PRAGUE – Jiri Menzel, a Czech director whose 1966 film “Trains Up Close” won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, passed away.
Menzel’s wife, Olga, announced sunday that she had died the day before, but no main points were given. Three years ago, Menzel underwent brain surgery and remained in an artificially induced coma for several weeks afterwards.
“Dear Jirka, thank you for each and every day I can spend with you. Everyone is amazing,” his wife said on Facebook.
Menzel has directed a score of films and one of the main filmmakers of the new wave of Czechoslovak cinema that gave the impression of the sixties, his films were a radical break with socialist realism, a typical genre of the communist era focused on the realistic representation of the work. -Class fights.
Unlike colleagues such as Milos Forman, Jan Nemec and Ivan Passer, Menzel did so to emigrate after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
“Strongly monitored trains” was his first feature film. Based on a novel by Czech publisher Bohumil Hrabal, it tells the story of an apprentice dispatcher who was placing a primary in a small exercise station of the Nazi profession of World War II.
His next collaboration with Hrabal, “Alondras on a Rope” in 1969, some other tragicomic description of life under totalitarian rule, this time under communism.
The film without delay banned by the communist authorities. After the 1989 anti-communist revolution led by Vaclav Havel, he won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Menzel’s adaptation of Hrabal’s paintings includes “Cutting It Short” (1980), “The Snowdrop Festival” (1984) and “I Serve the King of England” (2006).
His 1985 comedy “My Sweet Little Village” nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
He graduated from the Prague Academy of Performing Arts in 1962 and is also known for directing plays and also as an actor.
Among the awards, Menzel won the Order of Arts and Letters of France.