Coach to Vienna (1966) Defying the Perceived Wisdoms of WWII (Review)

Another day, another release from Second Run of a Czech film that fell foul of the authorities as the optimism of the Prague Spring gave way to the reassertion of Soviet control and the period of normalisation that took a hold of the country until the eventual collapse of the USSR. In this case, it is the unorthodox 1966 war film Coach to Vienna (Kočár do Vídně) from director Karel Kachyňa, whose 1970 film The Ear was also ‘banned forever’ and whose Second Run release includes liner notes from this site’s very own Graham Williamson. I say unorthodox because Coach to Vienna refuses to play by the accepted rules regarding the mythology and perceived wisdoms of WWII and indeed, it is for that reason that Czechoslovakia’s President Novotny decreed that his nation “won’t take this” movie, thereby condemning it to languish in obscurity.

As with all Allied countries, the perceived wisdom of WWII is that Nazi Germany was the enemy and that all Germans were therefore bad, that your country was on the side of the good, and that it faced both terror and tragedy with an indomitable spirit future generations would do well to remember. In this last respect, if your country was subjected to Nazi occupation, then honour and respect were particularly given to the partisans, those ordinary men and womenfolk who made up the resistance and fought back against the cruel and authoritarian oppression of the occupying forces. In his memoir, Stalin Eat My Trousers, the alternative comedian Alexei Sayle recounts how, as the child of card-carrying Communist parents, his childhood differed from that of any other kid in his native Liverpool. Not for him the enchanting stories of woodland nymphs and fairies, no; instead, his childhood woodlands were made up of similarly mischievous but all too real forest dwellers – the Communist partisans of Czechoslovakia and other such Eastern Bloc countries – who attained a similar heroic, mythical status in his eyes as any character from the Brothers Grimm or folklore. I’m reminded of this because I think it not only shows how much reverence was placed upon the men and women who risked their lives for freedom but also how an alternative perspective could be considered so damaging and how challenging perceived wisdom can prove to be deeply contentious.

Kachyňa understood that there is no such thing as inherently good and evil people, believing instead that we are all fallible human beings and that challenging circumstances are likely to bring out the best and worst in everyone. In Coach to Vienna he presents an ostensibly simple tale but, in his inverting of the traditional stereotypes of heroic resistance fighters and sadistic, villainous Nazis, the implications of it all ultimately prove anything but simple to an audience. His film tells the story of an unnamed young Czech woman (Iva Janžurová, an actress more familiar with comedy and cast against type here in her first major film role) whose husband has been executed by the Nazis. Alone and vulnerable in the dying days of the war, she has been forced to transport – via her horse and cart; the coach of the title – two German soldiers to the Austrian border. One of the soldiers, Günther (Luděk Munzar) is wounded and lies prone in the wagon, the other is a younger man named Hans (Jaromír Hanzlík), who is quick to reassure the widow that he is Austrian, rather than German and therefore accommodates the stereotype of ‘the good German’. The nature of extent of their loyalty to the Führer is further explored when it is revealed that both men are deserters, eager to reach the border before the advancing Russian forces arrive to liberate Czechoslovakia.

Of the two, Hans is the more good-natured and his persistent attempts at communicating with the widow suggest both a need for company and a need to be heard and understood. When Hans hears the chimes of distant bells, he believes them to denote the fall of the Nazi occupation and his wishful thinking leads him to swiftly tear off all of the identifying insignia from his uniform – an act that is as much about a symbolic reclamation of his true identity as it is a means of self-preservation. Hans, therefore, is not a natural Nazi, or indeed a natural warrior. In contrast, one suspects that the wounded Günther is only deserting because he can no longer fight. His dialogue, when he is conscious enough to speak that is, betrays a more accepted, conventional caricature of the Nazi soldier; he possesses contempt for others and it is suggested that he has enjoyed the sadistic perks of an occupier and raped several Czech women. He is, like all good soldiers, alert and suspicious and he is also deeply racist. The Nazi preoccupation with antisemitism rears its head early on when Hans intervenes in his suicide attempt, resulting in the injured soldier spitting at his well-meaning saviour the words “You look like a Jew”. Later, his fear for the approaching enemy combines with his contempt for women and his natural proclivity towards suspicion to announce that the widow is not to be trusted because she has “Russian eyes”.

Of course, the irony is that the widow ought not to be trusted. To her passengers, she is inscrutable. She does not – or at least does not wish to – speak their language, which means her only communication for a significant period of the film is a curious non-verbal trilling signal she gives to her horses when she wishes them to stop. She is an impassive, unreadable figure, clad in a black, hood-like headscarf and long coat that not only denotes mourning but also presents an anonymous celluloid silhouette. This unknown quantity, a character imbued with guarded self-possession, is specifically at odds with how an Allied country would normally wish to depict its heroic citizens. As an audience, however, we are slowly invited to become complicit in her actions. We know, for example from the scrolling introductory text at the start that she is a woman whose husband has been murdered and, as such, we understand that she is motivated by the desire to avenge him. Thanks to how Kachyňa chooses to shoot, we are privy to these thoughts as well as the many surreptitious actions she undertakes throughout the film. In placing her in the driver’s seat (both literally and figuratively), Kachyňa affords her the higher ground to look down upon her passengers, and her intentions colour the vulnerability of their positions, the prostate Günther as he drifts in and out of consciousness, or the nape of Hans’ neck as he walks out with the horses. We alone learn of the axe she possesses, hidden on the underside of the wagon, and we also see the gradual disarmament of the two soldiers as they progress on their journey – though we are never actually privy to just how she removes these weapons without discovery, we just see the likes of a dagger plunged into a tree trunk or a pistol nestling in the branches as the carriage continues on its way.

Again, the words of Alexei Sayle are brought to mind and we are left to wonder if partisans have the same kind of magical affinity with the land as any pixie might have. Indeed, the woodland itself is almost like a supporting character in the movie. With a great economy of storytelling, the whole narrative takes place within the forest and it seems fair to me to assume that Kachyňa is deliberately marrying the harsh reality of the recent conflict with the traditional ley-lines that folklore and rural femininity inhabit. Inevitably, this spell is broken with the arrival of the partisan menfolk who discover Hans and the widow just as a connection and understanding between the pair has been made. Again, the inverted stereotype and defiance of perceived wisdom rears its head once more as Kachyňa presents these heroes as interlopers destined to wreak the peace the pair have navigated. The resistance fighters are depicted as abusive and cruel, blurring the lines between those who fought for freedom and the forces of oppression.

Viewed now, sometime after the events and as the last of that generation sadly leave us, we do of course know that some partisans were indeed responsible for actions that could be comparable to the cruel injustices that they and their fellow citizens were on the receiving end of at the hands of the Nazis, but at the time this was an inconceivable and contentious notion that many did not wish to hear. In depicting a sympathetic German and less than sympathetic Czechs, Kachyňa had gone too far. Never mind that the nuance is there for all to see, that his film at least addresses the understandable desire for revenge the Czech characters feel when faced with a representative of their grief and pain. Never mind that the film deals with a wider context overall as an anti-war movie depicting the psychological hurt conflict delivers to all sides. For President Novotny, eager to appease his Soviet masters, Carriage to Vienna was unpatriotic revisionism that slandered those who fought fascism so that Czechoslovakia could be free. The irony is that the country was of course not free under Communist rule and that an expression such as this was withdrawn from circulation from 1973 so that citizens would continue to be told a particular line to believe is one that we can only have the luxury of now.

This Second Run Blu-ray release presents the film in a new 4K restoration from the Czech National Film Archive and includes extras such as the usual trailer and image gallery, an audio commentary from Mike White, Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger, and It’s Not Always Cloudy, a recently rediscovered graduation film of Kachyňa’s, co-directed by Vojtěch Jasný. Made in 1949, this is pure Stalinist propaganda from the young film students of the state, looking at the improvements to life in Moldova and upon state farming after the war. Jasný would of course go on to tell a more damning truthful account of such issues with his 1968 film All My Good Countrymen.

COACH TO VIENNA – MARK’S ARCHIVE