Sacrifice and Rebirth. The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War

Abstract

army, after all, was the home of that ultimate Czech icon of anti-establishment mockery, the Good Soldier Švejk, and Švejk proves a point of reference in more than one Army Film production (p. 162). Again, though, Lovejoy stresses how such qualities arose in large part from a specific institutional identity, from Army Film’s conception of its specific role. What gained ground among Army Film leaders in the 1960s was a belief in the unit’s natural responsibility to address social issues and the concerns of young people, given that it represented an institution with which virtually all Czechoslovak youth came into contact through military service. ‘Auteurist experimentation’ and anti-war sentiment emerged as strategies of rapprochement between military and civilian spheres, attempts at preserving the Army’s legitimacy before a critically oriented youth (p. 165). Taken together, Lovejoy’s analyses offer a forceful qualification to the shopworn dichotomy, often invoked in commentary on East European cinema, that pits the creative agency of the individual artist against the negative, essentially limiting input of the state institution. Lovejoy also challenges the notion of the monolithically coordinated national film industry, detailing the way Army Film jockeyed with Czechoslovakia’s State Film bodies for its share of cultural prestige. A third important idea Lovejoy’s study brings to light is the presence of tradition — typified in enduring tropes like the ‘myth’ of the Western border — in a cinema whose history is easily defined as one of ruptured continuity and diktat-imposed doctrine. Such reassessments would, of course, carry little weight without solid research to support them. Lovejoy’s scholarship is impeccable throughout, with in-depth archival study and new interview material sitting alongside sensitive, careful textual analysis that coaxes multiple meanings from this often highly concentrated material. I would have welcomed more detail on the fate of Army Film after the cultural hammer blow of post-1968 ‘normalization’, while the title’s reference to the ‘avant-garde’ does not strictly apply to all the works covered here, with space left perhaps for further elaboration on the distinctions broached early on between cultural–political ‘vanguardism’, experimental film, and the avant-garde proper. But any such issues pale beside the importance of this book’s specific discoveries and its wider implications. As if Lovejoy’s scholarly labours were not enough, she has also curated and co-subtitled the DVD that accompanies this volume, an invaluable selection of thirteen Army Film productions spanning from the 1930s to the 1960s.