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The acclaimed director Karel Kachyňa was born on May 1, 1924, and ČT reminds viewers of him in this period with several of his unforgettable films. The film Death of a Beautiful Fawn from 1986 is certainly one of the most popular. He also reminds the audience of the writer Ota Pavel.
Ota Pavel’s autobiographical book Death of a Beautiful Fawn (1971) offers in seven short stories memories of a happy childhood before the Second World War and of the occupation, which dramatically affected the fate of the writer’s mixed Jewish family.
The story of a courageous Jewish father who breaks all Nazi prohibitions and gathers deer to feed his two sons going to a concentration camp also inspired the creation of Karel Kachyni’s feature film from 1986.
The writer Ota Pavel was called by his real name Otto Popper. In the film, viewers then follow the story of his father Leo Popper, mother Herma and brothers Hugo and Jiří. They all live temporarily in the countryside, where they meet the ferryman Prošek, who spends time in Berun.
Director Kachyňa combined the short stories from the book into one whole, enriched the story with interesting characters and spiced up the plot a bit to make it more interesting for the audience.
Karel Kachyňa in 1990 | Source: Jonn Leffmann / Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
In the story, he kept the main plot line, in which Leo Popper becomes a successful salesman of vacuum cleaners and begins to fulfill his dream of buying a carp pond.
Despite the initial disappointment from the purchased pond, he eventually starts breeding carp and the story could continue with a nice idyll. But everything changed with the arrival of the Nazis.
Knowing that poaching is punishable by death, Leo does what he considers his duty as a father.
Although there is a picture Death of beautiful deer already notorious, he still manages to move the audience.
And the true story of the Popper family is also touching. They first transported Hugo and Jiří to Terezín, but then separated them. Hugo had to go to Germany for forced labor and Jiří was moved to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Even Leo Popper did not avoid the transport and was waiting for it a year later.
Miraculously, however, all three survived the terrible conditions and after liberation returned to Prague, where they originally lived.
In Kachyň’s film, the main role of Leo Popper was played by Karel Heřmánek and it is without a doubt the role of his life. Even Jiří Krampol stated in an interview that Heřmánek brought him to tears.
There is perhaps no need to praise Rudolf Hrušínský for the role of ferryman Prošek. What a role, an actor’s opera. Herma Popper was portrayed with elegance by the fragile Marta Vančurová. It was a dream come true for the actress. She wanted to act in Kachyňa’s film and she loved Ota Pavel’s books.
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Josef Kemr was also supposed to star in the film. He was offered the role of the academic painter Nejezchleb. He lost the role because of one unluckily spoken sentence at Jaroslav Seifert’s funeral. He said, “If God is with us, who is against us?”
The comrades did not like the biblical text and Lubor Tokoš got the role.
The casting of the singer Dana Vlková (from the duo Kamélia) was certainly surprising, as she accepted the role of Irma Korálková, because it was her dream to star in a film, even with such a famous director. Without hesitation, she accepted the role, not knowing that she would be filming the hottest scene of the entire film. Kachyn prudently left the filming of the love scene in the maringotka until the end, in order to present the actress with the finished product. During the shooting of the film, he only misted so as not to scare her.
Popper’s older sons were played by Jiří Strach and Jan Jirásek, the youngest son, nicknamed Prdelko, was portrayed by Marek Valter.
The film can be seen on May 8 on ČT1 in the evening.
