Josef Škvorecký and Evald Schorm worked on the script for two years. Škvorecký recalls:
It was a realization of an old promise that we had made to Jana Brejchová and her husband Vlastimil Brodský. We had promised to them that I would write a comedy and Evald would direct it. I was for a long time short of ideas, until Evald came with the story of an impostrous parson. I read the story in the newspaper in 1950’s. An adventurer for eight months pretended to be a priest in an Eastern Bohemian mountain village. He basically lived off the generosity of his unsuspecting parishioners, who were happy that at the time when a large number of parsons had to work as sewerage diggers or uranium miners they had a reverend in their village.
Thanks to Evald Schorm, the humorous story became a tragical slapstick, a philosophical parable on the situation in our country after February 1948. The main characters were the parson (Vlastimil Brodsky) and a teacher (Jan Libicek) who was his opposite. Between them was put a Mary Magdalene figure, the prostitute Majka (Jana Brejchova) and – asŠkvorecký says –everything changed into the Platonic idea of a Czech village interweaved with the tangible secret police in the frame of a Chaplin-like slapstick comedy…This probably seems more like a secret code. The film went almost unnoticed at the Festival of Cannes and later favourable American reviews looked at it as very entertaining and a little bit of evil fun.
The film was finished one day before the arrival of tanks
Today, however, our main interest is, in what conditions and where the shooting took place. The film crew settled in the village of Pocepice, which was discovered by Evald’s great cameraman Jaromir Sofr. It was a typical village around a baroque church with an onion-shaped spire top. Later JosefŠkvorecký found out, that it was right in that village that his uncle used to serve as a priest some fifty years before. In the end, he discovered his ancestors’tomb in the neighbouring village of Sedlčany. The screenwriter must have felt like a prophet at the time of the shooting in the middle of the summer of 1968. While the teacher was uttering his sentence:
I am for a dialogue, Father. Yet it is not really possible for you to lead the dance. With regard to my position in the village, this would seriously endanger its smooth running,
Czech politicians were exchanging letters with their “friendly“ parties, in Cierna Pri Cope they held negotiations and everything was heading for the occupation. The last scenes – in one of them the chief policeman gives a signal for the police to assault the village with a suspicious priest – were being finished on 20th August 1968 and that evening the film saw its final clapboard…It is symbolical to such an extent that it makes one shudder. Škvorecký saw the full film in January 1969, when all the events were practically over. The Parson’s End had its solemn first night, it was banned shortly after, so only a few chosen ones had the opportunity to see it. The public did not have the chance to see the film until November 1989.
Source: Josef Škvorecký: Všichni ti bystří mladí muži a ženy
Berta Štenclová