Jackson Booth-Millard This film from the Czech Republic interested me for two reasons, firstly and mainly because it is one I found in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, but also, secondly, because it was banned by the nation's ruling Communist party, it became available again in 1989, made me think it was controversial, I looked forward to finding out. Basically Ludvik (Radoslav Brzobohatý) is a senior official of Prague's ruling Communist regime, and his wife Anna (Jirina Bohdalová) is an alcoholic. They return home after spending the evening at a government function, a political party dinner, where Ludvik finds out several of his colleagues have been "relieved" of their responsibilities. Ludvik and Anna find that their home has been broken into, they repair the damage, but strange occurrences happen several times after, including the disappearance of the spare house keys and dead phone lines. This leads the couple to believe they are under surveillance by their own government, the house has been bugged, and "the ear" of the government is listening. As the night progresses, the couple are being extremely careful what they do and see, at the same their personal and marital flaws are exposed, until eventually they have had enough, and they make an effort to find and destroy the bugs, but there will be consequences whatever happens. Also starring Gustav Opocenský as Conrade, Miroslav Holub as General, Lubor Tokos as Minister, Borivoj Navrátil as Cejnar and Jirí Císler as Secret Agent Standa. It is a combination of politics and domestic drama, the most memorable scenes are obviously of the bitter married couple at loggerheads, it is a bit dated now, and I can't really understand it being "banned forever", maybe for the invasion of the home and privacy element, but it is interesting enough political thriller. Worth watching!

swodder A soviet psychological thriller from Hungary. A couple arrive back from a government party to find that someone has been in their house and start to believe that they may be next on the disappearance list. Their neighbour, his boss, and a minister in the government has recently been 'taken care' of and they start to think that they may be next. The electricity and phone lines are down and they sneak around their home looking for hidden bugs.However this isn't just a political conspiracy thriller. It is the couple's 10th wedding anniversary and the woman is very drunk and slightly hysterical. Reminiscent of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', living under this regime has clearly taken a large toll on their relationship. Watching the breakdown unfold can make for uncomfortable viewing as you sympathise with his attempts to calm her down as she subjects him to torrents of verbal abuse, while he is mostly powerless to stop her, paranoid that she may something "The Ear" will pick up.I didn't follow exactly what the state may have against him. It seemed to be about some possible favours that he may have been able to secure to promote a building firm that he owned rather than anything hugely controversial. However this may have been the point and the real story is about the effect on the personal lives of those wrapped up in a surveillance society where corruption is rife. Their relationship was totally believable and when it seemed that the regime might have just got the better of them their desperate need for each other was thoroughly convincing. (8/10)

chaos-rampant Husband and wife stagger tired and tipsy through their house at night holding candelabras. Something's not quite right, a basement door open ajar, keys where they shouldn't be, electricity and phone are out of order. A little earlier the movie opens with the couple back at their house after a 'party' gala. They fight and bicker on the pavement out of the car, then inside the house, like we're behind a closed door hearing echoes of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Flashbacks to the party earlier that night in subjective POV shots take us through a roomful of people dressed in suits holding up cocktail glasses ready to toast prominent Party figures, faces peering intently into the camera, huddling together to hide conspiratorial whispers or perhaps simple idle gossip. When the husband goes to the bathroom to freshen up, an old woman shows up to offer him a towel; in doing so, she disappears in the background and stays there, as though placed there to observe.This is a great movie about paranoia, the "fear" of being watched and discussed, and it's a half good movie when it stops being about paranoia, because at some point we know the couple is being monitored by the Party and have had to live with bugs in their living room for years. In the famous finale of The Conversation, a maddened Gene Hackman tears through his apartment looking for bugs. His nightmare echoes through the years of cinema because it's a nightmare left incomplete, damnation through eternity. Here things become clear in the final act.This is ambiguous psychodrama for as long as it suits the movie, then it becomes the political indictment it planned to be. It's stunning to me that a movie like this was allowed to be made in the Eastern Bloc of the 1970's. Usually filmmakers working in Soviet Union satellite republics spoke of Soviet tyranny indirectly. They used the Nazis to tell us about living through the oppression of a totalitarian regime. Here comrade Stalin is mentioned by name. As such, this is a brave movie that attacks contemporary things of a contemporary society.The dimensions of this political thriller are most chilling for me in a particular scene: the husband asks the wife to remember earlier at the party if one particular guest was friendly to her and addressed her by her first name. He reasons that if he did so, if he recognized her in public in a friendly manner, that the husband is not under political scrutiny by his higher-ups, if that were the case everyone would keep their distance from even the wife. Social life in The Ear is not leisure time or exchange of ideas, it's an arena of suspicion and conspiracy, a chess game of ritualized behavior and expected moves.Back home, behind closed doors, The Ear never sleeps. Under its scrutiny, married life becomes the forum of vented anger and frustration. As the married couple stagger through their household in the dark holding candelabras as though exploring the catacomb of a Gothic horror movie, their exchanges become increasingly unpleasant and hostile. There's one very grueling scene in the bathroom where the wife berates her husband for the choices of a lifetime. Yet in the important moments of life and death, when a man is about to take his own life or when they're coming to get him, they're close together in defiance of everything.

writers_reign It's not all that often that I for one come across a movie totally unknown to me and written, directed and performed by people who are just names albeit names worthy of respect in their own country. Ucho is one of those films from a country we used to call Czechoslovakia -Billy Wilder had a lot of fun with the name, recommending spelling it backwards as a cure for insomnia in his script for Bluebeard's Eighth Wife - which then became the Czech Republic and has now fragmented into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. What few films I've seen from there - with the possible exception of 'Daisies' - I've enjoyed though it is a woefully small total, The Fireman's Ball, Closely Observed Trains, Kolya, Divided We Fall, which are now supplemented by Ucho. Watching it I was reminded in turn of L'Aveu and The Trial given that it contains elements of both. It's also something of a Long Night's Journey Into Day chronicling as it does the time that elapses between a government Minister arriving home late from a party to slowly realise that in the absence of himself and his wife their house has been bugged by his own Party, and the next morning when his fears prove theoretically groundless as he learns he is to replace a Minister who has been deposed. Although on paper this makes for a sigh of relief in reality it just means he will have an even higher profile and be that much bigger a target for Party hit men. Shot in black and white the film mirrors a society that for us in the West is virtually impossible to imagine but even then the tension is liberally laced with humour. A fine film in a fine tradition.