Otakar Vávra

Otakar Vávra (28 February 1911 – 15 September 2011) was a Czech film director, screenwriter and pedagogue.

Biography and career
Vávra attended universities in Brno and Prague, where he studied architecture. During 1929–30, while still a student, he participated in the making of a handful of documentaries and wrote movie scripts. In 1931, he produced the experimental film Světlo proniká tmou. The first movie he directed was 1937's Panenství.

His 1938 film The Merry Wives was praised in Variety for "first-rate direction, a salty yarn and elaborate production effort", even though it had undergone certain cuts because it was considered too "ribald" by American censors.

Vávra was a member of the Communist Party from 1945 to 1989. After the Communists seized power in 1948, Vávra adapted quickly to the new political climate and produced films praising the current regime and supporting the new, official interpretation of the past.

In the 1950s he filmed the "Hussite Trilogy", one of his most famous works, consisting of Jan Hus (1954), Jan Žižka (1955) and Against All (1957).

In the 1960s, Vávra made his most celebrated films Zlatá reneta (1965), Romance for Bugle (1966) and Witchhammer (1969). Romance for Bugle was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Special Silver Prize.

In the 1970s Vávra produced his "War Trilogy" consisting of semi-documentary movies Dny zrady, Sokolovo and Osvobození Prahy, all being heavily influenced by communist propaganda. The film Dny zrady (Days of Betrayal, 1973) was entered into the 8th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Diploma. In 1979 he was a member of the jury at the 11th Moscow International Film Festival.

Since the 1950s Vávra taught film direction at Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Among his students were several directors of the "Czech New Wave".

Awards
In 2001, he was awarded the Czech Lion for his lifelong contribution to the Czech cinema. In 2004, he received the presidential Medal of Merit.

Criticism
Vávra's critics point to his willingness to accommodate the Communist regime. In a 2003 article ("Playing the Villain", The Globe and Mail, May 15, 2003) about his documentary film, Hitler and I that he shot in Prague, David Cherniack described the following encounter with his former FAMU head professor:

"Having lived in a police state for four years and seen the difficult choices that people make between ends and means, I decide to interview my head professor from the academy, National Artist Otakar Vavra. Now 92 but still very sharp, Vavra made 50 feature films under every regime from the thirties on, including the seven years of the Nazi occupation. Though he maintains he was serving his films and the public by doing the minimum necessary to co-operate, others are of the view that he was serving himself. The films of his that I've seen tend to be rather didactic history lessons.

I meet him at the Theatre Restaurant where he lunches every day and still conducts business. Behind the bluster and razor-sharp intellect that is still very much present, I sense a sad and isolated old man who feels he should be enjoying the adulation of his country and not being as ignored as he is. My own Fritz Gerlich (a Catholic newspaper editor executed in Dachau during the Night of the Long Knives) was our teaching assistant, the New Wave director Evald Schorm. Unlike Vavra, he refused to sign a paper agreeing with the 1968 occupation by the Warsaw Pact. Schorm went to his own Dachau. He was forced to leave the school and filmmaking and go direct operas in Brno. One of the Czech actors on the set tells me he died an embittered man shortly before the Velvet Revolution. Reality is always more complex than the stories we tell about it."

Filmography

 * 1931 Světlo proniká tmou
 * 1934 Žijeme v Praze
 * 1935 Listopad
 * 1936 Three Men in the Snow
 * 1936 Velbloud uchem jehly
 * 1937 Panenství
 * 1937 Filosofská historie
 * 1938 Na 100%
 * 1938 Cech panen kutnohorských
 * 1939 Humoreska
 * 1939 Kouzelný dům
 * 1939 Dívka v modrém
 * 1940 Pohádka máje
 * 1940 Podvod s Rubensem
 * 1940 Pacientka Dr. Hegla
 * 1940 Maskovaná milenka
 * 1941 Turbina
 * 1942 Přijdu hned
 * 1942 Okouzlená
 * 1943 Šťastnou cestu
 * 1945 Vlast vítá
 * 1945 Rozina sebranec
 * 1946 Nezbedný bakalář
 * 1946 Cesta k barikádám
 * 1947 Předtucha
 * 1948 Krakatit
 * 1949 Němá barikáda
 * 1949 Láska
 * 1953 Nástup
 * 1954 Jan Hus
 * 1955 Jan Žižka
 * 1957 Proti všem
 * 1958 Občan Brych
 * 1959 První parta
 * 1960 Srpnová neděle
 * 1960 Policejní hodina
 * 1961 Noční host
 * 1962 Horoucí srdce
 * 1965 Zlatá reneta
 * 1967 Romance pro křídlovku
 * 1968 Třináctá komnata
 * 1969 Kladivo na čarodějnice
 * 1973 Dny zrady
 * 1974 Sokolovo
 * 1976 Osvobození Prahy
 * 1977 Příběh lásky a cti
 * 1980 Temné slunce
 * 1983 Putování Jana Ámose
 * 1984 Komediant
 * 1985 Veronika
 * 1985 Oldřich a Božena
 * 1989 Evropa tančila valčík
 * 2003 Moje Praha