I Served the King of England
Jan Dítì (Ivan Barnev) is short in height, but high in ambition. To put it bluntly, the young provincial waiter wants to become a millionaire. And he knows just how to do it: by hearing everything, seeing everything, and creating opportunities at every turn. Armed with this knowledge and an irrepressible wish to please, he soon leaves his first place of employment, a pub, for a luxury brothel and, finally moving onto an elegant Art Nouveau Prague restaurant. But by the late 1930s, things are changing: Hitler has taken the Sudetenland region and is breaking apart Czechoslovakia. Jan falls in love with Líza (Julia Jentsch), a Sudeten German proud of her Aryan blood. They marry, and soon after Líza is sent to serve on the Polish front, while Jan remains behind to serve as a nurse in a Nazi SS Research Hospital, but when she returns, she has a fortune in rare stamps that Jews had ‘left behind’ … After Líza’s less than heroic death, Jan sells the stamps and becomes … a millionaire. But he only has three years to enjoy his fortune: the new Communist regime puts him behind bars for 15 years, one for each of his millions… Upon his release from jail, Jan is sent to live in a decrepit border town. Here Jan reflects on the events that have shaped his life – and to reflect on what might have happened if he had played a different role in these events. (Source)
A look at the glamorous life at an old-world Prague hotel, where a busboy with an inferiority complex and a driving ambition to become a millionaire quickly rises to become a head waiter. (Source)
Despite the 1997 death of longtime friend and Closely Watched Trains collaborator Bohumil Hrabal, 1960s-era Czech New Wave filmmaker JirA- Menzel enters into a postmortem collaboration with the famed author in this pitch-black comedy detailing the shrewd rise of an ambitious waiter. All diminutive manservant Jan Dite (Ivan Barnev) ever wanted was to be filthy rich and to preside over his very own hotel. As a young man coming of age in the 1930s, Jan was preoccupied by beautiful women and awestricken by the fact that anyone, be they rich or poor, would bend to their knees to pick up a coin. With World War II fast approaching and the Germans steadily taking occupation of Czech territory, the opportunistic servant begins his rapid ascent up the hospitality ladder by working for a number of high-profile figures. Though Jan was never a man to settle down with just one woman, his growing attraction to Aryan beauty Liza (Julia Jentsch) soon finds the aspiring hotelier proposing marriage. Of course, a blueblood Teuton like Liza could never wed a man unable to provide proof of his German heritage, but that doesn't stop Jan from doing his best to please her in the bedroom. Later, when Liza is killed retrieving a box of valuable stamps acquired during her stint at the Russian front, Jan uses the valuable collector's items to purchase the very hotel in which he used to work. Unfortunately for Jan, good luck is always followed by bad news, and it's not long before his life's ambition comes crumbling down all around him. - Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide (Source)
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