The Cassandra Cat (aka Až přijde kocour) (1963); I See Your True Colours Shining Through (Review)

Jan Werich stands upon Ken Adam’s impressive space-age set, a fluffy white Persian cat with piercing blue eyes cradled in his arms. His co-star Sean Connery has stalked, somewhat like a bored panther, off the Pinewood sound stage as soon as the director called cut and now, the figures who stand behind the harsh glare of the studio lights and the firing squad line of cameras, step out from the shadows to hurriedly prepare for the next scene. The take seems to be in the can but Lewis Gilbert, the director, does not look happy – indeed he hasn’t since Jan arrived from Prague days earlier. Now he stands beside the producer, Cubby Broccoli, deep in conversation. Lewis Gilbert is pleading his case, Jan can see this. He can also see that he looks pained and embarrassed. For an Englishman, firing someone is distasteful.

The make-up girl arrives to touch up his face and Jan smiles at her administrations, making some pleasant remark that he is only half conscious of. It is an infectious smile and the young woman returns it, but the truth is his mind is elsewhere and he does not hear what she says in return. His twinkling eyes see only the director and producer, the men with his fate in their hands.

Broccoli, the big man stares morosely down at the floor and sucks on his big cigar. Occasionally he nods at what it is Gilbert is finding difficult to say. Being a Czech, English is not Jan’s first language, but he’s fluent enough to make out the words “poor, benevolent Father Christmas” and he realises that it is his physiognomy the men are referring to. Not for the first time this week, Jan suspects it will be unlikely he’ll be accompanying the production to the extinct volcano location in Japan. He turns to speak to the make-up girl, but she’s spirited herself away. He glances back into the gloom to see Broccoli shrug his shoulders. He lifts a hefty paw in a gesture that calls for more time and strolls off the set, leaving Lewis to summon a smile and enthusiasm for the next take. Jan gently digs his index finger and thumb into the soft white fur of the cat, who purrs contentedly at his fussing, and Jan feels envious. Now the star of the film, James Bond 007 himself, has returned. Connery flashes him a distracted smile, his eyes looking everywhere other than the smaller man before him ruefully nursing the cat. “Great work Jan on that last scene” he mutters, as the cinematographer arrives between them, taking light readings. “Keep it up and you’ll be in clover with this lot. A big star!” He sighs an ambiguous sigh, adding “A big star just like me” His words are hollow. It doesn’t sound like Connery recommends such status at all and, deep in his heart, Jan knows it doesn’t matter. It needn’t concern him one bit.

“Places everyone” Gilbert calls before relaying the pages they’re about to tackle. Jan continues to fuss with the cat as he returns to the modish G Plan chair of his character Ernst Stavro Blofeld. As he does so, he wryly recalls the old showbusiness adage about never working with children or animals. If Jan were superstitious, he’d wonder if this could be the reason for all his woes but he dismisses such a thought from his head almost immediately. After all, he reasons to himself, it’s not the first time he’s worked with a cat…

A big name on stage and screen in his native Czechoslovakia, Jan Werich might not be a recognisable name to Western audiences, but that could have changed if the makers of the 1967 James Bond movie You Only Live Twice hadn’t had second thoughts and replaced him in the role of Blofeld, 007’s chief nemesis, with Donald Pleasance. Prior to the fifth film outing for Ian Fleming’s secret agent hero, the character of Blofeld was as enigmatic as he was sinister, appearing only in two films, never credited, and seen only from the torso down, stroking his trademark cat. The Prague-born avant-garde pioneer of the arts, Jan Werich was set to change all that, continuing the trend of the villains of Bond films being cast from Europe (Austria’s Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love, Gert Fröbe from Germany in Goldfinger, and the Italian Adolfo Celi in Thunderball) but, upon his arrival in Pinewood in 1966, Lewis Gilbert and Cubby Broccoli began to have second thoughts regarding how menacing a figure Werich would appear to audiences. Bearded, rotund and with an unmistakable twinkle in his eye, Werich did indeed put Gilbert in mind of Father Christmas, with his Eastern European roots recalling the penury of the traditional festive folklore. Filming continued but, with no party happy, a parting of the ways was decided upon and Werich’s removal from the film officially put down to ill health (a prodigious smoker, Werich suffered from throat cancer and was indeed unwell during the making of The Cassandra Cat). Enter esteemed British character actor Donald Pleasance and a number of ideas regarding his physical appearance that included his balding hair being completely shorn so that he resembled a hardboiled egg and a pronounced duelling scar prosthetic across his eye. They were to be physical characteristics that would become the stock in trade for criminal masterminds, most memorably parodied in the Doctor Evil character from the Austin Powers series. But maybe, in a parallel universe, every power-mad, evil genius resembles Jan Werich’s seemingly avuncular figure. I don’t know about you, but I think that could be even more menacing.

The feline-based film that Jan Werich had previously made was Vojtěch Jasný’s acclaimed 1963 production Až přijde kocour which goes by the title of When the Cat Comes or The Cassandra Cat in the English-speaking world. It is under the latter title that the film has been released this week to Blu-ray by the excellent Second Run. A stylised New Wave satire on Communist rule and a colourful contemporary fairytale, Jasný’s film tells the story of a small, provincial Czech town which is descended upon by a curious travelling circus whose star of the show is a tabby cat, a seemingly unprepossessing one were it not for the fact that this feline wears shades. The curious townsfolk are told that the cat wears the glasses at all times and that, if they were to be removed, the cat would see everyone in their true colours. Like the Cassandra of Greek mythology, this magical cat is fated to deliver the truth. Whenever its glasses are removed anyone captured in its baleful gaze will change colour according to their nature and actions. If you lie or cheat, you turn blue from head to toe. If you thieve, you become grey. The unfaithful become as yellow as a canary, while the village’s true innocents, the lovestruck, turn red. And before you can say Cyndi Lauper, the whole town becomes awash with technicolour bodies and divisions are sown as the cat reveals everyone’s true character. Needless to say following the events of 1968, the film was effectively banned by Czech authorities, a fate that befell any number of films made prior to the Prague Spring, including Jasný’s All My Good Countrymen.

Initially, Jan Werich did not want to make The Cassandra Cat, even though the roots of its distinctively avant-garde humour were clearly influenced by his work. A key figure in the nation’s arts since the 1920s and an unmistakable predecessor of the Czech New Wave, Werich initially found fame and renown in a theatrical double act with Jiří Voskovec whom he had met at high school. Inspired by circus entertainments such as traditional clowns and their cinematic cousins like Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, Dadaism, improvisation, audience participation and Japanese Noh theatre, the duo established in the 1930s the Liberated Theatre, writing plays, performance pieces and films that mixed absurdist humour with an increasingly political edge, tackling key issues such as unemployment and the rise of fascism across Europe. With Hitler and Mussolini in their sights, the Czech president Edvard Beneš increasingly called for their work to be banned and, though they continued to stage work up until the outbreak of war, their situation became increasingly precarious. Fleeing to the US, the pair devoted their time to anti-Nazi radio broadcasts for the Voice of America until hostilities ceased. They returned to Czechoslovakia shortly after, but the partnership dissolved under pressure from the authorities to steer clear of political matters and Voskovec emigrated to France and latterly, to America once more.

Content to stay at home, Werich served as the director of the ABC theatre and founded the Theatre of Voskovec and Werich to expand upon his vision for the arts. He also pursued a film career which, although it proved to be lengthy, was often threatened with curtailment because of his well-known anti-communist stance – indeed he would go on to sign the 2,000 Words petition against the Soviet regime’s stamping out of the Prague Spring’s liberal reforms. Upon his return from America after WWII, Werich had seen what Stalin had done to his country and he was not impressed. It was this that led to his initial reluctance to work with Jasný, who was still then a Party member. Legend has it that, as Werich refused to ever entertain a card-carrying Communist in his house, Jasný had to persuade his hero in the garden instead! There, he pitched the film to Werich and sweetened the deal by offering him two roles instead of one; Comrade Oliva, the film’s storyteller and town castellan, and the magician alter-ego whose circus comes to town. But Jasný’s work didn’t end there – he then had to convince the authorities to allow him to cast Werich. He did so by petitioning Jan Procházka, then serving as a production head at Barrandov Studios and a party faithful, though he too would go on to become disillusioned enough to pen The Ear, itself banned in the more repressive 1970s and ’80s, years known as ‘normalisation’.

Jasný co-wrote his film with Jiří Brdečka who had previously penned a number of films starring Werich and was therefore familiar with the actor’s working methods and happy to allow him free rein to improvise. The film opens with Werich’s head popping out of the medieval castle’s clock face to break the fourth wall with the traditional fairytale opening line of “Once upon a time…”. In his role of Oliva, the storyteller, Werich is our guide and he proceeds to survey the town and its people from the clock tower. From there, he explains, “one sees tragedies, as well as trilogies” This line proves more than mere alliteration, foreshadowing the arrival of the circus and his alter-ego, the magician ringmaster who, it is implied is a parallel version of Oliva based on his own past experience touring with the circus, and the fate that may befall the film’s hero, the much-loved schoolteacher Robert (Vlastimil Brodský in a deeply sympathetic turn). It is Robert who invites Oliva to pose for his infant charges art class and, surrounded by a captive audience, the storyteller can’t resist spinning a yarn about his circus performing youth. He explains all about the cat in the glasses who can see everyone’s true colours and its mistress, the beautiful Diana (Emilia Vášáryová), and how he defied her instructions one evening and removed the cat’s glasses – an action which terminated his relationship with the travelling troupe. No sooner has he told his tale, and Robert has incurred the disapproval of Karel the snooty, huntsman and taxidermy-loving headmaster (Jiří Sovák) for inviting the lowly Oliva into the school, that the circus rolls into the town square to the sound of Dixieland jazz and Werich appears in his second role, dressed in the traditional magician attire of top hat, white gloves etc, alongside an eternally youthful Diana and the cat. Whilst Oliva and the Magician clearly recognise they are one another, Diana fails to recognise Oliva, the man who once loved her. Though Diana’s unchanging appearance is never explained (and the actress was just 19 at the time), the film rather poignantly relates the idea that it is only the elderly who can afford the luxury of memory, for the young are only concerned with the present and the future. And already Diana has set her sights on the future, catching the eye of Robert. Diana of course wears a red leotard and it goes without saying that Robert’s true colour will inevitably match.

The memorable circus performance itself was masterminded by Jiří Trnka, a renowned director of puppet animation and costume designer. It remains a deeply impressive cinematic setpiece, utilising camera trickery and black light theatre and exceptional cinematography from Jaroslav Kučera. We have already seen atop the circus truck on its arrival into the town, members of the troupe clad entirely in black. It is necessary for these performers to dress so in order to blend into the shadows, manoeuvring the illuminated flowers and props to suggest to the eye that they are floating in mid-air, but in the context of the film, their attire has a secondary resonance, pre-empting and serving as a contrast to the colourful makeovers that are about to follow. Diana descends from the ceiling on a trapeze, her red leotard pronounced against the black light and proceeds to remove the glasses from the cat’s features.

With an eye-popping pop art aesthetic, the audience begins to change colour and as embarrassment, frustration and chaos take hold, this peculiar Czech New Wave movie starts to resemble a Hollywood musical. The reactions of the many-hued audience is conveyed via interpretive dance, performed by professional dancers and mime artists. It’s a truly spectacular marriage of performance, lighting, costume, and make-up (Jasný had somehow used his pull to even circumvent the Iron Curtain in order to get Max Factor from Hollywood for the red make-up necessary to depict the lovelorn after the original cosmetic company from Berlin found that they could not master that particular colour) and frenetic cutting as the sequence reaches its dizzying peak as the collective psychodrama that grips the shamed townsfolk spills out of the performing space and into the streets. The cat also flees the scene, rescued by Oliva who returns its glasses.

In the wake of the performance, the townsfolk attempt to return to normal but the petty mean spirited Karel, who was revealed to be yellow, reaches for his rifle and assembles his lackeys and similarly shamed individuals to hunt the cat down. Fortunately, the town’s children who, under the auspices of the free-spirited Robert, have long since despaired of their parent’s true behaviour and faults, take action. With anarchic and artistic endeavour they fill the school and town with images of the cat, pledging their allegiance to it and Robert (both being in the sights of the tinpot dictator Karel) and seemingly deserting the town. Faced with this crisis, the adults finally consider their actions and the consequences of their behaviour and use the PA system to atone for their sins and assure the children that the cat will not be harmed should they return. The children do return, having been hidden by Oliva in the castle tower, but Karel tries to go back on his pledge and seize the cat with murderous intent. Once again the true colours of all are exposed, culminating in Karel changing hue several times over. The implication is clear; the authoritarian is a chameleon who wants to appear to be whatever you desire in order to achieve his own ends. As such, his words can never be trusted. Like all good fairytales, the message is simple yet effective. This is one of the best skewerings of authority you could hope to show your children, and it is a film for children as much as it is for adults; a film that teaches kids to be true to themselves and to question authority, but more than that it is a film that actively celebrates children for it is them who right the wrongs through artistic creativity and an innate free-spiritedness. The film ends with the characters coming to terms with their true selves and dancing in the streets. The red Robert attempts to leave with Diana and the departing circus but, like Oliva before him, it is not to be. The crowd keeps him apart and, in the end, he is needed there most of all.

A beautifully visual film with a profound and enjoyable message, The Cassandra Cat was rightly released to great acclaim, securing both the Special Jury Prize and the CST prize at the 16th Cannes Film Festival in May 1963. Plaudits were also earned at home for Jasný who won a director’s award from the Czech Film and Television Unit. But along with the trophies came considerably less welcome attention from the secret police who attempted to pressurise the director into serving as an informant on his anti-communist colleagues Werich, Trnka and Brdečka. Angered, Jasný consulted none other than President Novotný himself and threatened him with suicide if his dogs were not called off. Remarkably the president complied and the international award-winning director was left alone. It’s even more remarkable when you consider that many believe that Jasný and Brdečka had the premier in mind when they created the Karel character. Nothing could save the film however from its withdrawal from circulation following the events of 1968 and Jasný made one more damning indictment of Soviet repression with All My Good Countrymen before going into exile in 1970. Jan Werich returned home to Czechoslovakia from Pinewood studios in time to witness the Soviet tanks roll into his beloved Prague. As ill health continued to dog him, he made a terrible omission followed by what he claimed was a terrible mistake; he did not sign 1969’s Charter 77 condemning the regime’s poor human rights record in the wake of the invasion and instead went on to sign the anti-Charter pledging loyalty to the authorities. It was an act that astounded friends and admirers of the longstanding anti-communist and Werich defended himself by saying he had been duped into signing, but the fact remains he did attend several meetings promoting the anti-Charter. Could it be that old and sick, Werich sought appeasement in exchange for a quiet life? It is hard to judge him unfairly if so, and it seems that the Czech people agree. He spent his remaining years performing only sporadically, appearing in public one final time in 1977, three years before his death. He may not have gained cult fame as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but he remains a giant in Czech culture.

This Second Run world premiere Blu-ray contains a stunning new HD transfer of the Czech National Film Archive’s 4K restoration of the film, along with a new audio commentary from Mike White, Spencer Parsons and Chris Stachiw. There is also a trailer and a 1963 animated short entitled Badly Painted Hen from Jiří Brdečka.

Mark’s Archive – The Cassandra Cat (1963)