MARECEK, PASS ME THE PEN! 1976
(Marečku, podejte mi pero!)
Directed by Oldřich Lipský
91 minutes
In Czech with English subtitles
Made in 1970s Czechoslovakia, this remains today one of the most beloved films in the country. It became iconic, and It has a beautiful kind of innocence and playfulness about it, along with a punchy sense of humour. It's made by one of the most witty and inventive directors of that time – Oldřich Lipský.
When a father brazenly instructs his teenage son about how to behave and study for school, he is suddenly thrown into a dilemma. He wants a promotion at the agricultural machine factory where he works, but in order to get it he has to have a high school diploma, which he never got. So suddenly he finds himself with a lot of other old-agers taking evening classes in the local highschool to get his graduation diploma. In fact he finds himself stuck in the same desk that his teenage son attends during the day. What emerges is a poignant comedy conjured up by a zany duo of screenplay writers - Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak - who have become legendy in Czechoslovakia.
Once back into the classroom, our aging factory worker struggles with academic exercises and poor performance... and along the way the film throws us into screwball situations exploring issues of social conformity, ironic domestic situations, dumbfounding bureaucracy, and the contradictions of the family unit... all reflecting what was happening in that communist country at the time. In fact, the screenplay writers were drawing from their own real life experiences as teachers in working-class evening schools during the 1970s, and capturing the absurdities of aging geezers navigating school life, often older than their instructors... adults finding themselves regressing into the role of children again.
But what we also experience in this flick is the Czech spirit during those times – an unparalleled sense of humanitarianism and the wacky adventure of everyday life. A huge cult film in Czechoslovakia, and yet has rarely been seen in the west almost at all.