With gorgeous photography and a soundtrack that has religious undertones, Carriage to Vienna reminds us that the terror of the Reich’s occupiers spilled over into horrors committed by the previously occupied Czechs.
Czechoslovakia
4.5*
Director:
Karel Kachyňa
Screenwriters:
Jan Procházka
Karel Kachyňa
Director of Photography:
Josef Illík
Running time: 75 minutes
Original title: Kočár do Vídně
Alternate English title: Coach to Vienna
A road movie unlike any other, Karel Kachyňa’s Carriage to Vienna is also a thriller and an absolutely devastating indictment of the Czech nation after the Second World War. Set in the forests of Moravia, close to the Czechoslovakia–Austria border, the story covers roughly 24 tumultuous hours in the life of a young widow named Krista (an enigmatic, quietly brooding Iva Janžurová).
The opening crawl informs us that an anonymous “they” had hanged Krista’s husband the previous night for stealing a few sacks of cement. It’s the first week of Mary 1945, and we can reasonably assume it was Germans who did the killing. A few hours later, as day is breaking, two soldiers (one of them suffering serious injuries) appear on her doorstep and force her to take them to the border. They say they are Austrian, not “Reichsdeutschen”, although in wartime this is a distinction without a difference. Thus begins a daylong horse-drawn carriage ride through the misty forest.
Krista doesn’t speak a word. By contrast, Hans (Jaromír Hanzlík), the young German soldier sitting beside her on the carriage, is positively giddy. He can’t stop talking or moving about. Perhaps it is because the war is at an end and he has survived the ordeal. Maybe because he is going home. Or because this quiet and mysterious but seemingly submissive girl is taking him to freedom. He shows her photos of his family and his home in Vienna.
It has to be said that Hans is portrayed as far more naïve than malicious. Unlike Krista, whose life is in immediate danger, he is high-strung to the point of nearly snapping in half. And although he had been in the service of far-right fascism, he is clearly also human. In post-war Czechoslovak cinema, this was a big shift from the previous representations of German soldiers as uniformly malevolent.
However, all is not quite as it seems. We are constantly aware of the various weapons on board: The Germans have rifles and a pistol, but Krista has an axe concealed underneath the carriage. Slowly but surely, as the second soldier, Günther, loses consciousness and Hans is easily distracted, Krista disposes of the weapons one by one. These moments are elegantly brought to our attention when the carriage moves on and the camera stays behind to discreetly reveal the items discarded in the bushes.
Beautiful organ music played by Milan Šlechta suffuses the soundtrack as we watch the trees stretching up to the heavens contrast starkly with the fog in black and white. Over time, we come to realise that the trees themselves are, in a way, the organ pipes, and we find ourselves in a sacred space where good and evil have come to do battle. Krista spends the first half of the film in silent contemplation, and it is riveting to behold. But despite the almost ethereal audiovisual atmosphere, we can feel the tension building. Will she or won’t she use the weapons on the Germans? Will they or won’t they discover what she is doing?
Then, things take a sharp turn, and the film ends in a stunning obliteration of sympathy. We had gone most of the film on the side of the underdog, hoping that Krista would escape and perhaps even take revenge for enduring the war and losing her husband hours earlier. But with the front line drawing closer, and Hans’s head is in her lap, she does not kill him. In fact, she makes a decision that can most charitably be described as unexpected, if not downright cuckoo. And yet, while her later actions may seem erratic, the very real impact of the war on her way of life cannot be underestimated.
However, Carriage to Vienna will be best remembered for its powerful final scene, which calls to mind the brutal postwar expulsion of Czech Germans. (The same applied to Hungarians, although they did not have the added burden of their people directly supporting genocide during the war.) For reasons that are easy to guess but morally questionable, anyone who was “ethnically” German was persona non grata in the newly liberated Czechoslovakia. The country’s president, Edvard Beneš, issued decrees to the effect that such individuals, even if they had lived in the Czech lands for generations, would lose their citizenship and be deported to the countries of their forefathers.
Kachyňa’s film requires just a single, well-placed scene to drive its point home about the violent backlash after the war. Its portrayal of German soldiers as people who fought on the wrong side rather than machines of immorality is equally bold. And although the film’s first half is far superior to its second, it may be one of the best and most important works of art the country has ever produced.