The
Wishing Machine

(aka AUTOMAT NA PRÁNÍ)
(1967, Czechoslovakia/France) color 83 minutes
Filmové Studio Gottwaldov/Central Office of Film Distribution/
Ceskoslovensky Filmexport/Societe Generale de Prodcution
Story: Josef Pinkava
Screenplay: Josef Pinkava, Jiri Blazek
Cinematography: Jirí Kolín
Music: Wiliam Bukový, Arthur De Cenzo
Produced by Zdenek Stibor
Directed by Josef Pinkava

English-Language Versions:
(1971) Xerox Films 79 minutes
(1974) Paramount Family Matinee
Series Director: Thomas D. Anglim
Theme Song: Robert Braverman
Executive Producer: Robert Braverman
Produced by Belluci Productions
Screenplay: Janet Waggener

With: Milan Zeman (Vasek/Thomas Caliban), Vit Weingartner (Honza/Charlie Casper), Rudolf Deyl (Charlie’s grandfather), Karel Effa, Frantisek Filipovsky (schoolmaster), Josef Hlinomatz (prison guard), Miloslav Holub (Commissar), Oldrich Velen, Marketa Rauschgoldova, Zdenek Blazek, Jana Rendiova, Radim Cvrcek, Zdenka Revayova, Eva Vodickova, Milos Vosmansky, Ales Kosnar, Frantisek Solc

***

Plot Outline: Two young boys, Charlie and Tom attend a world's fair and gather up every available piece of literature about the world of tomorrow. While telling their friends of the visit to the fair, they invent a wishing machine that will make anyone's wish come true. They wish for a trip to the moon ...

***

Synopsis: Two young boys, Charles Casper and Thomas Caliban, play hooky from school in order to explore an ultramodern world's fair. They take in the many marvelous scientific and industrial exhibits, obtain literature, eat food, and generally run amok.

Later at school, the boys tell the other kids about the exciting fair, especially their trip to the "Sonor" pavilion, in which resides a computer for creating electronic music! When they whistle three times, a beautiful and haunting melody begins, and a swirling marble hypnotizes them. The boys then tell of a magic machine which manufactures new clothes at the press of a button.

The children think that the boys are telling tall tales. The schoolmaster arrives, and begins the day's lessons. The boys, bored with education, reminisce some more about their wonderful trip to the world's fair...

The most amazing exhibit by far is the "Automatic Wish Fulfiller", a machine which can grant your every desire! A girl wishes for a dish of banana ice cream, and soon receives a giant bowl. Another girl wishes for a Palomino, and soon rides off in one! Tom & Charlie enter, and wish to be the first children to travel to the moon!

Soon, the boys find themselves in a spaceship, ready for takeoff! A sultry female control voice instructs them on their final preparations, and reminds them that they only wished for a one-way trip!

The boys panic, and plead to be released from their wish. The voice makes a deal with them; if they bring back something more beautiful than the earth itself, within three days, they can take a round trip to the moon and back.

The boys are released from the rocket, and begin their search for beauty. The control voice convinces the boys of her superior knowledge by performing a mathematics trick to the boys amazement. Later, the boys lie in a field, and stare at the sky through their giant colored marble.

The boys glance through their world's fair literature, but find nothing that would please their master.

The next day, Tom produces two hamsters; he wonders if they might please the control voice, who they have dubbed "the Space Lady". The boys spend the rest of the afternoon blowing bubbles, and contemplating the strange designs created within.

Charlie shows Tom the log he's been keeping of their strange adventure-to-be. The boys then go into Charlie's barn, and open his grandparent's chest. They ponder various treasures, and wonder if the "Space Lady" might like the entire treasure chest. Tom falls into the chest, and gets stuck inside. Charlie rescues him, and the two barely escape the wrath of the grandfather. Charlie has hurt his leg. As Tom bandages it, Charlie produces a kaleidoscope, which produces magnificent multi-colored designs.

The net day is the last before the scheduled space flight. The boys lay in a rowboat in a nearby pond, enjoying their final hours on earth while they fish. They ruminate on the potential dangers, and joys, of completing this most amazing adventure. They even fantasize seeing themselves as heroes in a ticker-tape parade upon their triumphant return! The mayor gives a speech on their behalf, as the crowds cheer. They even receive medals for their bravery.

The boys come back to reality when a fish tugs at their line. A nearby farmer runs over with his hounds and a rifle, telling the boys to get off his property. The boys scurry off, again barely escaping adult wrath. They rest in a nearby field. Soon, they hear the farmer's hounds, and continue to run.

The boys end up hiding in a hothouse full of tomatoes. Much to their shock, they are soon surrounded by a group of armed soldiers. They are arrested for various crimes, and taken to prison!

In the prison, the boys are subjected to a Kafkaesque trial, in which they must defend their various boyhood actions. The boys plead their case, but can't connect with the logic of their accusers. The commissioner asks Charlie where their supposed rocket is, but the boys are reluctant to reveal their information. The commissioner tries to scare the boys with a giant bear and a dancing skeleton named "Pirate Bill". The boys are found guilty, immediately imprisoned in an iron cage, and sent to jail via forklift!

The boys are placed into a maximum security cell. At first. the boys find prison great. They don't even notice the sign which says, "If you try to escape, you'll be shot." But soon they learn they are scheduled to receive "Treatment #10" in the morning; execution by firing squad!

Later that night, the two boys ponder the seriousness of their plight. As Charlie writes in his log book, the boys hear the sound of a helicopter, but it is only a surveillance craft, assuring that they cannot escape. The boys lay on their bunks, and lament missing their favorite TV show, "Space Hunter". Even worse, they face execution in the morning!

The prison guard soon returns, with balls and chains for our young prisoners. After he leaves, the boy size up their situation. They agree to remain strong in the face of their persecution. Charlie intones: "Free men will always be able to win over tyrants!"

The guard soon returns to Cell 13, warned by an alarm bell. Charlie shows the guard that the chain fell off. They also ask to have the radio net door turned down. After the guard leaves, the boys discover that the cell door was left unlocked. They sneak out of their cell, and surprise the guard.

The boys befriend the guard by helping him with his mathematics homework. While he is distracted, the boys take the guard's gun, and lock him up. They then throws tied sheets out a window, and climb down to their freedom.

The boys run through the dark fields, and stumble upon the prison helicopter. They overpower the sentry, and wrap him in sheets. They boys quickly climb into the copter, and fly off just as the prison staff begins a frantic search for the escaped convicts. The guards open fire, but the boys successfully make their escape.

The next morning finds our heroes approaching home in the helicopter. They fly over their village, and wave at some of their schoolchums. They realize they still have enough time to reach the rocketship, so they make a beeline for the launching pad. As they approach, however, the boys fight over the control stick, and the copter crashes in the woods.

The boys miraculously emerge unharmed, and run like the wind to reach the launch pad in time. To their horror, as they approach the rocket, it takes off without them! A tiny parachute floats down from the rocket.

The boys chase and capture it. Inside is a note, which asks, "Has your search for beauty taught you to distinguish between reality and fantasy?" The boys reflect on their past, magical adventures, and realize that everyday beauty such as friendship and freedom and the natural beauty of earth, is better than even the highest flights of fancy.

Tom and Charlie race back to their village, to share their knowledge with their anxiously waiting peers.

***

THE WISHING MACHINE is an engaging and unusual fantasy for children. It deftly skirts the line between fantasy and reality, and this indeed is the film’s dominant theme. In fact, the entire film may well be merely two young boys' tall tales or wild imaginations run amok.

Tom and Charlie (Vasek and Nonza in the original version) are two outlaw children, definitely out to disrupt the repressive social order of their community. Playing hooky from school, they visit an extraordinary international exposition, but they all but mock the displayed marvels of technological progress.

The world’s fair sequence is a fascinating time capsule of European technological advancement and state-of-the-art design theory; giant tractors and sleek private airplanes and marvelous pavilions, and even some computers, circa 1967, give us a rare glimpse of civilization on the hopeful cusp of great advancement.

However, when our little heroes tell their schoolchums about the fair, they either embellish or fabricate even more fantastical adventures and devices. Of note is an electronic machine which can take one’s thought waves and turn them into beautiful computer-generated music! This sequence, with its amazing opticals and haunting (vocal) musical piece is a real winner, and segments of it were used in the promotional trailers for the film.

Even more amazing is a purported “Wishing Machine”, which can make your wishes come true! We are witness to some small miracles before Tom & Charlie ask the disembodied host-voice for a trip to the moon. The wish is accepted, with conditions, and our boys are off on their journey of discovery.

Here is where the film becomes murky in delineation; are we watching a narrative, a dream shared by two minds, or a straightforward fantasy-adventure? Regardless, the film takes on a decidedly surreal note at this point.

By far the most harrowing segment of our journey to find beauty with the boys is their capture and incarceration by buffoonish tyrants. This segment is very dark for a kid’s film, and although played for laughs, suggests a very grim fate for rebels in a totalitarian regime.

This sequence includes another rather amazing montage, depicting rows of heavily-armed guards surrounding the prison walls, faceless and humorless. Finally, we see one lone soldier, apparently a young one, secretly going fishing while on guard alone. This disarming moment, showing a youth who has yet to be corrupted by “the system”, takes THE WISHING MACHINE out of the realm of pure children’s fantasy, and into that of political satire.

Tom & Charlie easily escape their captors, as befitting the more fantastical aspects of a children’s film, and fly off in a helicopter for their rendezvous with fate. Sadly, they arrive too late, and the “Uranie” rocket takes off without them. This may disappoint some who really hoped that the film contained a space trip (as the trailers suggest), but others will realize that the film, after all, was about that all-important ”inner journey” of locating peace and beauty in your current environment, as opposed to seeking it elsewhere. And the "Wishing Machine", of course, is the imaginative mind.

At film’s end, as the boys run off to tell their peers of their completed spiritual quest, we are still left to wonder whether the whole affair was wishful thinking or fantastic reality. This gives THE WISHING MACHINE a nice twist of the surreal, in a sense what one might consider the lighter side of Luis Bunuel.

A visually stunning, unusually thoughtful and somewhat hallucinogenic film, with some very “heady” optical sequences, THE WISHING MACHINE is a French and Czecholsoslvoakei co-production, well-mounted and with a wonderful musical score by Wiliam Bukový.

The short-lived Xerox Films released THE WISHING MACHINE in 1971 to U.S. Kiddie Matinees. When Xerox leased their feature film library to Paramount Pictures a few years later, THE WISHING MACHINE turned up in the schedule of Paramount’s 1974-1975 Family Matinee releases. It has since become virtually impossible to find, with only an educational VHS release surfacing. Frankly, we think this would be a terrific film to see on DVD!

Video/DVD availability: VHS (Studio Off-Hollywood Entertainment, 1993, “Specially for kids” series, volume 8, oop)