Romeo, Juliet And Darkness

Love, War and Prague

In May 1942 Reinhard Heydrich, Deputy Reich Protector of Czechoslovakia was assassinated by Czech resistance fighters. This daring daylight assassination has become the subject of several films notably Fritz Lang’s ‘Hangmen Also Die’. It also forms the disturbing background to Jiri Weiss’ film.

As can be guessed from the title the subject of Weiss’ film is yet another tragic love story; IMDB lists 49 films bearing the names of Romeo and Juliet in the title. Weiss’ film puts the love affair in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia between an idealistic young Czech student, Pavel and a Jewish girl, Hanka, who is escaping from Heydrich’s crackdown on the Jewish population of the former Czechoslovakia.

As Pavel rescues a pet guinea pig from the flat in his apartment building which has just been vacated by a Jewish family he discovers Hanka who has come too late to catch what we know must be one of the death trains from Prague to an unnamed concentration camp. On an impulse Pavel persuades Hanka to hide in a part of the attic that his mother, a seamstress, uses as a storage room. Before long they learn that Heydrich has been assassinated and the Nazis really start to crack down.

As their love develops the stress of hiding Hanka, providing her with food and the other necessities of living begins to take its toll more and more heavily on Pavel. Slowly he alienates his friends, his Czech girl friend and finally his family. All the while the effects of the Nazi vengeance on the Czech population at large looms ever closer and more dangerous.

Weiss skilfully intercuts between the three strands of his story, Pavel’s secret love life, his home and school life and the ever-threatening presence of the Nazi’s so that the tension gradually increases as the film draws closer and closer to what we know from the title must be its inevitable dénouement.

The soundtrack neatly blends the original music that accompanies Hanka and Pavel’s love affair with snatches of the Hussite hymn from Smetana’s Ma Vlast.

The transfer from film to dvd is not all that good leaving the film with an overall washed out grey look as the contrasts between blacks and whites are muted. On their website Second Run admit this but due to defects in the original source material this is about the best digital version possible. Despite the drawbacks of the transfer this remains a very good film worthy of a place alongside fellow countryman Jiri Menzel’s WW2 movie ‘Closely observed trains.’