F. X. Mlejnek

Filmed during the Nazi occupation, this panoramic drama set in a Prague department store follows the divergent destinies of four female coworkers, each of whom seeks happiness in a different way.

The story of love, between a sturdy village boy and a gentle country girl, filmed with a movingly genuine charm.

Věra Kalinová lives a life of luxury with her uncle, a factory owner. Having just won a literary contest, she receives an offer to work for the social affairs column of a magazine. The aspiring writer takes her future editorial role very seriously—she wants to experience "real life" first. Telling her family she is heading to the mountains, she disguises herself as a poor girl and visits an employment agency.

A writer of pulp crime novels is drawn into a series of real crimes. This film was one of the first Czech attempts on a genre parody.

A fortune teller predicts that Dr. Přelouč will marry the third poor girl he meets. Míla, the daughter of factory owner Janota, likes the doctor and, with the help of his housekeeper Amálka, sneaks into his home disguised as a poor shoelace saleswoman. She first prepares for her role by exploring the outskirts, where she meets Vendelín Pleticha, who becomes her guide to the local pubs and her teacher of the vernacular. Dr. Přelouč is enthusiastic about the poor, uneducated girl and tries to teach her the basics of social behavior and standard language. All this until he discovers that Míla has deceived him and that Pleticha is not her father, as she had claimed...

The likeable and charming Vanda Karhanová has problems in every job because of her appearance. So when she is about to start a new job, she decides to decisively prevent similar problems. She adjusts and dresses in a way that men do not notice her and do not pay attention to her. She has no idea that she will cause even more problems for herself, and not only because she now bears an uncanny resemblance to the millionaire Czech-American Ruth Baretová, who ran away from home to avoid getting married. First, Vanda is mistakenly arrested and ends up in the police station, so she cannot return to work. At the factory, they suspect her of having disappeared with a large sum of money that they had entrusted to her to deposit in the bank. Then the whole situation is complicated by the arrival of the real Miss Baretová.