Men Without Wings

Men Without Wings
Directed by František Čáp
Starring Gustav Nezval
Cinematography Jan Stallich
Release date
  • 1946 (1946)
Running time
 79 minutes
Country Czechoslovakia
Language Czech

Men Without Wings (Czech: Muži bez křídel) is a 1946 Czech drama film directed by František Čáp. It was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.[1] Where it was one of the winners of Palme d'Or.

Plot

The action takes place in occupied Czechoslovak Republic after assassination of Schutzstaffel (SS)-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office, RSHA), the combined security services of Nazi Germany, and acting Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.[2] In Prague on 27 May 1942.

Jirka is the boy whose family was murdered in the village of Lidice as repercussions for the assassination of Heydrich. He stays with his uncle - engineer Petr Lom. Marta - a young girl living next door, working at the post office helps to take care of the boy. Lom has just started working on the military airport, governed by Sudeten-Nazi named Ullman. Resistance is quite active in the airport, collecting arms and grenades and communicating with allies, sometimes doing some small diversion. They have a lot of great intel thanks to secretary Jana Tomesowa, who is trustee of Ullman and has access to a lot of restricted information. Jirka also starts to work at the airport, but he's filled with sorrow and need of revenge. He's caught stealing a grenade and is arrested by the Gestapo, (Geheime Stadts Polizei - secret state police), and later shot. When Jana sees it she faints and Ullman finds some secret message she had with her. He tells his Gestapo friends and goes to the warehouse to investigate where he's killed by being pushed onto a transformer. The Gestapo start arresting and searching houses of airport workers, revealing that Marta is an informer for the Germans. Lom doesn't know that yet, he's struck by Jirkas death. He picks the gun from his hideout and walks back to the airport. The neighbours tell him truth about Marta. Lom kills her and helps Jana escape.

Germans gather airport workers and threaten to kill them all if no-one says who killed Ullman. Then Lom appears saying he did it and killing men from gestapo who killed Jirka. He's killed by the soldiers. Workers go back to work.

In last scene, dying Lom has vision of the future. He sees woman with gun (symbolizing Chechoslovakia) going forward with war atrocities around her. However she doesn't stop until the war is over and Czechoslovak flag appears on mast.

Cast

References

  1. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: Men Without Wings". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2 January 2009.
  2. ↑ McNab 2009, pp. 41, 158–161.
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