The Grape Harvest

An old man Dobeš sells his cottage on a village square to a town holidaymaker named Klazar. He moves to his son's new small villa with several pigeons. He is unpleasantly surprised by the constant quarrels between his philandering son and his hysterical wife. It most hurts him that the discords are witnessed by their six-year old son, Jeník. A horse auction is held at the local stud farm. Dobeš and his friend Hubert - both old horsemen - bear it very hard. The two friends loved the same woman, named Albína, in their young age. Hubert never married because of her and Dobeš, whom she favoured more, respected his friend's emotion and married another. Albína married repeatedly but was left childless. The friendship, however, remained among the three. Hubert and Dobeš tend to the remaining horses in an almost empty stable. But these horses, too, will be taken away the next day. Dobeš teaches his grandson to love horses. It is the time of feast and the centre of the celebrations is near a hunting lodge. Hubert, Dobeš, Albína and Jeník arrive there in a buggy. But the served goulash is made of foalmeat. The embittered old man buys off the whole stockpot and pours it out in a kennel. The feast ends up unhappily for the friends - by an unfortunate dispute when Hubert refuses to take the horses to a railway station. Dobeš introduces Jeník to the beauty of a vineyard as well as to the hard work which it requires. He shooes away the plundering starlings with a petards. But the little boy is scared of the noise. When the child falls asleep in the vineyard, his granddad better lets the birds devastate the entire harvest. The pigeons are let out, but return to the old house and Klazar inconsiderately kills them all. Hubert refuses his friend's offer of help with the grape harvest. Dobeš, however, still wants to buy his friend the remaining pair of horses for all his savings. Finally, one horse remains for Hubert. Albína's heart stops at the moment when she sits in the candy store of her friend Eva. The celebration of Jeník's birthday does not end up too well. The parents are angry with the boy, but he finds protection with his granddad. The old Dobeš is glad that the grandson, contrary to his own son, adopts a love of nature, honest and straightforward manners and respect for work from him. Jeník goes to school for the first time. The grandfather borrows from Hubert, with whom he eventually reconciles, a horse to take the grandson to school with all the bells on. He is in a hurry and takes a shortcut. But the horse stampedes on an old road full of potholes and turns the light carriage over. The old Dobeš dies and the boy waits for him in front of the school in vain.