Greeting to the Swallows

Country

Czechoslovakia

Copyright

1972

Production year

1972

Premiere

26 May 1972

Runtime

88 min

Director

Jaromil Jireš

Genre

drama, biography

Typology

featuretheatrical distributionlong

Original title

...a pozdravuji vlaštovky

Czech title

...a pozdravuji vlaštovky

English title

Greeting to the Swallows

Working title

Maruška / Maruška Kudeříková / Země na druhém břehu

Summary

This intimate drama from Jaromil Jireš acquaints us with the personality of Marie Kudeříková (1921–1943), a communist resistance fighter who was executed by the Nazis in March 1943, when she was just 22 years of age. The story describes the last 99 days of Marie’s life spent on death row in a jail in the Polish city of Wroclaw. In a series of flashbacks, the reasons why the heroine has been condemned are presented along with the events that resulted in her joining the resistance. A first great flush of emotion, opposition to the occupation, and the passivity of those around her all led an ordinary girl from a rural Catholic family to embark on a path full of danger that would end tragically. Although ...a pozdravuji vlaštovky (Greetings to the Swallows) was released in 1972, the style and form of the story puts it in the same company as Jireš’s earlier work linked with the Czechoslovak New Wave, especially the director’s drama Žert (The Joke) from 1968. The screenplay for the film was written in the 1960s and it is therefore no wonder that, instead of a portrait of a communist icon, it offers the poetic and sensitive story of a girl on the threshold of death who comes to terms with her fate. Together with his co-screenwriter Zora Beráková, Jireš based the script on Zlomky života (Fragments of a Life) – a posthumous collection of letters home that Marie Kudeříková wrote in prison. Thanks to their civic-minded and authentic approach to the material, the writers managed to avoid taking a simplistic ideological view. The film, therefore, remains a rare example of a movie from the “normalisation” era of Soviet entrenchment after the Warsaw Pact invasion which managed in a heavily censored environment to maintain contact with the best traditions of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Jireš’s favourite collaborators – the cinematographer Jan Čuřík and the composer Luboš Fišer – played their part in ensuring the film was a success. The actress Magda Vášáryová gave a remarkable performance in the lead role.

Synopsis

Towards the end of 1942 a young prisoner Maruška awaits in her cell in prison in Breslau (after war Polish Wrocław) her execution. After death sentence it was ninety nine days of grace of life that were granted to prisoners by the Nazis, a period during which the prisoners were put to work. Maruška paints the eyes of the plaster tin soldiers by a thin brush and thus she takes the opportunity to put down secretly the fragments of her memories, thoughts and expectations. She hopes she will manage to smuggle these "scraps", as she calls them, to her close friends and family. In retrospect there are returning the girl's experiences. Strict but loving parents, younger brother and sister. Her beloved Julek who first suggested the idea of the resistance movement against the Nazis to her but ultimately he recoiled from danger and did not venture anything. After leaving examination Maruška started working in a factory in Veverská Bitýška. The regular commuting by train enabled her to be an orderly of resistance fighters. However, the illegal activity was disclosed and most of members of the group were arrested. Despite the cruel interrogatory Maruška did not betray anybody. Eventually, Maruška is sentenced to death. The girl refuses to return to the belief in God though her mother is urging her to do it. Maruška's defence lawyer, she herself and her parents ask for pardon. After expiring the time limit of the execution the girl starts hoping. Her father at his visit tells her that the Red Army opened up the counter-offensive. But pardon is refused and two days after her twenty-second birthday Maruška Kudeříková is executed (*24. 3. 1921 +26. 3. 1943).