Such Is Life

Summary

Carl Junghans' social drama Such Is Life (also released under the title The Story of a Prague Washerwoman) is one of the highlights of Czech silent cinema, along with Eroticon and St. Wenceslas. Junghans could not find a sponsor in Germany because of the leftist theme of the film. In 1929, he met actor Theodor Pištěk in Prague, who was interested in the subject and raised the money. Although the film was shot in twelve days in the studio and ten shooting days outdoors, funding kept running out during the production and Pištěk had to borrow more money. In the end, the film's planned budget of 80,000 grew to more than 200,000 crowns (some roles were played by foreign actors who had to be accommodated in Prague). The Berlin premiere was a success, and the film was warmly received elsewhere in the world (and by Czech critics), but it was not released in Prague until May 1930 after the changes demanded by the censorship were made. By then, however, the sound film was already all over the cinemas, and Such is Life was shown in the capital for barely a week in mediocre cinemas without much interest of the audience. Pištěk paid off the debt for the film himself until 1941, which forced him to take all acting offers in the 1930s. – Even today, the film is impressive not only due to its strong naturalistic subject matter, camera work and editing, clearly inspired by Soviet montage films, but also due to the performances of Russian Vera Baranovskaya and a future married couple Theodor Pištěk and Máńa Ženíšková. Especially Pištěk was given the opportunity to play a distinctive character role as a degenerate coal miner, and he broke out of his usual part of high society or bourgeois fathers. – For many years the films was considered lost, but after the World War II one copy of it was found. At the turn of 1958 and 1959 the film was remastered under the supervision of Elmar Klos, new opening credits and intertitles (the film does not involve any other titles than names of each chapter) were created and the film was accompanied with soundtrack by composer Zdeněk Liška. It was re-released in September 1959. – In 2016 was the film digitally restored by the National Film Archive in Magyar Filmlabor in Budapest thanks to financial support from Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and in partnership with the National Library of Norway and CESNET. As neither the original negative nor any contemporary copy was preserved, the oldest uncensored copy from the archive's collections with intertitles from the 1950s was used. Complete removal of signs of some damage would compromise the integrity of the film image. The digitally restored title was first screened in the Recovered & Restored section on 29 June 2016 at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, Italy, and on 4 July 2016 at the 51st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2016 in the Out of the Past section. – After more than eighty years, the National Film Archive returned the film to the mainstream distribution in October 2016. As it was not possible to use Liška's music from the shorter 1959 print, Jan Burian Jr. composed new abstract music. The title was distributed with reproduced music, and by agreement with Burian's live accompaniment. English subtitles were available on request, and a short lecture and presentation on digital restoration of the film with excerpts was also arranged.

Synopsis

Note

The film was addapted in 1959 by director Elmar Klos who also added the sound track to the film. The music was composed by Zdeněk Liška (print 1 823,8 metres).