What do the crazy comic comedy Who Wants to Kill Jessie?, the legendary comedy about the Prague watermen, the fairy tale about Cinderella or the popular series about Princess Arabella have in common? All these unforgettable film works were created thanks to fantasy, imagination and talent film director Václav Vorlíček († 88). His work has gone down in the history of Czech cinema mainly thanks to his long-term collaboration with screenwriter Miloš Macourko. However, some works may not have been created at all. As he states the director was planning to emigrate.
The invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968 disrupted filming for Hollywood. The producer ended the cooperation and the frustrated filmmaker wanted to leave the country with the script Sir, you are a widow! and film it in West Germany. “In 1969, a year later, my wife and I even obtained visas for West Germany, and with our daughters, we went there in early October to visit friends with some kind of fur coat.” admitted Vorlíček in a biographical book aptly titled Sir, you are a director!.
However, he was not welcomed by the red carpet in the neighboring country. When he met two young directors at the company, whom he knew from the festival in Karlovy Vary, he quickly sobered up. “I told them that I had a flawless, ready-made script and I’m thinking of staying in Germany and shooting it there. But they told me quite frankly that they were struggling to get a job, let me do it myself at home…” he mentioned and added that he realized that in Germany he would have very difficult conditions for the work he wanted to do.
So they packed their things again and went to the border, where they experienced a bizarre situation with the customs officer. “There was just such a decent guy working there. He took our passports, looked at me, my daughters, my wife and the pile of suitcases that we are carrying back, returned the passports to us and asked in amazement: ‘Are you coming home? Well, when you think…'” concluded in the book.
His mission was comedies
Václav Vorlíček was born in Prague on June 3, 1930. He got his enthusiasm for film during a scout camp, where he had the opportunity to see the filming of an adventure film. Immediately after graduation in 1950, he took exams for the Prague Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), but was not accepted. After a year, his attempt was successful and he got into school. He finished his directing studies in 1956, his graduation film was the film Directive.
He joined the Barrandov Film Studio in Prague as an assistant director, among other things he gained experience in the crew of the classic Czech film director Martin Frič. It was he who pointed out to Vorlíčka that his mission is comedies. In 1960, Vorlíček’s independent debut was a family film with a detective plot, The Case of the Lupínek. However, he only came to the attention of the audience in 1966 with the comedy Who wants to kill Jessia? Together with artist Karl Saudek, he managed to transfer to the screen a story in which comic book characters came to life as an unwanted byproduct of a scientific experiment.
The film was a commercial success and received extremely favorable reviews abroad. In 1966 he won the Golden Asteroid Award at the Trieste Festival and the Mack Sennett Award in Locarno. One of the main characters – Superman – was played by Slovak bodybuilder Juraj Višný. The comedy was supposed to see an American version as well, but it was eventually canceled due to political reasons. But the successful film sealed Václav Vorlíček’s further collaboration with screenwriter Miloš Macourko, whom they had met a few years earlier by chance on a train.
In 1967, the successful pair produced the film The End of the W4C Agent through Mr. Foustka’s dog, which was a parody of spy films, although instead of James Bond, the main character was a scruffy accountant played by Jiří Sovák. In 1970, the audience was entertained by the black comedy Pane, vy jeste vdova!, which Vorlíček himself describes as his most popular work. The motive of the story, in which the king of an unnamed country decides to abolish the army and thus launch a wave of assassinations on his person, was supposed to be a hidden protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
A year later, the fairytale-like Girl on the Broom was created, a still popular and well-known story about a young witch played by Petra Černocká. Vorlíček wanted to bring entertainment with his films – he used elements of fairy tales, science fiction and film tricks, which were often created “on the knee”. Talking heads, figures without heads, or the disappearance of watermen in sinks were created without computer technology, only thanks to the creativity and ingenuity of the creators. The workshop of the Vorlíček-Macourek duo also includes the fairy tale Three Nuts for Cinderella (1973), which was created in a Czech-German co-production and returns to television screens every year at Christmas time.
Just as immortal is the comedy with elements of fantasy and black humor How to Drown Dr. Mráčka or The End of the Watermen in Bohemia (1974) and the similarly tuned film How about putting spinach (1977). Later, the Vorlíček-Macourek couple mainly devoted themselves to television projects. In 1979, the legendary fairy tale series Arabela was created full of tricks and great acting. His free sequel titled Arabela returns or Rumburak king of the Fairytale Empire was released in 1993. He also filmed the series Léatící Cestmír (1983) and Křeček v noční košili (1987).
Václav Vorlíček also directed the film Sokoliar Tomáš (2000) and a year later he filmed the animated fairy tale Mach, Šebestová a zuzážné húčelo (2001), in which the cartoon characters of the artist Adolf Born came to life. Vorlíčková’s last work was the film Saxána a Lexikon kouzel (2011).
In 2006, Václav Vorlíček received an honorary award for lifetime achievement at the International Film Festival for Children and Youth in Chemnitz, Germany. He received the Golden Camera award in Slovakia. He received the award for significant contribution to the field of cinematography at the Art Film Fest in Trenčianske Teplice in 2010. In 2017, he received the President’s Award of the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary.
Václav Vorlíček died on February 5, 2019 in the Prague Hospital under Petřín. He said of his film life: “It’s been a bit of an adventure, but I don’t have to regret a single minute of it.” His motto was: “Every second we laugh adds to our life.”
