Adina Mandlová

Kind and decent professor Artur Čejka is about to marry his fiancée Helena Frýdlová. On the eve of the wedding, he comes across the unfortunate actress Káťa Holanová on the riverbank, who has been unsuccessfully looking for an engagement for a long time and wants to take her own life out of desperation. Čejka prevents her from committing suicide and helps her. He meets the girl again on the train when he and Helena are going on their honeymoon...

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.

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.

Wealthy and ill Petr Kornel (Karel Hasler) is not pleased with the carousing lifestyle of his nephew. He stops supporting him financially and demands that he change his name. Out of gratitude Kornel bequeaths a substantial sum of money to his nurse Alice (Adina Mandlová) with the condition that she marries. Petr Suk (Hugo Haas), as the nephew is now named, visits the doctor. In the waiting room his X-ray is mistakenly switched with one of another patient's. On the basis of this he presently learns that he is seriously ill and has only one day of life left to him.

One of the few European films of the 30s to criticize the Nazis, even if they couldn't be directly named due to censorship: Gangsters with gray hats stir up trouble in what is obviously the Sudetenland.

A morally questionable lord comes to the aid of a working class man who is to be executed for speaking out about thieving rich scoundrels sticking it to the poor.

Professor Karas is widely known as enthusiastic propagator of the motto "Morality Above All Else". He guides his students as well as his own family to live a morally decent life. One day he has an unexpected visit. It's his illegitimate daughter Vera, who is proof of his thoughtless youth. Mr. Karas know that she can ruin his image, thus he decides to keep her a secret and asks her to leave. Instead of leaving she takes a position of a governess in his own family without letting him know. Mr. Karas realizes that he must reveal the truth sooner or later, but he doesn't have enough courage to do so. As he postpones it, he is more and more scared to come to his own home.

A dashing but mysterious man saves a gambler from suicide, crashes the posh party of a prominent industrialist, falls in love with his daughter, and finds himself in a web of intrigue revolving around her blackmailing fiance and a gang of counterfeiters.

Young civil servant Marta Urbanová wins a two-week stay at a luxury hotel. While looking for a typing room, she accidentally finds herself in the suite of the Minister of Finance, who mistakes her for a typist. Marta complies with the request of the Minister's secretary Diviš and stays to take dictation...

The main character of the funny story is an ordinary typist Julinka Svobodová, who works for the established business firm Hrubý a syn and lives in a sublet with the seamstress Mrs. Pokorná. Although she is poor and sometimes manages to be late, she is still cheerful and pleasant. However, a small coincidence is enough and everything changes. That is when she takes an elevator ride with the Minister of Trade, Dr. Horák, who coincidentally lives in the same building. Mrs. Pokorná, in good faith, hints to the inquisitive landlady that Julinka is the Minister's girlfriend. From the talkative woman, an innocent rumor spreads like wildfire and, surprisingly, it helps the girl in every way...

Hospital orderly Rozruch, denied his therapeutic treatment, is mistaken for Dr. Marek at the insurance office and sent to a spa. Councilor Pěna, plotting to wed his mistress after his daughter Heda’s marriage, also arrives. At the spa, impostures collide, identities are exposed, and hidden motives and loyalties come to light.

The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra’s classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood’s Frank Borzage. (BAM/PFA)

Young music composer Viktor Honzl in vain looks for work. He is prevented from committing suicide by a technician of the gasworks who shortly beforehand has disconnected his gas due to past due bills. In the disguise of an older, serious, musical scholar Viktor obtains work in a music publishing house.

Alois Novák (Oldrich Nový), a minor clerk in a travel agency and the husband of a dowdy housewife Marenka (Natasa Gollová), lives a run-of-the-mill, dull life. In his soul, however, there resides an inextinguishable desire for adventure. And so once a month he poses as a playboy. As the mysterious and wealthy Mr. Kristian he goes to the exclusive Orient Bar where he does not skimp on generous tips and where he platonic-ally seduces beautiful and elegant women. In the salon he speaks of love and the magnificence of exotic lands, which he has supposedly come to know on his wanderings abroad. In reality he has read all of this in the travel agency's brochures.

Emanuel Pokorný, a bachelor, is to join a rural church school as a professor. Before leaving, however, he finds an infant abandoned in his room. Since he has no time to search for the child's parents, he secretly takes the child to the boarding house. And from that moment on, there is no end to his travails...

Based on an anonymous letter about Margot's fiancée's infidelity, the factory owner Hora hires detective Pejsek. His investigation then reveals Margot's efforts to obtain money from the factory owner for her lover Pepito, a fake gambler and swindler. Pepito has lost twenty thousand and must pay the money by midnight. At a fashion show, Margot receives a check from the factory owner for the purchase of a fur coat, but accidentally puts it in the pocket of a fur coat that the saleswoman and model Eva secretly borrows after the show...

Mr. Ducháček runs the law firm of JUDr. Faukner in a peculiar but completely devoted manner, which manages the financial affairs of the Rispaldic family. The family members treat their lawyer Faukner with condescension, except for their daughter Julia, who secretly loves him. However, no one except Ducháček knows that the squandering family no longer has any money and that JUDr. Faukner is subsidizing it, because he is also secretly in love with Julia.

Factory owner Dvorský also faces his own share of life's troubles; the supply of kaolin for his factory is running dangerously low. Mayor Pivoňka’s wife is willing to sell her kaolin fields, but only on the condition that Dvorský marries her daughter, Táňa—who, however, has no desire to marry a widower with a four-year-old son. Mrs. Lexová also owns kaolin deposits. Dvorský organizes a puppet show at his villa for his ailing young son. During the night, little Mirek wakes up and goes to the theater to look for a princess puppet; tragically, he accidentally sets the curtain on fire with a candle, and the theater burns down.

Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need.