Zborov

Summary

The war film Zborov was originally scheduled to premiere in 1937 on the twentieth anniversary of the battle near the Ukrainian village of Zborov, in which the Czechoslovak Legions first intervened on the eastern front of the World War I. For various reasons, however, it was not filmed until a year later and did not appear in cinemas until after the Munich Agreement, which gave the film’s brief release an unexpected patriotic dimension. The film stands out from the usual First Republic film production in terms of genre, magnificence, and state support. The final battle scenes, lasting about eleven minutes, were filmed with the participation of several thousand Czechoslovak Army soldiers. The story takes place from 1914 until the victory in the battle on 2 July 1917. It starts at the ŠKODA factory in Plzeň, where the experienced foreman Kalina is the workshop supervisor. His two sons find themselves on opposite sides after the declaration of war. The two brothers meet on the battlefield after the Battle of Zborov. Apart from them, we follow the fates of other participants in the war events, and the first part of the film also captures life in the rear. – The film, written by the famous legionnaire, General Rudolf Medek, shows explicitly its patriotic intentions, emphasised by the pathetic opening and closing commentary. For its time, it quite successfully depicts life in the trenches at the battlefront and surprises with its management of crowd war scenes. In addition to the large number of extras, many of well-known actors participated in the production, sometimes only in supporting roles. – The film was removed from cinemas during the Protectorate at the end of the summer of 1939. It appeared in cinemas after the war, but only until 1948, as the Communist regime purposefully suppressed the legacy of the Legions. – In November 2018, the National Film Archive, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, presented the title in a digitally restored version as part of the Filmové osmičky series. The official premiere took place on 8 November 2018 at the National Memorial at Vítkov in Prague. The aim of the digital restoration was to make the film available as it could be seen and heard by the audience at the time of its first screening in 1939. Therefore, the film kept some elements that were created during filming or laboratory processing and are therefore evidence of the technologies and creative processes of the time. The source for the digitalisation of the image and sound was a duplication positive (the original negative of the image and sound was not preserved) stored at the National Film Archive. The restoration was carried out in 2018 under the supervision of the National Film Archive at Universal Productions Partners and Soundsquare studios in Prague.

Synopsis