Jiří Weiss

Directing

Jiří Weiss

Born March 29, 1913 · Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]

Died April 9, 2004 · aged 91

Jiří Weiss (29 March 1913 – 9 April 2004) was a Czech film director, screenwriter, writer, playwright and pedagogue. Jiří Weiss was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Prague. His father was a Czech patriot and named his son after Czech king Jiří of Poděbrady.His parents were Emil Weiss (1880–1942) and Martha Weissová (née Fuchsová; 1882–1944). Emil Weiss owned a liqueur factory in Libeň district.…

Known For

Romeo, Juliet and DarknessRomeo, Juliet and Darkness · 1960
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness
★ 6.21960
MovieDramaWar
Pavel, a young student living in Prague in 1942, hides a Jewish girl in his apartment building's attic. Amidst the brutality of the occupying German army, love blossoms between the two. He is her only link to the outside world. Then the two are discovered by Pavel's mother, who forces the residents of the apartment building to decide whether Hana can remain.
90° in the Shade90° in the Shade · 1965
90° in the Shade
★ 5.71965
MovieCrimeDrama
In a Prague shop, an assistant has been carrying on an affair with the dishonest, married manager. An emotionally repressed auditor with domestic problems of his own uncovers serious stock discrepancies. A test of loyalties and a questioning of values concludes in tragedy.
O ševci MatoušoviO ševci Matoušovi · 1948
O ševci Matoušovi
★ 5.01948
MovieDramaHistory
The revolutionary year of 1848 brought great hopes among the hitherto silent classes, awakening social and national hopes. The response also penetrated the remote countryside, even as far as the Podkrkonoše Mountains. The young shoemaker there began to take an interest in social and political events, and he also experienced disappointment in later developments.
The King of KingsThe King of Kings · 1963
The King of Kings
★ 7.41963
MovieComedy
During his work assignment in Tamani Kingdom, Czech worker Lojza saves a local man from dying in the desert. Two years later, it turns out the saved man was also the Taman king; and he has decided to name Lojza, a communist, his royal heir.
The Rape of CzechoslovakiaThe Rape of Czechoslovakia · 1939
The Rape of Czechoslovakia
★ 7.01939
MovieDocumentary
Weiss’s classic B&W agitprop short made after his escape to London just ahead of the Nazis. He carried with him three reels of material for his unrealized film ‘Dvacet Let Svobody’ (‘Twenty Years of Freedom’) i.e. 20 years of the existence of independent Czechoslovakia from its 1918 founding to 1938 when the Munich Agreement dissolved it. In English with poetic narration written by C. Day-Lewis (father of Daniel Day-Lewis).
Vstanou noví bojovníciVstanou noví bojovníci · 1951
Vstanou noví bojovníci
★ 7.01951
MovieDramaHistory
The leader of the emerging organized labor movement in the 1880s, Ladislav Zápotocký-Budečský, is exiled to his native village, where he works as a tailor and continues to raise social awareness among members of the working class.
Reportáž psaná na oprátceReportáž psaná na oprátce · 1962
Reportáž psaná na oprátce
★ 6.51962
MovieDramaHistory
Screen adaptation of Julius Fucik's story about communist fighters.
The Golden FernThe Golden Fern · 1963
The Golden Fern
★ 6.81963
MovieWarFantasy
Wandering through the forest, a woodcutter finds a golden fern whose seed turns into a beautiful woman - they fall in love. After getting drunk in a village feast, he gets to sign up to the army. The fairy gives him a shirt to wear and asks him to swear he will never abandon it. At the war front, he falls in love with the the colonel's daughter and will have to perform various feats to get her attention.

Filmography

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Murder Czech StyleMurder Czech Style · 1967
Murder Czech Style
★ 4.21967
MovieComedy
The protagonist (Rudolf Hrusinsky) is a dull, fat, shy government clerk indulging in voyuerism and ego fantasies. In love with another clerk (Kveta Fiolova), he is urged on in his pursuit by a commiserate executive. The story is told in a flashback sequence as the cuckolded Hrusinsky attempts suicide by gassing himself in his bathtub. The "Murder" of the title is not a murder as such, rather the murder that Hrusinsky remembers planning upon discovering his wife's unfaithfulness with his supposed friend and advisor. Both plots failing in his mind, he loses himself in fantastic reveries of his funeral and of hypocritical mourners. ' Deciding (perhaps) that this is not the way out either, he gives up the attempt and imagines a life of reconciliation and eventual affluence.

Story

A Life at StakeA Life at Stake · 1956
A Life at Stake
★ 6.21956
MovieDrama
The year is 1941 and the German Nazis rule Bohemia with a free hand. Engineer Otakar Racek is an extremely cautious man who tries to avoid problems at all costs. While some of his colleagues are being arrested by the Gestapo, he receives an offer to become the director of a new department. When he refuses to help the wife of an arrested resistance fighter, his wife Vlasta is shaken. However, she loves him, to the point of even resigning herself to the hatred of Otakar's wealthy mother. One day, Vlasta lets her old acquaintance Ondřej Rýdl, who is on the run from the Gestapo, stay at her house for a few days. The wife passes him off to her husband as a distant relative. However, Otakar succumbs to jealousy and, on his mother's advice, hires a private detective to follow Vlasta. However, the detective is also a Gestapo informant and receives a hefty reward for every arrested resistance fighter...

Director