Czech actor Vlastimil Brodský († 81) he excelled with his civil, melancholic, yet humorous acting. He knew how to talk or write about his work and life just as convincingly, with insight and characteristic self-irony. “Bróda”, as his friends and colleagues nicknamed him, he was known for his reflections on death and illness, but no one thought that he would voluntarily take his own life. According to the sight of his colleague Miroslav made him take this step Horníček († 84)who never returned to normal life after a stroke.
Horníček was hospitalized for a long time after the defeat in 2001, and his health problems only worsened since then. His acting colleagues forgot about him and he was visited only by Stella Zázvorková, who took Brodský with her one day. That was a fatal mistake. He was completely horrified by Horníček’s condition. “Where did his intellect go? That spark, that talent! He can’t even kill himself,” he should have announced in shock.
Although it was said that Brodsky was afraid of death, it was not true, he was afraid of the long, slow dying that he had just seen while visiting his friend. The feeling traumatized him so much that he considered ending his life, which he finally did three months later, shooting himself at his cottage in Slunečná. Ironically, the autopsy revealed that he was essentially healthy and could have lived for a long time.
Vlastimil Brodský was born on December 15, 1920 in Hrušov nad Odrou (now part of Ostrava) to an official family. Although his parents were enthusiastic volunteers, their only son had a reserved relationship with the theater – also because he did not like to recite in public. The situation changed when the family moved to Prague.
He enjoyed dancing, admired Fred Astaire, learned tap dancing and danced in nightclubs as a high school student. He admired the theater as a spectator until he discovered an advertisement in Český slov from October 1939. In it, the director EF Burian was looking for young students for his company D40. Brodský was accepted, moreover, he managed to graduate, although he described himself as a bad student. He changed several troupes, and finally spent most of his acting career in the Vinohradsk Theater (1948–1984).
red flashed on camera for the first time in 1937 in the film The World Belongs to Us, which was shot by Martin Frič with the duo Voskovec and Werich. After the war, he mostly played episodic roles, and he was offered more significant acting opportunities in 1958. Frič cast him in the film Today is the Last Day, Jan Krejčík entrusted him with the role of the negligent bank clerk Šembera in the short story film O vácech nadtnávrálých, based on the prose of Karel Čapek. He also impressed as an eternal critic the engineer Pokorný in the satirical film Three wishes by the director duo Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos.
Brodský played Kastelán in the comedy Where the Devil Can’t which was filmed in 1959 by Zdeněk Podskalský – and the same director cast him again six years later in the castellan role in the comedy Bílá Paní. In 1964, Jiří Krejčík shot the movie Čintamani a podvodník again based on Karel Čapek. In it, Brodský played a police investigator who nobly and sensitively arrests a marriage fraudster played by Jiří Sovák. By the way, the acting duo Brodský and Sovák always worked great and appeared in films many times.
Unforgettable acting creations were created by Brodský in the horror comedy Lost Face and in the film Closely watched trains, which won the young director Jiří Menzl an Oscar statuette for the best foreign film. In the same year, Podskalský in a whimsical comedy You can’t even hit a woman with a flower offered Brodský the main role of a notorious womanizer.
Successful films followed Whimsical summer, or Evald Schorm’s bitter film Farařuv konec. In 1969, Menzl once again cast Brodsky in the role of a philosophizing professor in the film Larks on the thread. And finally, in the same year, the trio of Vlastimil Brodský, Jiří Sovák and Jan Libíček shone in Podskalský’s unforgettable comedy Saints.
It was Podskalský who, after the criminal comedy Devil’s Honeymoon, offered him a role that Vlastimil Brodský considered a great challenge – in the film Night at Karlštejne he portrayed the monarch Karl IV himself. In 1974, he starred in a “relationship” comedy We are perfect for each other, dear.
He also shone in the dramatic genre – his role in the German film Jakob, der Lügner (Jacob the Liar) directed by Frank Beyer won him the Silver Bear Award for Best Actor at the 1975 Berlinale. We cannot forget the comedies of Oldřich Lipský either Long live the ghosts and the Secret of the Castle in the Carpathians.
At that time, roles in serials added to Brodský’s popularity, e.g. Pan Tau, Arabela, or Visitors, where he played the character of the folk wiseguy and the eccentric Drchlík. Brodský’s acting performances in films made by František Filip based on Zdenek Svěrák’s scripts are worth mentioning – The Platfus case and the bitter comedy I’ll drown him myself. Among his latest films is Bábí leto. Vladimír Michálek’s film from 2001 won four Czech Lions – three of which were for the acting performances of Stella Zázvorková, Stanislav Zindulka and Vlastimil Brodský.
He was the recipient of several awards – e.g. Prizes of the Czechoslovak Radio (1981), with whom he collaborated for a long time and gladly, among other things, as an unforgettable narrator of evening programs. He won the Golden Nymph for the drama Birds of Prey at the International Film Festival (IFF) in Monte Carlo, the title of national artist, the Thalia Award for lifetime excellence in drama, the Medal of Merit and the Award for extraordinary artistic contribution to world cinema in memoriam at the Karlovy Vary IFF.
Vlastimil Brodský was married twice. His son is the actor and artist Marek Brodský (from his first marriage with Božena Křepelková), Tereza Brodská, daughter from his second marriage with Jana Brejchová, also became an actress.
