Acting
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An only son, Jirí Valenta (Jaromír Hanzlík), has been drafted to the army. At the barracks he acquires the nickname Seamstress because he sews rugs in his spare time. One day, his friend introduces him to Julka Vávrová (Jorga Kotrbová), a girl he is desperate to get rid of. The naive Jirí falls in love with the girl and accepts her invitation to spend Easter together in the country. There he learns that the girl is the single mother of the young boy Martínek, whose father is the married tractor driver.
In autumn 1941, Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich’s brutal rule in occupied Bohemia and Moravia fuels Czech resistance. In spring 1942, the government-in-exile sends trained paratroopers led by Lt. Král on a mission to assassinate him. Masters Strnad and Vyskočil ambush Heydrich’s open Mercedes in Prague’s Libeň district, mortally wounding him despite a jammed submachine gun. Their success triggers harsh Nazi reprisals, mass executions, and an intense manhunt for the operatives.
The conflict, in which a mature, thirty-year-old woman must choose between her energetic, down-to-earth, and selfish husband, a priest, and her eighteen-year-old admirer, centers on the question of what constitutes the strength and value of men and women.
This feature film based on the events of 1938 is a chronicle of the futile efforts of the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes (Jirí Pleskot), politicians and ordinary citizens, to save the independence and the territorial integrity of the state from the advance of Hitler's Germany. On the 29th of March 1938 the leader of the Sudeten Germans Henlein (Werner Ehrlicher) has a meeting with Hitler (Gunnar Möller). Hitler orders him to intensify pressure on the Czechoslovak government. On the 24th of April in Carlsbad, the Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party) decides upon eight demands that are unacceptable to the Czechoslovak President, since they would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Republic. Benes still shows a certain willingness to negotiate, and Henlein resents this. The Germans are determined to make further negotiations impossible through incidents and violence.
