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ARCHIVE

7th(2005)



The Apple Game / Hra O Jablko

Věra CHYTILOVÁ

  • Czech Republic
  • 1976
  • 92min
  • 35mm
  • color

SYNOPSIS

The Apple Game is a sex-comedy focusing on the social, and psychological definitions of the male-female relationship and is amongst the most conventional narrative films of Věra Chytilová works.
 Anna is a nurse who sleeps with a playboy gynecologist. Her fantasy world falls apart when she finds out that he is having an affair with a colleague¡¯s wife. However, when he discovers that Anna is pregnant, he proposes to her, but she refuses deciding to become a single mother.
 Despite its conventional narrative, the film shocks the audience through its visual expressions like a typical Chytilova film. The rapid montage sequences that juxtapose images of a red apple and the bloody head of a new-born baby not only gives way to shocking aesthetics, but also opens a door to critical thinking on the old issues of human desire and the nature of female-male relationship.
 The film deploys its story around issues such as love-sex relations, the significance of marriage and childbirth, and contrasts a life of femininity pursuing passionate, innocent jouissance that often ends at the bliss of life creation, to a life of masculinity controlled by competition and rationale in goal-oriented procedure where life is only regarded as an object of human techniques. The Apple Game deconstructs the mythical abstraction of love and raises a question on the ethics of love by focusing on ¡®pregnancy and childbirth¡¯- the film¡¯s main motifs are the instinctive, physical and reproductive definitions of love. (Joo You-shin)
 

PROGRAM NOTE

The Apple Game is a sex-comedy focusing on the social, and psychological definitions of the male-female relationship and is amongst the most conventional narrative films of Věra Chytilová works.
 Anna is a nurse who sleeps with a playboy gynecologist. Her fantasy world falls apart when she finds out that he is having an affair with a colleague¡¯s wife. However, when he discovers that Anna is pregnant, he proposes to her, but she refuses deciding to become a single mother.
 Despite its conventional narrative, the film shocks the audience through its visual expressions like a typical Chytilova film. The rapid montage sequences that juxtapose images of a red apple and the bloody head of a new-born baby not only gives way to shocking aesthetics, but also opens a door to critical thinking on the old issues of human desire and the nature of female-male relationship.
 The film deploys its story around issues such as love-sex relations, the significance of marriage and childbirth, and contrasts a life of femininity pursuing passionate, innocent jouissance that often ends at the bliss of life creation, to a life of masculinity controlled by competition and rationale in goal-oriented procedure where life is only regarded as an object of human techniques. The Apple Game deconstructs the mythical abstraction of love and raises a question on the ethics of love by focusing on ¡®pregnancy and childbirth¡¯- the film¡¯s main motifs are the instinctive, physical and reproductive definitions of love. (Joo You-shin)
 

Director

  • Věra CHYTILOVÁVěra CHYTILOVÁ

    Director and screenplay writer, born in Ostrava in 1929. From the beginning of her career, Věra CHYTILOVÁ¡¯s works were daring and original. Her talent to observe ordinary, everyday things in an unconventional way and from unexpected angles, made her different from the general run of film directors. Her major works include A Bagful of Fleas, Something Different, Pearls of the Deep, Fruit of Paradise and The Apple Game, which were screened and awarded at a number of festivals. Věra CHYTILOVÁ is the one of the representative figures in Czech film and is also known as the leader of the ¡®Czech New Wave¡¯ of the sixties.

Credit

  • Cast Dagmar Bláhová, Jiří Men
  • Screenwriter Věra Chytilová Kristyýa Vlacho
  • Cinematography František Vlček
  • Editor Alois Fisárek
  • Music Miroslav Kořínek
  • Sound Adolf Nacházel