Crime in the Cabaret (Portal of Prague)

In 1968 pop-music singers had various opportunities to appear in a film. It was not just the ‘immortal’ music fairy tale about the terribly sad princess in which shone Václav Neckář and Helena Vondráčková. There was also Marta Kubišová who filmed a musical film together with her husband Jan Němec and Josef Škvorecký and Jiří Suchý were writing a screenplay for eva Pilarová.

Writer Josef Škvorecký admired Eva Pilarová and her vocal expression so it is no wonder that she inspired him to write a detective story Crime in the Cabaret. Film director Jiří Menzel made the film as his third feature film. Jiří Suchý cooperated on the screenplay, he made up all the dialogues. What is more, not only does he play in the film but he also sings the famous song Nashledanou (Goodbye) in it. The song was commissioned by Jiří Menzel and Suchý wrote it overnight. Originally the song was recorded with the only accompaniment of Jiří Šlitr and his piano.

I intentionally made it a black and white film in the style of 1930’s and 40’s. This way I paid homage to Martin Frič whom I had a lot of esteem for, said Jiří Menzel about the film. The film is a mixture of different genres: detective story, comedy, musical, political thriller, which in its outcome is not exactly ideal. I think that the best thing about the film is the camera work of František Uldrich and the great performances of Eva Pilarová and the two gentlemen Suchý and Šlitr. The film came to the cinema in autumn 1968, when people cared about completely different things so it got partially drowned. After Josef Škvorecký’s emigration the film was withdrawn from distribution and couldn’t be played until after the year 1989.

Years later Eva Pilarová admitted that she never felt as an actress so she transcribed all the spoken parts into music so that she could know where she should speak up and where the piano should slow down, where to speed up and so on.

The plot of the film is simple: One day a pearl necklace gets lost in The Cabaret Tartaros, where the singer Clara Regina sings. Clara got the necklace from her devoted suitor, the Minister of Justice, (excellent Vlastimil Brodský). An investigation is launched full of different plots and tragicomical situations.

Berta Štenclová