Late August at the Hotel Ozone
Before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 the country was experiencing something of a renaissance. In the cinema the “Czech New Wave” demonstrated a unique and original style of storytelling.
This week’s movie was “Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon,” (“Late August at the Hotel Ozone”), from 1967, directed by Jan Schmidt from a script he co-wrote with Pavel Juracek. The story opens with a series of voiceover countdowns delivered in several different languages, followed by the blinding flash of nuclear detonations. Then we see a tree cut down. A woman’s hand points to the rings of the tree while her voice describes the passage of time during the fifty years since the war. The voice belongs to a woman named “Dagmar Hubertusova,” (Beta Ponicanova). She is the aged leader of a band of seven healthy young women. Hubertusova is traveling across the wasteland hoping to find healthy men who can help her charges to replenish the human race. The young women have no real understanding of the civilization that died before they were born. Eventually they do encounter a man, but he is very old. His name is “Otakar Herold,” (Ondrej Jariabek), and he lives in the remains of the “Hotel Ozone.” Hubertusova is delighted to talk with someone who remembers the old days, but the girls are not impressed. Herold tries to tell them about newspapers, television sets, and vacations to Venice. None of these things interest the tribe. The only thing that does have an impact is when he plays the song “Roll Out the Barrel” on an old-fashioned Gramophone. Hubertusova takes ill and dies. The women decide to continue their trek across the wastes. They demand that Herold give them the Gramophone. When he refuses they shoot him and take it. They have no sense of conscience. All traces of the past civilization are gone from them now.
This is a genuinely bleak vision of the future. It is an interesting and sometimes affecting film, but not a really memorable effort. I appreciate that the movie had an impact in its day and time, but I didn’t find it particularly compelling for me. I am glad to have watched this picture, but I just can’t recommend it to others.