Cassandra Cat

(aka AZ PRIJDE KOCUR, WHEN THE CAT COMES,
THE CAT WHO WORE SUNGLASSES, THAT CAT)
(1963, Czechoslovakia) color 91 minutes
Filmove studio Barrandov / Ceskoslovensky Statni Film
Story: Vojtech Jasny (as "Voytech Jasny")
Screenplay: Jiri Brdecka, Vojtech Jasny
Special Dialogue: Jan Werich
Music: Svatopluk Havelka
Music performed by the Filmovy Symfonieky Orchestr, conducted by Frantisek Belfin
Set Decoration: Oldrich Bosak
Costume Designer: Vladimiar Dvorak
Make-Up: Gustav Hrdlicka
Editor: Ivan Passer
Assistant Editors: Otto Koval, Zdenka Karlovska, Rene Pesniova, Eliska Kolarikov
Cinematography: Jaroslav Kucera
Executive Producer: Jaroslav Jilovec
Directed by: Vojtech Jasny (as "Voytech Jasny")

With: Jan Werich (Oliva/Magician), Emilie Vasaryova (Diana), Vlastimil Brodsky (Robert), Jiri Sovak (Schoolmaster), Vladimir Mensik (School Custodian), Jirina Bohdalov (Julie), Karel Effa (Janek), Vlasta Chramostova (Marjanka), Alena Kreuzmannova, Stella Zazvorkova, Jaroslav Mares (Restaurant Owner), Jana Werichova, Ladislav Fialka, Karel Vrtiska, Vaclav Babka (Policeman), and the children: Misa Pospisil, Tonda Kremar, Avel Brodsky, Dana Dubansky

English-Language Version:
(1967) Teleworld
Directed by Peter Riethof

***

Plot Outline: In a small unnamed village in Czechoslovakia lives Mr. Oliver, the village seer. He introduces himself, and tells the audience about his little village, famous for its controversial museum of taxidermy.

Elsewhere, Robert, a schoolteacher, conducts his third-grade class. He asks the children to draw anything their heart desires, and the children imagine their drawings coming to life as if they were motion pictures.

Oliver soon visits Robert's class, and tells them the story of his adventures on a ship, a beautiful young acrobat named Diana, and her cat Mokol, who wore magic glasses. With these glasses, Mokol saw people as they really were (i.e. = hypocrites).

Soon, a traveling circus arrives at the village, bringing with them a beautiful young acrobat named Diana, and a cat named Mokol who wears strange X-Ray specs. There is also a magician, who is the spitting image of Oliver!

That night, the troupe puts on a wonderful show in the village square. The villagers enjoy the bizarre show, which involves magical tricks and pantomime.

Suddenly, Mokol the cat removes his glasses, and everything changes. You see, the magic animal sees people as they really are! Lovers are bathed in red; cheaters are soaked in yellow; and the petty jealous are doused in blue. The audience breaks out into a mad panic.

Later that night, Oliver steals Mokol, replaces his spectacles, and lets him loose. Meanwhile, Diane the acrobat and Robert the schoolteacher spend time together. Mokol joins them, and sees them bathed in deep red; they are falling in love! The two lovers take a boat ride, share some old wine, and play chess. Finally, they take a ride in a hay wagon led by Oliver.

The village men mount a search party for Mokol, which turns into an orgy of hunting for exhibits for the taxidermy museum. Meanwhile, the village children mount their own search party.

One of Robert's pupils, William Yosko, finds Mokol, and brings him to his house. Seeing what Mokol sees, William notes that his parents are bathed in red, obviously in love, while his blue-tinted uncle is revealed as a jealous hypocrite!

Mokol and the kids return to the village, and see their parents in all of their revealed glory. William is ordered to bring Mokol to the evil Schoolmaster - who steals the cat and prepares to have him stuffed!

The schoolmaster gives the kids a lecture on taxidermy; one of the kids looks out the window and sees Mokol being stolen away by the school custodian. Distracted, Robert intervenes and tells the kids the real story of the horror of taxidermy.

Later, Robert and his wife Julie, who have been fighting, break up for good, as they have completely different philosophies of life. Robert is later caught while trying to rescue Mokol, and is fired.

Robert's class rises up in protest against his unfair dismissal, and cover the entire village in subversive art! Then they run away, in order to punish their parents. The villagers look for the kids in the deep woods, but to no avail.

Robert then pleads for the kids' return over the loudspeaker. The kids hear Robert's plea, and return with Mokol. The grateful villagers then see their village with the reality that the kids have seen all along. They learn to live with and accept their own truths, and failing.

Diana and her magical troupe leave the village, to Robert's dismay. But, as his class runs to him carrying their banners of Mokol, Robert knows what he must do. He must share his new-found love with the village, his wife, the children, and most of all, the wonderful cat who taught them all to "see".

THE END

***

WHEN THE CAT COMES is a wonderful allegorical fantasy, as well as a fascinating, not uncritical look at modern Czech life, with its fakers and phonies and cheaters and drunks, and most of all, its pompous bureaucrats!

Here is also an amazing look at the delicious conspiracy of childhood, as some village children learn to rise above the terrible irony of their elders telling children them one thing, and doing entirely another.

The magic show put on for the villagers is a tour de force of drama and special effects, reminding one of Herman Hesse' "Magic Lantern" Theatre, in which reality is revealed through magical playacting.

The film utilizes marvelous camera tricks against black backdrops, employing simple but effective opticals, and some wonderful pantomime. There are even some Godardian jump cuts.

We soon see that cute title cat Mokol is really the deus ex machina of the piece; he sees humans' secret desires and real motivations, in effect the subconscious brought to the surface. In point of fact, the villagers turn the colors of their secret longings (and shortcomings): the yellow are unfaithful, the purple are liars or jealous, and the red are the true lovers.

There are some amazing use of opticals, with multi-colored persons dancing in front of other layers of back-projected humanity. The riot becomes a sort of dance, a cross between an orgy and a courtship ritual, complete with symbolic matings, and even, amongst rivals, psychic fistfights. The orgy escalates into a kaleidoscopic montage worthy of Eisenstein.

The film is full of poignant bittersweet moments. In one, a mismatched couple comes out of the wedding chapel. She is red, deeply in love, but he is yellow, cowardly and unfaithful. We know that the romance is doomed. In another, lovers Diane and Robert romp through a pastoral fantasyland, reminiscent of similar fertility rituals in Ingmar Bergman films.

Later, the villain of the piece, the cowardly schoolmaster, is seen changing color over and over, showing deftly that bad leaders are not merely dishonest bullies, but severely conflicted individuals as well.

A sublime music score by Svatopluk Havelka adds to the deep emotions triggered by this most unusual fairy tale. A breathtaking treatise on forgiveness and the bonds of love, as well as a politically powerful tirade against moral hypocrisy, WHEN THE CAT COMES is surely one of the finest films for children ever made.

CASSANDRA CAT won two prizes at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France: "Prix de la Commission Supérieure Technique" and "Prix spécial du Jury", both in 1963.

***

Here is an interesting overview of director Jasny, from an online article called "Preceding Generations", by Mira & Antonin J. Liehm (1977):

"It was a leading representative of the generation of 1956, Vojtech Jasny, who declared in 1963 that Czechoslovak film-makers are aware of this responsibility, that they don't intend to keep silent any longer, and that from then on, they would call things by their right names. "Cassandra Cat" ("Az Prijde Kocour" - 1963) was a modern fairy tale, one of the political morality films that became so typical in those years. Stylized to the extreme, almost a kind of film ballet, it was the story of a magic cat whose gaze made everyone show his true colors: it not only opened a Pandora's box of taboo subject matter, it also broke the lock on the chest that for so many years had confined visual fantasy. Following "Desire", it was another pioneering feat, and it was no accident that Jasny was to conclude this era of film-making- after the unsuccessful international coproduction of "Pipes" ("Dymky" - 1966)- with one of the most significant films of 1968, "All My Countrymen" (Vsichni Dobri Rodaci")."

Video/DVD availability: VHS (Nostalgia Family Video, oop)

Links of related interest:
an interesting piece on Jasny from "the Valley Advocate"

a good overview of the Czechoslvak new wave, including Jasny, from Criterion Video

The magic cat Mokol sees into people's souls!

Diane and Robert fall in love.

True lovers dance, bathed in a heavenly red glow.

The magic mime show portrays all of the town's villains as ghostly symbols of corruption and deceit.

Diane and Mokol watch with amusement as the townspeople are forced to confront their true selves...