Ferdinand Kruta Movies

In 1936, Jakub Vilda was a championship professional boxer from Czechoslovakia. He was in Munich, battling his German rival Kurt Schaller, when his manager called off the match. Puzzled and angry, he returned to Prague to train for another match and to find a new manager. When he learns that the Nazis were pressuring his manager to get him to lose, he becomes even more upset. Meanwhile, his old girlfriend has left him for someone else, and he takes up with a German woman who is a popular actress in Czech films. At the time of the rematch, he wins with great difficulty, but he wins. Unfortunately, his new girlfriend was under orders from the German government to cause him to lose, and the results for her are fatal. This drama is directly based on actual events. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

It is mid-winter in a distant village that happens to be home for an engineer working on a drilling rig, when a daughter he had never seen -- nor even knew existed -- suddenly shows up seeking his help. Her mother has died and she does not want to live alone, nor does she want to depend on her boyfriend and his unfortunately elitist family for support. Although the father is taken quite by surprise, he agrees to his daughter's wishes and the two plan on spending their Christmas vacation together to get to know each other. What the daughter does not realize and the father will not admit, is that he has an alcohol problem that amounts to a near-suicidal addiction. The renewed relationship with his daughter seems to offer some hope that he might overcome his problem, if he has enough self-control left to value his daughter over the bottle. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Five directors team up for this drama that strings the stories together in one 105-minute Czech feature. "Mr. Baltazar's Death" is directed by Jiri Menzel. Jan Nemec directs "The Imposters" in which two elderly men nearing death keep themselves alive by telling each other lies about their careers. In Elward Schorm's "The House Of Happiness," an insurance agent flees from the home of an eccentric painter when he believes his mother is a witch. In "The Snack Bar," directed by Vera Chvtilova, a young woman's body is found after she has committed suicide. The final feature, "Romance" directed by Jaromi Jires, involves a young man having an affair with a carefree gypsy woman before she returns to her traveling tribe. The feature marks the emergence of five young directors who show that Czechoslovakia has made leaps and bound in the quality and technical aspects of filmmaking as of 1965. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi