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Ear – the book behind a Czech film legend
January 17, 2023 @ 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
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A book launch & film screening of the Czech film classic Ear.
To mark the publishing of a first English translation of Jan Procházka’s masterpiece Ear, David Vaughan and Peter Hames discuss both the book and the film, followed by a screening of the 1970 classic, considered one of the greatest of all Czech films.
The Ear – Ucho in Czech – was the culmination of ten years of fruitful cooperation between the director Karel Kachyňa and screenwriter Jan Procházka. It is set in the period of the Stalinist purges in 1950s Czechoslovakia. A senior government official Ludvík and his wife Anna come back from a drunken party at the ministry to find that their house has been bugged. A gripping psychological drama follows, as they await a knock on the door.
The novella Ear is perhaps Jan Procházka’s greatest work. He was one of the most popular and prolific Czech writers of the 1960s, closely identified with the reforms and growing artistic freedoms of the time. It combines the economy of Hemingway with the tension of Hitchcock, set in a stifling totalitarian environment.
For the first time Ear has been published in English – by Karolinum Press in a translation by Mark Corner.
David Vaughan, who wrote the afterword to the new edition, is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and university lecturer.
Peter Hames is a film historian and Visiting Professor in Film Studies at Staffordshire University.
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