Long Live the Republic!
(Karel Kachyna) 1965 Second Run Blu Ray,
It’s the spring of 1945 in the Moravian village of Nesovice. The defeated German army is retreating as the Russians rapidly advance. Twelve year old Oldrich (Zdenek Lstiburek) runs away from his parents to journey across a war-torn landscape. He briefly teams up with a man from the village called Cyril (Gustav Valach) who advices him on how to survive.
Yet the boy is worldly-wise for his age and resourcefully equipped to go it alone. Oldrich has undergone the torments of children, from richer farms than his and the brutal beatings he’s received from his father have further shaken his trust in people. The rebellious Oldrich already has a remarkable individualism and stoicism.
Only Cyril, memories of his adoring mother and the white horse of his family are his friends in the chaos leading up to military liberation.
At the beginning of Long Live the Republic! Oldrich (voiced over as a man) says he was afraid back then that he’d never physically grow bigger and that the community would label him a midget. There are moments when director Karel Kachyna cuts from the frustrated activities of villagers and the enemy to reveal them all as stupid grownups that are, at heart, just like the ignorant clumsy kids who can’t match up to Oldrich, for though small of stature he’s cunning and clever.
Long Live the Revolution! is a story of flight recalling Nemec’s very different Diamonds of the Night. A flight to a better life from the country’s socialism that’s failed everyone (the film’s title is squarely ironic); a flight not so my much from the horrors of war (Klimov’s boy observer in Come and See has a nightmarish time) or an escape into boyish blitz adventures (Bormann’s children in Hope and Glory have more qualified fun) but a brief interregnum before peace comes where, from Oldritch’s subjective point of view, he struggles to understand his place in a new world that may not have changed that much when it comes to combatitive, violent and selfish relationships.
The one scene in Long Live the Republic! that illustrates the corrosive effect of war is not the smaller bad things that Oldrich witnesses (The shooting of a horse, the burial of his dog, a squirell violently pursued or a pigeon that he shoots with a catapult) but the villagers stoning of Cyril, that drives him to suicide by throwing himself into a well.
We are never sure if Cyril did actually collaborate with the Germans. And Kachyna refuses to sentimentalise things by having Oldrich weep over Cyril’s death. Has the ‘midget’ grow up too much inwardly that he’s now hardened by his experiences? Oldrich appears more concerned about the fate of his family’s prized white horse that he learns later on turned up as an anxious stray on the streets of Berlin. Yet the horse story is probably a fiction: an idealised legend representing a vestige of freedom for Oldrich (As the voiced-over man again) now reflecting on his disrupted childhood.
Long Live the Republic! is lyrical though tough: a journey beautifully photographed in monochrome cinemascope. Real present events, memories and fantasies pour out on the screen with a stream of consciousness charm that’s intoxicating. Occasionally the film slips into magic realism as Oldrich flies over the countryside but it avoids whimsy: our anti-hero protagonist moves through a real and uncertain Moravia which often looks like its being made up off the hoof, controlled by an astute and critical child.
Perhaps it’s overlong, guilty of repetition (too many shots of running horses do bring loungers) and tends to be a sprawling story over-packed with incidents. But Kachyna brings an exhilarating passion to his adaptation of Jan Prochazka’s novel.
Not as intense as Kachyna’s brilliant Coach to Vienna or The Ear (recent Second Run releases) yet a seductive 60’s epic that I’m delighted to have back in circulation.
Alan Price©2026.
Long Live the Republic!
(Karel Kachyna) 1965 Second Run Blu Ray,
It’s the spring of 1945 in the Moravian village of Nesovice. The defeated German army is retreating as the Russians rapidly advance. Twelve year old Oldrich (Zdenek Lstiburek) runs away from his parents to journey across a war-torn landscape. He briefly teams up with a man from the village called Cyril (Gustav Valach) who advices him on how to survive.
Yet the boy is worldly-wise for his age and resourcefully equipped to go it alone. Oldrich has undergone the torments of children, from richer farms than his and the brutal beatings he’s received from his father have further shaken his trust in people. The rebellious Oldrich already has a remarkable individualism and stoicism.
Only Cyril, memories of his adoring mother and the white horse of his family are his friends in the chaos leading up to military liberation.
At the beginning of Long Live the Republic! Oldrich (voiced over as a man) says he was afraid back then that he’d never physically grow bigger and that the community would label him a midget. There are moments when director Karel Kachyna cuts from the frustrated activities of villagers and the enemy to reveal them all as stupid grownups that are, at heart, just like the ignorant clumsy kids who can’t match up to Oldrich, for though small of stature he’s cunning and clever.
Long Live the Revolution! is a story of flight recalling Nemec’s very different Diamonds of the Night. A flight to a better life from the country’s socialism that’s failed everyone (the film’s title is squarely ironic); a flight not so my much from the horrors of war (Klimov’s boy observer in Come and See has a nightmarish time) or an escape into boyish blitz adventures (Bormann’s children in Hope and Glory have more qualified fun) but a brief interregnum before peace comes where, from Oldritch’s subjective point of view, he struggles to understand his place in a new world that may not have changed that much when it comes to combatitive, violent and selfish relationships.
The one scene in Long Live the Republic! that illustrates the corrosive effect of war is not the smaller bad things that Oldrich witnesses (The shooting of a horse, the burial of his dog, a squirell violently pursued or a pigeon that he shoots with a catapult) but the villagers stoning of Cyril, that drives him to suicide by throwing himself into a well.
We are never sure if Cyril did actually collaborate with the Germans. And Kachyna refuses to sentimentalise things by having Oldrich weep over Cyril’s death. Has the ‘midget’ grow up too much inwardly that he’s now hardened by his experiences? Oldrich appears more concerned about the fate of his family’s prized white horse that he learns later on turned up as an anxious stray on the streets of Berlin. Yet the horse story is probably a fiction: an idealised legend representing a vestige of freedom for Oldrich (As the voiced-over man again) now reflecting on his disrupted childhood.
Long Live the Republic! is lyrical though tough: a journey beautifully photographed in monochrome cinemascope. Real present events, memories and fantasies pour out on the screen with a stream of consciousness charm that’s intoxicating. Occasionally the film slips into magic realism as Oldrich flies over the countryside but it avoids whimsy: our anti-hero protagonist moves through a real and uncertain Moravia which often looks like its being made up off the hoof, controlled by an astute and critical child.
Perhaps it’s overlong, guilty of repetition (too many shots of running horses do bring loungers) and tends to be a sprawling story over-packed with incidents. But Kachyna brings an exhilarating passion to his adaptation of Jan Prochazka’s novel.
Not as intense as Kachyna’s brilliant Coach to Vienna or The Ear (recent Second Run releases) yet a seductive 60’s epic that I’m delighted to have back in circulation.
Alan Price©2026.
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film