纯真 (1937)

A shimmering tragedy in the Hollywood mold, Virginity concerns a beautiful young woman prepared to sell herself into marriage to obtain money for her dying lover's treatment, while the camera tracks through gaudy nightclubs and overstuffed apartments. This is one of the first films by the great film master Otakar Vávra, a leading fixture in Czech cinema who, at the age of 95 is still directing films! With Lída Baarová, Ladislav Bohác. Directed by Otakar Vávra, Czechoslovakia, 1937, 35mm, 84 mins.


The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Otakar Vavra's fluid, romantic work. The lovely Hana finds herself on the street after her lecherous stepfather turns a little too attentive, but her new job in a cafeteria offers no respite. When it's not the customers, it's the boss: lechers all around, except the young composer Pavel, whose heart is as large as his lungs are weak. Soon Hana must make a fateful decision, one that may save his life, but end their love. The film lingers over its characters' habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra's classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood's Frank Borzage.