Ivan Passer - Intimni osvetleni (Intimate Lighting, 1966)

The last Czech film by Milos Forman's co-writer Ivan Passer is a moving, sympathetically directed study of belonging, place and the pleasures of friendship. It follows the visit of musician Bezusek and his betrothed to old friends in a small country town. Wistful, gently comic and affecting. ~ Time Out





This wry comedy of provincial life was one of the signature works of the Czech "New Wave." It concerns the director of a small town music school named Bambas (Karel Blasek), who is visited by Peter, an old musician friend (Zdenek Bezusek) from Prague, and his pretty mistress (Vera Kresadlova). The once-ambitious Bambas is now disillusioned, and occupied in the day-to-day vexations of home life - with wife, children and aged parents to take care of. During Peter's visit they go to a funeral - for which Bambas and his father play the music. Later they put together an impromptu string quartet and play Mozart (poorly) while the puzzled young mistress gets an education in country life from Bambas' wife and mother. ~ CineScene





In Projections 41/2, Krzysztof Kieslowski wrote: "I was recently asked by the editors of Sight & Sound to make a list of the ten films which have most affected me. Here is my list – although the order is by no means significant (film number one could be number ten and vice versa): La Strada by Fellini; Kes by Ken Loach; Un Condamné à mort s'est echappé by Robert Bresson; The Pram by Widerberg; Intimate Lighting by Ivan Passer; The Sunday Musicians by Karabasz; Ivan's Childhood by Tarkovsky; Les Quatre cents coups by Truffaut; Citizen Kane by Orson Welles; The Kid by Chaplin."