The Smoke [Rooftop Moviehouse]

dir. Tomáš Vorel / 1990 / comedy, musical / Czechoslovakia / Czech with English subtitles / 89 minutes

“A musical of the totalitarian age” is the subtitle of The Smoke, a film in which Tomáš Vorel builds on his legendary second student film ING. (1985), though with many changes. Only the core of the story remains: a young engineer arrives at his first job, intending to actually work—an intention that, in the bizarre climate of the late totalitarian era, proves to be a shocking act of rebellion. With his unusually normal attitude, Mirek sets the wheels of “local” history in motion. The social evil—embodied by incompetent bosses—is overthrown by a justly outraged, newly awakened crowd, and a new order is established. Yet this new order soon begins to resemble the old one, only in reverse.

The screenplay was co-written by Tomáš Vorel and Lumír Tuček of the Prague Five theater group, specifically from the Recitation Ensemble Vpřed. The film bears the distinct poetics of this creative circle: a blending of the serious and the absurd, irony and admiration, reality and bizarreness, truth and the surreal.

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