Jandová, was born on September 7, 1941 in Strakonice, but grew up in the town of Nepomuk near Pilsen. The family moved to Prague in 1948.
Gallery: Marie Poledňáková
Otto Janda’s father was a professor of economics. In the 1950s, during the communist repressions, he was threatened with imprisonment, which he finally avoided, but instead of his original profession, he had to work as a miner. A similar fate met his daughter, who, although she successfully graduated from high school, did not receive a recommendation for college. She got a job at the Institute of Photographic Chemistry, later she worked manually in a factory.
The key for her was the meeting with Jaroslav Dietl, a then just beginning television producer, who offered her a job on television, where Marie Poledňáková worked as a stage and director’s assistant from 1961, while at that time the television was broadcasting live. At the same time, she studied dramaturgy at the Theater Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU). She finished her studies in 1970, which began her television career as a screenwriter and director.
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(Source: SITA)
Initially, she focused more on historical and psychological subjects, for example in the film Yesterday and Today from 1971, under which she signed as screenwriter and director. Filming according to one’s own script became a rule for Poledňáková in other works as well.
She also used it in her first family comedy, How to Pull a Whale from a Chair (1977). Thanks to the touching story and the spontaneous acting performances of Tomáš Holý, the comedy became one of the most popular and most frequently rerun TV movies. A year later, the sequel How to get dad to a reformatory followed. In 1979, both comedies received awards for best screenplay and best direction at the Monte Carlo International Television Festival. And Tomáš Holý became a child star.
After the film Kotva u prívozu (1980), Poledňáková returned to work with child actors. It was their performances that freshened up the 1982 comedy S tebu me babu svět, which the audience could already see in cinemas. Poledňák’s film debut, set in a romantic winter landscape, was successful in the form of a Special Prize at the Gijón International Film Festival in 1983.
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(Source: CT)
In the years 1983 – 1989, she worked as a director at the Barrandov Film Studio and shot the films The Taming of the Shrew (1986) and Two People in the Zoo (1989).
In the 1990s, she started doing business in the media field. In 2006, she returned to filming with the family comedy How to Tame Crocodiles and also filmed the films Kiss as God (2009) and Kiss as the Devil (2012).
Other creative plans of the director Maria Poledňáková were thwarted by a stroke that affected her in 2016. The last time the director appeared in the company was in April 2016 alongside Vlastimil Harapes.
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Marie Poledňáková and Vlastimil Harapes (Source: Profimedia)
In July 2016, information emerged that the famous filmmaker was taken by helicopter to Prague’s Central Military Hospital after a neighbor found her at home. She struggled with the consequences of a stroke for the rest of her life, and over time she was also troubled by other health problems.
Marie Poledňáková died on November 8, 2022.
2023-11-07 23:01:00
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