All My Good Countrymen (1969) User Reviews

No More Singing In The Fields

[boblipton · 8/10 · 20 October 2020]

The end of the War brings a Communist government; in a small Moravian village, the hard-working, close-knit community of farmers find themselves forced to collectivize... and the singing ends.

It's a diffusely told story, centered around Radoslav Brzobohatý, who fights an increasingly lonely war of his own to remain his own man, and yet part of the community. Can a few aging farmers fight corrupt men backed by an uncaring government?

Well, this seems to have been a last gasp of individualism in a rise sea of oppression. Yes, all the scenes of beauty are group scenes, where the people gather, musical instruments magically appear, and people sing. But the brass band playing the old songs vanishes, and the most beautiful scene, where the neighbors come to help Brzobohatý harvest his wheat, is worthy of Millais.

all my compatriots

[mossgrymk · 8/10 · 2 November 2020]

A too long, too meandering and, in my opinion, too simplistic look at life in a Soviet Czechoslovakian village. The Communists, with the notable exception of the film's narrator, are pretty much all scumbags, while the anti Communists are all firmly stuck in either the Noble or Warmly Human Peasant tradition. However, despite these drawbacks, I found myself becoming increasingly sucked into director Vojtech Jasny's world until, by film's end, I didn't want to leave. Don't know why this was exactly although I suspect Jasny's poetic, luminous style, with its abundance of lovely music and cinematography and moments of genuine pathos, such as the suicide of a petty thief who cannot face incarceration , and the vagaries of fate when the wrong man is assassinated have a lot to do with it. Give it a B plus. PS...Is it just my imagination or is the opening shot of church spires rising above a rural landscape a lot like the opening shot of "Places In The Heart"? (i.e. I'd bet my pierogi that Robert Benton's seen this film).

an ardent reportage of its locus and time

[lasttimeisaw · 8/10 · 21 June 2017]

Possibly the most famous work of the nonagenarian Czech filmmaker Vojtech Jasný, ALL MY COMPATRIOTS is a trenchant allegory of life under the Communist regime, shot with sublime bucolic élan and fairly won him the BEST DIRECTOR honor in Cannes.

Inhabited in an idyllic Moravian village, this close-knit community Jasný rounds up is particularly male-oriented, a patriarchal microcosm where the fate of ordinary lives is steered by an intangible hand. From the film's time span (1945 to 1958), inhabitants are divided by political views, tormented by past deeds, succumbed to ludicrous idiocy or outrageous hatred, united behind one good guy but also crumbled when things become menacing. Overall, Jasný manages to flesh out a vivid smorgasbord of characters living under shifting sands with none-too-heavy-handed snippets center on their objects: a four-square peasant (Brzobohatý, full of fortitude), a shifty photographer, a guilt-ridden drunkard (Matuska, strikingly entrancing), a displaced organist, a cleft-lipped thief, an ill-fated postman among others; whereas in the petticoat front, we have a running gag of a jinxed merry widow, whoever dares to court her would be pretty soon pushing up daisies.

But, the film's strength and value does not reside in the circumspect plot construction, because Jasný doesn't offer a rounded inspection of the state of affairs, most of the time, audience are passive witnesses of the unjust happenings but barring from peering into the machinations behind those (Communist) persecutors and connivers (they are all schematically depicted as surly pawns), thus it manifests that Jasný's standing point might not be entirely objective, it has Jasný's autobiographic influence notwithstanding, but no more a convincing censure of the regime than a frank rumination of an existential philosophy and his unbiased view of the hoi-polloi (both affectionate and matter-of-fact).

Actually what makes this film a marvel to any new audience is its ethnographic portrait of the place and its people, Jasný has an extremely keen eye on faces and lights, the portraitures he captures are magnificent to say the very least (particularly the furrowed visages of the elderly), and sonically, its nostalgic soundtrack (organ pieces, lyrical strains) and diegetic music sequences serve as excellent ballast to those indelible images, somehow, the film is sublimed itself into something might surpass even Jasný's intention, something should be enshrined as an ardent reportage of its locus and time, a deathless enterprise finds its solid toehold amongst a vastly manifold Czechoslovakian cinema.

A treasure from the Prague Spring

[jandesimpson · 9/10 · 24 May 2002]

Although I was unaware of the name, Vlastimil Brodsky, I recognised the face immediately from his obituary photograph in a newspaper the other day, a face as distinctive and unforgettable as that of Louis Jouvet or Michel Simon. Brodsky brought distinction to a number of fine Czech films particularly in the '60's. but it is his performance of Ocenas, the organist in Vojtech Jasny's "All My Good Countrymen", that I remember most. The obituary prompted me to take another look at this fine cinematic product of the Prague Spring. Unfortunately it followed the fate of two other politically liberating films of the period, "Funeral Ceremony" and "The Ear", by being banned during the years of repression that followed, only to resurface with the collapse of communism. Their rediscovery was one of the most important cinematic events in recent years. The title "All My Good Countrymen" is not without irony as this epic tale of Czech village life from shortly after the end of the second world war concentrates on the activities of a group of friends who are not beyond reproach in siding with a politically corrupt regime for material advancement. Are these the "good countrymen" of the title or does it refer to the rest of the village who scorn these petty authority figure with silent contempt? By portraying the friends sometimes with quirky affection and sometimes as petty bullies, the director displays a certain moral ambiguity that makes one feel that the message behind it all has not quite been fully thought out. Another area of puzzlement is the three strange deaths that punctuate the narrative flow. They have an almost dreamlike quality, but, powerful as they are, their significance is not entirely clear. Where the film wholly succeeds however is in its wonderful evocation of time and place. The passing of seasons, particularly winter landscapes, have a beauty that is quite breathtaking. The symphonic score by Svatopluk Havelka, a rich tapestry of ostinato figures, beautifully compliments these landscape interludes while an unaccompanied trombone solo highlights the three moments of death. But it would be wrong to give the impression that "All My Good Countrymen" is a film where style matters more than substance. The use of a silent village crone, generally seen in closeup at moments of crucial drama, brilliantly sums up the stupidity of so many of the main characters' actions - an inspired use of a type of wordless Greek Chorus. In fact the film is often at its most powerful when it uses silence. Note the wonderfully poignant use of gesture when the honest young farmer takes leave of his family on his arrest. It is at moments such as this that the film achieves greatness.

A look back upon the Stalinisation of rural Czechoslovakia from the end of the Prague Spring

[pocketapocketa · 10/10 · 7 November 2015]

This may not be a good place to start to enjoy Czech film - there are more accessible New Wave films - but it is a very powerful film which should not be missed by anybody who has more than a passing familiarity with the country and its history. With actors such as Radoslav Brzobohatý, Vladimír Menšík, a young Jíří Kodet, and the ever-popular singer and actor Waldemar Matuška, the film has a first-rate cast. In Jaroslav Kučera, it had a great cinematographer. Jasný was by now an accomplished screenwriter and, the countryside of the Pardubice region was as beautiful a backdrop as the machinations of the early communist period and, in particularly, the collectivisation of agriculture, were a fascinating subject. Still, the excellence of the film was not a given. The structure, given in large part by alternating dramatic changes of the environment as the seasons change and those first years after the communist takeover roll on, is effective and well-paced and permits a continuity of tone and subject with certain more episodic elements. The plot, on the page, might come across as busy, but on the screen, there is plenty of breathing space, and room for exquisite shots of the countryside, of work, even of play. So too does the heroic refusal to compromise of one of the characters, František, which becomes of increasing importance as the film moves into the mid 1950s, do nothing to detract from the well-balanced portrayal of the various characters of the village, described and referred to by their silly nicknames from the opening scenes in the months after the war. The history and fates of these characters are handled deftly, often with a brevity and telling detail of a John Cheever story. Neither is the film as unremittingly brutal as others handling similar material, such as the excellent, and thematically similar Smuteční slavnost of the following year. Like that film, I hope to return to Všichni dobří rodáci many times yet, and am sure it will repay repeated viewing.

Czech New Wave that is as important as it is watchable

[t-dooley-69-386916 · 6 April 2016]

'All my compatriots' (original title ' Vsichni dobrí rodáci') tells the story of seven friends from a small town in Czechoslovakia and we join them in 1948, they are on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and the new Communism is thrust on this agricultural society. The seven friends are used as a vehicle to shine a light on the shortcomings of collectivisation and the corruption that seemed to be concomitant when power is used to deprive others of wealth.

The story slowly distils to one of resistance albeit within the spirit of the law and that is in the shape of Frantisek. This was promptly banned by the Soviets after the 1968 invasion and sadly never had the impact it should have done and that is despite winning Best Director and the Jury Prizes at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.

It is filmed and framed very beautifully and all of the acting is of the highest calibre. It has a maudlin quality that is juxtaposed against the strength of will displayed by some of the main players. Some of the shots will stay with you too and very real people have been used to give added authenticity to the whole thing. This is a film for those who really appreciate cinema in all its glorious forms.

Seems like a prequel to Satantango!

[panspermia · 6/10 · 22 May 2012]

Satantango is my all-time favorite movie. It's about a small town and the dissolution of its collectivized farm after the end of communism. All My Good Countrymen (the title on my DVD, though listed on IMDb as All My Compatriots) is about a similar small town, but it's about the period of collectivization instead of de-collectivization. In All My Compatriots, there is a steady demoralization of the townspeople as the collectivization and politicization moves along from 1945 to 1958. If you follow that trajectory until the collapse of the Soviet Union, you get to the lethargic, soul-destroyed nadir from which Satantango begins. Even though All My Compatriots is about a Czech town, and Satantango takes place in Hungary, it's remarkable how similar the towns feel and how much the one movie feels like the continuation of the other.

While Satantango is an unusually long movie (over 7 hours!), it felt like it moved along a lot faster than Compatriots. (Satantango isn't fast-paced by any means; but time goes by faster than in Compatriots because it manages to mesmerize in a way Compatriots does not.) Besides its slowness, Compatriots was also rather hard to follow. Nonetheless, Compatriots had a quirky quality I liked, and it's especially interesting as a movie made during the Prague Spring. Also, the town and landscape had a delightful Brueghel-like quality, and many of the faces made me feel like Fellini had managed to slip into Eastern Europe to shoot the close-ups.

Quiet desperation

[dale_rosenthal · 9/10 · 3 December 2000]

An excellent film that takes a group of villagers as allegorical characters for Czechoslovakian society. The film follows these people from post-WWII (and pre- communism) to the late 50s, watching as they and their village change. In terms of the unescapable creeping feeling of dread, I was reminded of Ang Lee's _The Ice Storm_. While the film is clumsy at times (some shots or plot shifts might have been done better), the cinematography can be very resourceful. Watch also for the classic symbols of Czech identity: the geese, the white horse (from the legend of Libuse), and the old women (from the Czech novel _Babicka_). These mirror the plot nicely.

The film seems a bit innocuous today...

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 17 November 2011]

When you see "All My Compatriots" today, it seems like a reasonably innocuous film. However, back in the late 60s, it was quite radical because it did NOT show the post-war years in Czechoslovakia as a workers' paradise nor did it show a just system. So, in context, it's pretty interesting but it just seems to lose something here in 2011.

The film picks up immediately after the Germans are forced out of Czechoslovakia and takes place in one small town. The folks are grateful for the Russians for liberating them and the future is very bright and hopeful. During much of the beginning of the film, the folks seem quite happy and celebrate the joy of living. However, the film is episodic and as the years pass, things turn a bit ugly. The town now has a new committee to enforce the Communist system--and it seems a bit capricious and is run by petty tyrants. Folks in the town who were nice folks at the film's beginning now let the power run to their heads. Still, despite this, life goes on and you see the town over a 15 year plus period of time.

None of the film seemed especially exciting to me, though the beautiful red-head and the subsequent things that happen to each of her admirers is interesting--and possibly a metaphor for the nation as a whole...perhaps. A decent film but one younger audiences would probably not especially appreciate.

cheesy goring scene

An epic vision of a small village

[rocek · 10/10 · 24 September 2000]

This film tells the story of a village in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1968. Combining satire, farce, drama, poetry, and pure photo-lyricism seamlessly, it shows how politics and daily village life are interwoven in the fates of a broad spectrum of the village's inhabitants. The film's audacity and epic scope remind me of early Orson Welles--don't miss it!

Convincing bittersweet portrait of small Czech village under Communist rule despite lugubrious moments

[Turfseer · 7/10 · 15 April 2023]

Vojtech Jasný's All My Good Countrymen was released following a brief period of liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968 known as the "Prague Spring." Following the invasion of the country in that year by Soviet forces and five other Warsaw Pact signatories, the film was banned and Jasný was forced into exile.

Jasný won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969. The narrative chronicles the machinations of Jasný's fictionalized small town compatriots who he knew growing up in the historical region of Moravia currently located in the eastern section of the Czech Republic.

The film begins in 1945 just after the defeat of Nazi Germany and presents glimpses of life in a small rural town chronologically up through 1958.

The expository scenes prior to the Communist takeover in 1948 are extremely lugubrious and the worst part of the film. These are vignettes that unfortunately show no economy of style; one such scene that goes on and on focuses on two kids who get a hold of some guns and fire live ammunition at a farmer who just avoids being killed.

The film picks up when the fate of each "good" countryman is shown as the years pass. The main character is proud farmer/peasant Frantisek (Radoslav Brzobohatý) who resists playing ball with the local Communists for quite a while.

The way the Communists work is of great interest confiscating the land belonging to private individuals and turning the businesses into "collectives." Of course, it's simply outright thievery where these petty tyrants are now running the show.

By 1949 some of townspeople who have cooperated are now marked men. Bertin (Pavel Pavlovský) the postman is unluckily gunned down after he switches places with church organist Ocenás (Vlastimil Brodský) initially tasked with completing an errand.

Ocenás, now facing death threats, leaves the village. Meanwhile Bertin's fiance Machacová (Drahomira Hofmanová)-dubbed The Merry Widow-later ends up with other men who meet an ignominious end. Her's is a woefully underdeveloped part just like the other female roles in the drama.

There are other tragic figures here that round out the proceedings-- Zasinek (Waldemar Matuska) who drinks himself to death, ridden with guilt over abandoning his Jewish wife during the war who was taken away and killed by the Nazis.

There is also Jorka (Vladimír Mensík), the town thief, who commits suicide by pouring acid over his foot after facing the prospect of more prison time and photographer Josef Plecmera (Ilja Prachar), once having obtained a coveted position as a power-wielding apparatchik, but ends up having a heart attack and going blind.

Most of the drama revolves around Frantisek who at one point leads a protest over the Communist's arrest of the town priest on bogus charges. Later Frantisek is imprisoned, escapes and almost dies after becoming ill during captivity.

A man of real principle, Frantisek refuses to sign a document declaring the amount of his harvest in contrast to the other farmers who capitulate to the Communists.

But even Frantisek finally agrees to become head of the collective and in effect becomes part of the "establishment."

Jasný also adds a surrealistic scene right before the climax with various villagers in a carnival procession masked with animal and monster heads. When the villagers arrive at a pub, they take off their masks and remark "soon all the people will be gone and all that will be left are the animals," suggesting that life is ephemeral, and people will eventually be forgotten after they die.

Frantisek's death is only alluded to in conversation. It's left to Ocenás who finally returns to the village after many years to provide the closing benediction: "We have made our beds and now we have to lie in them. But have we made them ourselves? What have we done, rather, what have we undone, all my fellow countrymen?"

All My Fellow Countrymen despite its lugubrious moments, presents a convincing bittersweet portrait of a small Czech village under Communist rule.

A Lesson in Collectivisation

[unwashed_brain · 9/10 · 29 October 2020]

I think that, unlike common propaganda, where things are more black and white, good and bad, 'All My Good Countrymen' illustrates where real people, that are just like the rest of us (more or less), are capable of being very unjust and inhumane, when using the excuse of supposedly working to benefit "the people", and especially when given ultimate power over others. The most common human motivation is greed/selfishness. In a "free enterprise" model, those motivations can be turned into positives, because someone with those motives often is willing to work very hard to achieve his desires, and the increased production is a benefit to society (assuming that the proper laws are in place eliminate the worst abuses and corruptions of capitalism). Under Communism, the will to produce is stunted via collectivization, because the fruits of your labor are taken from you without recompense. The peasant and serf labor was in for a big surprise. The only way to success was through politics (not through hard work or skilled labor). The Agitators, Commissars, Bureaucrats and Apparatchiks reaped the benefits of your hard work, and were much harder taskmasters that the old landowners. As shown in this film, the small independent farmers had it the worst of all, because everything they had was taken from them via collectivization, then they were forced to produce as before, but without gaining the benefits of their labor. The "agitators" portrayed in 'All My Good Countrymen' never do anything but complain and steal what others have accomplished by hard work. It has been said "You have to break some eggs to make an omelet", but as this film shows, it's your eggs, but it's their omelet.

Many people considered Stalin to be a Hero and a fine fellow, with a great sense of humor. Of course, we don't know what they thought when Stalin had them all shot six months later.

Eventual authoritarian in Czechoslovakian

[jordondave-28085 · 7/10 · 9 April 2024]

(1969) All My Good Countrymen/ Vsichni dobrí rodáci (In Czech with English subtitles) WAR DRAMA/ SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Produced, written and directed by Vojtech Jasný which it opens after WWII that showcases two young boys rummaging through a pile of weapons presumed to be left behind until they found a pair of hand guns the boys liked and begin to play with them. We then meet a somewhat of an overweight man, Lithby going through other piles of abandoned war stuff, and he happens to help himself to some of those items, and upon him driving home, he is then gets shot at from the two boys. Shooting off the hat he had on his head, he replaces it with another one. We are then introduced to a tailor, Franta Lampa (Václav Babka) tending to his gardening until we then see those two young boys again targeting him. And after he was being shot at, he then manages to catch up to them and grab their pistols from them. These are some of the eccentric characters from this particular village including a delivery postman, Frantisek (Radoslav Brzobohatý) who is often making out with his love interest (Vera Galatíková) to which they would evntually get married down the line. It is the start of a small glimpse of what a little war can lead toward authoritarian to which laws are imposed toward others without realizing it.

Denounced by Russian that can be a good thing except that some of the singing scores are not too inspiring.

Interesting concept, so-so movie.

[Spuzzlightyear · 5/10 · 30 August 2005]

'All My Good Countrymen' is a curious little Czech movie that tells how a small village fell into Communism.

A small little blip of a town suddenly has a pro-communism group banging their fists on the table demanding that farmers give up their land for a new farming policy that is more in line with party policy. The villagers not surprisingly, are dead set against it. The village then goes through almost a cycle of mysterious arrests of townspeople who are anti-Communism, trying to pressure the farmers to sign a commie card, and the very curiously high mortality rate of the Party members, I actually liked the variety of characters in this movie, and their interactions with each other. The big problem I have with this movie is it's lethargic pacing. The film just crawls and crawls to its conclusion, which is sort of well, anti-climatic.

"Politics is filth..."

[poe426 · 10/10 · 23 March 2010]

It's hard to argue with the assessment of the village elder who comes to the conclusion that "politics is filth" in ALL MY GOOD COUNTRYMEN. The "conversion" of the happy troupe to The Cause (first One, and then the Other) speaks volumes- most of it bad. Franz Kafka would've no doubt greatly appreciated a movie like this one; it's just so Right in its depiction(s). Beautifully shot and directed, ALL MY GOOD COUNTRYMEN is must-see for anyone even remotely interested in the filthy game of Politics. (Just yesterday, a Universal Health Care bill was finally passed in this country, after what has to have been the sleaziest Media onslaught by the Republican Reich we've ever seen. Somebody in this country needs to make a movie about THAT...) That a movie like ALL MY GOOD COUNTRYMEN could even be made in a country as oppressive as theirs is nothing less than a miracle. One can't help but recall the final line from the Epilogue: "When they start singing, you'll hear them."