Jiri Menzel, a Czech director whose 1966 movie “Closely Watched Trains” won the Academy Award for foreign language film, has died.
The friendship between Czech New Wave pioneers Milos Forman and Ivan Passer was crucial in the life of the man who directed ‘Amadeus’ and ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’“Closely Watched Trains” was his first feature movie.
Based on a novel by Czech author Bohumil Hrabal, it tells the story of a dispatcher’s apprentice coming of age at a small train station during the Nazi occupation in World War II. His next collaboration with Hrabal, “Larks on a String” in 1969, was another tragicomic description of life under a totalitarian regime, this time under communism.The movie was immediately banned by the communist authorities. After the 1989 anti-Communist revolution led by Vaclav Havel, it won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Menzel’s other adaptation of Hrabal’s work include “Cutting It Short“ , “The Snowdrop Festival” and “I served the King of England” .A graduate of Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts in 1962, he was also known for directing plays and also as an actor.
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