Daily Movie Rec 5/21/24 (Double Feature)

Black Peter (1964)

Directed by: Miloš Forman

Cinematography by: Jan Nemecek

Country: Czechoslovakia

Genre: Comedy

Plot:

The daily life of a blank-faced and helpless teenager named Petr as he pursues his crush, Pavla, gets a job working security at a small grocery store, endures regular scolding from his very opinionated father, and brushes off harassment from the dopey apprentice bricklayer Čenda and his quiet sidekick Zdeněk.

First Images:

A shop owner enters his store as circus music rings on the soundtrack. The owner opens the door for a series of female shop assistants who arrive. 

Last Images:

Petr's father reproaches Petr and Čenda for the way they and their generation navigate life. About to reveal information to them, he says, "Do you know what this is? This is..." and the frame freezes on the father's face right before he answers. The film then cuts to Petr, raising his head expectantly for the advice to come, then back to the father, still frozen. Music comes on over the still image. The film fades to black. The End. A clever and playful piece of postmodern self-reflexivity. Forman drawing attention to the form and the facade of cinema to say that the grumpy father doesn't hold the answers to life either. Very New Wave.

Thoughts:

There are more differences than similarities, but Black Peter feels like Czechoslovakia's answer to The 400 Blows (1959) in its subjective slice-of-life coming-of-age comedy story about an aimless young man who just can't seem to get it right. After directing a few documentaries, Black Peter was Miloš Forman's narrative feature debut. He carried some of those documentary-like formal aspects with him in this debut - aspects that would define much of his early comedies, often recording unsuspecting extras and passers-by, including their natural reactions and interactions in his films, toying with fact and fiction. 

Forman also instills some understated absurdism into the comedy (though admittedly, most teenage years feel like a farce in hindsight), goofy enough to recognize it as such but deadpan enough that the jokes are not overtly signified as jokes; they could almost be real events from a teenager's diary. At the start of the film, Petr roams the grocery store looking for shoplifters. He identifies a shifty man who he suspects of stealing, and rather than confronting him, Petr tails the man for half the day - at times walking a mere 4-5 feet behind the man, pretending to stare off in some undefined direction every time the man stops to look back at Petr - following the man on a pointless voyage through the city until he eventually loses track of him. Petr gets the chance to redeem himself for his gaff at the end of the movie when he sees a woman blatantly shoving bag after bag of candy into her purse, but this time, Petr refuses to act in any way, which sets up the end of the film where his father berates him before time stops without resolution. Other scenes see Čenda and Zdeněk attempting to provoke Petr into a confrontation while he's hanging out with Pavla by the waterside, but when Zdeněk fidgets with the string on his shorts, accidentally loosening them and exposing his butt, the two flee in shame with Čenda chastising Zdeněk's faux pas. And at the dancehall, Čenda again pesters Petr, and then pleads for Petr to lend him money in the middle of their argument - money he uses in hopes of mustering enough drunk courage to talk to the girl he likes, instead getting so drunk he falls asleep at a table his boss sits at. For all of its enjoyment, what I came away the most with from Black Peter was gratefulness for not being a sloppy, embarrassing youth in bizarre and unpredictable situations, endless days and nights ruined by unfailingly fumbling the bag with girls or getting into a situation I had no idea how to navigate - because goddam if I didn't see a hard truth in this movie: a young me wincingly reflected back in these blundering idiots.

Favorite Shot(s):

The juxtaposing shots at the dancehall contrast the footloose youths juking, jiving, and twisting with Petr's utterly inept, awkward, shoulder-ific Neanderthal dance moves.

Where to watch:

The Criterion Channel