ABSTRACT
There were several approaches to Czechoslovak reality among the young generation of Czech filmmakers. Some - Forman, Passer, Papousek-perceived that this reality defies generalization. So they made close-ups of the surface, almost microscopic views, and found, frequently to their own amazement, in the microcosms of human action a portrait of social reality as a whole that was more than precise. Others - including Masa, Jires, to some degree Bocan, and of course most of the previous generation - inclined toward ideological generalization, social analysis. And, finally, a third group - represented by Chytilova, Nemec, Juracek, Krumbachova (Menzel and Schorm are hard to pigeonhole since they were alternately attracted to one or another approach) - approached social reality much in the manner of the philosophical iterature of eighteenth-century England or, better yet, France: through fables, by taking a philosophical story into the concrete, by tracts, by fantastic dialogue.
