...the band plays on from a memorial service for composer Frantisek Kmoch.
leathered motorcyclists prepare themselves on the starting line.
A hand holds up circular signs that count to the race,
the music finishes, the countdown continues -
10 seconds - we hear the birdsong from the graveyard,
see the riders adjust their goggles
5 seconds - the bird sings once more, hands poised on throttles.
Anticipation. There is an orchestra, uniformed, waiting.
The conductor, back to us, raises his baton.
The band plays.
Konkurs or Audition / Talent Competition (1963)...
floats somewhere in that fertile channel between documentary and fiction. Released as one film, it is really two - one that follows two boys who play in rival brass bands, and a second that takes place at a proto-x-factor for starstruck young Czech girls. It's a study of the competitive impulse and of failure, a delve into the human animal's mating ritual where boys and girls try to impress each other until undone by insecurity or laziness.
There's a marked difference between the two films. The first is stunning. Miroslav Hájek puts in a virtuoso editing performance which weaves the practice sessions of two bands led by their brilliantly archetypal conductors (who are clearly not actors) with a motorbike race where our two heroes (or should that be hero and anti-hero?) try to impress the girls. There seems to be something here about individual (and particularly youthful) ego versus the good of wider society - the boys are dismissed from their bands, but they merely swap groups, welcomed into the other like saboteurs or young cuckoos.
The second film is much less innovative, or perhaps it's that we're so used to competition films today that it seems so. Here some of the fictional interventions are a little clunky - like when the girl who's skived off work bitches about the rock n' roll girl's performance. The "rockiroll" song is classic thou - sounds ace in a Czech accent.
In general though, the fictional interventions are minimal - a decision not to turn up to band practice, a staged loss of nerve in front of the microphone. What do films gain from sitting in this space near to real life? I think it's partly a practical one for directors on a budget - real people undirected are always perfect actors, whereas good actors are scarce. But that's too prosaic - real life is simply more surprising, more innovative. But stories are rarely natural things, art perhaps needs to be coaxed out of reality by the intervention of the artist. The artist is a subversive.
