Nazi Occupation in the Novel „Romeo, Juliet and Darkness” by Jan Otčenášek and in the Film Adaptation by Jiří Weiss
Petr Kučera
IN: Stredoeurópske pohľady, Vol. I., Issue 1, 2019, pp. 76-85, ISSN 2644-6367 (print), ISSN-2644-6472 (online)
DOI: 10.17846/CEV.2019.01.1.76-85
Abstract:
The article deals with the comparative analysis of Jan Otčenášek’s prose Romeo, Julie a tma (Romeo, Juliet and Darkness, 1958), and the film adaptation of director Jiří Weiss (1959). The writer and director co-wrote the script – when they came to film adaptation, they sought to make changes to the text of the prose, which would allow the language of the film to best express the disturbing atmosphere of the period of Nazi occupation in Prague. Prose and film are the prologue of the „golden sixties“ years of Czech literary and film – in addition to the short stories published at the same time by Arnošt Lustig, they begin a stage of literary and film interest in Jewish fate under the conditions of the Nazi occupation regime in the Czech part of the former Czechoslovakia. On the ground plan of the famous tragedy of W. Shakespeare, J. Otčenášek created a love drama from the darkest period of the 20th century – film adaptation, the story dynamises and highlights the moral dilemma of people who have had to take a clear stance in the face of the fate of the Jews.
