Pavel Juráček (1935-1989)

When we talk about the film production of the 1960s, sometimes called the "Czechoslovak film miracle", we cannot forget the director and screenwriter Pavel Juráček, whose name is inseparably linked to this period.

Pavel Juráček was born on 2 August 1935 in Příbram. He graduated from the local grammar school, studied journalism and Czech for two years at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University, and during his studies worked briefly as a reporter for Večerní Prahy. Despite this experience, and despite being an unofficial spokesman of his generation, he had difficulties with his philology exam and did not finish his studies. He tried in vain to find employment in Prague editorial offices and was finally forced to accept a position as editor of the Nymburk Village Newspaper. After less than a year, in June 1957, he was admitted without examination to FAMU, majoring in dramaturgy.

Already during his studies he showed himself to be a distinctive talent and impressed with his distinctive literary style. In 1960 he wrote the screenplay for the film The Dynamite Watchman, based on a short story by Jan Drda, and at the end of his fourth year in 1961 he finished the screenplay for Black and White Sylva and also adapted the screenplay for the film The Ceiling by Věra Chytilová.

After graduating from school, he became a dramaturge for the eight-member creative group of Bohumil Šmid and Ladislav Fikar of the Barrandov Film Studio. In the 1960s, as a co-writer or scriptwriter, he participated in the production of a number of films, such as the science-fiction film Ikarie XB 1 (directed by J. Polák), The Fool's Chronicle (directed by J. Polák), Nobody Will Laugh Based on a Theme by Milan Kundera (directed by H. Bočan) and The End of August at the Ozón Hotel (directed by J. Schmidt). In 1963 he made A Character to Support, a film where Juráček, in addition to his own theme and script, tried his hand at directing for the first time in collaboration with Jan Schmidt. It was a shorter medium-length Kafkaesque story about a young man in a labyrinth of absurdity and bureaucracy. A year later it won the Grand Prix at Oberhausen and the FIPRESCI Prize in Mannheim. In 1965, he directed a two-story film about military life, Every Young Man, expressing the absurdity and mindless manipulation of the military environment. The film was awarded the FIPRESCI prize at the Karlovy Vary IFF in 1966.

At the end of the 1960s, Juráček became the head of one of Barrandov's creative groups. As a producer, he was involved in the creation of a number of excellent films - most notably Chytil's The Fruit of the Trees of Paradise We Eat, Menzel's The Larks on the Thread, Suchý's The Bride, and Juráček's biggest and unfortunately last project, The Case for a Beginning Executioner, in which he was loosely inspired by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The story has an actual contemporary feel - its hero gets to an imaginary land where people are manipulated by their rulers. The film was completed at the very beginning of normalisation, in December 1969, but the following year its screening was banned. In mid-1971 Juráček had to leave Barrandov due to "loss of confidence", none of his other projects were realised, and he ran into financial difficulties. The inability to work and also partner disagreements caused his health problems and depression. His situation was further complicated by the signing of Charter 77 and he was eventually forced to move to Germany, where he failed to make it in the commercial film environment. While abroad, he wrote more than twenty scripts and themes, including The Wolf Situation by J. London and Golem by G. Meyrink, but none of them were realised. To achieve success, Juráček would have had to abandon his ideals, and he was unable to do so. Disappointment, as well as increasing health problems, finally forced him to return after six years. But even at home, despite the help of his friends, he was not successful; the old depression reappeared. At the time when negotiations with FS Gottwaldov for the filming of The Wolf Situation were coming to a successful conclusion, Pavel Juráček died of cancer on 28 May 1989 in Prague, aged just under 54.



Sources:

FRYŠ, Josef, 1944-. Twelve Fates of Two Centuries. Josef Fryš. Edition 1. Příbram: J. Fryš, 2006. 270 p. ISBN 80-239-8119-6.

FRYŠ, Miloš. Our Natives. M. Fryš, Příbramský zpravodaj, 1990, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 14-15.



Processed by: Hana Pegová, Jan Drda Library in Příbram