 |
| Lubomír Beneš at the wheel, circa 1981 |
Moving on into episodes with 1982 copyright dates, this time we will discuss the final batch of episodes completed at Studio Jiřího Trnky's Čiklovka branch, which consists of the unusual triplet of Sťahovanie, Voda and Záhradka.
These episodes feel interconnected. Although a long way off from being part of a real sequence of episodes, they are still the closest the series has at any point come to follow-up episodes. Even though all three end in complete catastrophes, it is easy to imagine Pat and Mat quickly fixing the mess they made by their moving expedition and continue with managing the water supply the next day. They mess that up as well and move on to gardening another day and so on. The connection is, of course, that all of the episodes take place on the newly-introduced countryside set. A good question to ask is: why not include Skokani? Although that episode is the only spiritual successor to these three, it was not filmed at Čiklovka, but at Wenzigovka (as confirmed by Jan Klos) so I will talk about in the next post. This one is too long as it is.
The upper image shows director Luboš Beneš working on the stone bridge. I've put the image as being shot circa 1981 because it appears to show the set and props in preparation. The 1982 episodes brought a change in the characters' appearance. They now sported thinner eyes and no longer utilized different face expressions. I wrote about how this led to them acting a bit differently
back in February. If you take a closer look at the photo, you will notice
(apart from it being scanned improperly - I noticed this too late and will fix it when the opportunity arises, sorry) that the puppet still has the old face on. I say 'the puppet' because I can't name it Mat - it is wearing a yellow shirt! All this makes me believe the photo was snapped in the middle of preparation.
The set is the original series' most ambitious. It is a big change from the confined surroundings of a typical flat or, at most, the back yard. Some of the details on this cozy, homey set are marvelous, like the stone walls and bridge, or the tree stumps scattered around, which I only noticed by watching TDK's masters. It is fun how they contrast with the ragged, barely standing
chaloupka reused from 1975's
Kouzelný dědeček, whose erratic movements are also charming in their own way, or the ridiculously redundant front gate. It is a neat link of the characters' clumsy, but optimistic nature.
It is interesting to note how both Sťahovanie and Voda feature a solo writing credit for Beneš, while his usual colleague in that section, dramaturge Vendulka Čvančarová, was paired with Vladimír Jiránek for Záhradka. This makes me wonder whether the two episodes were prepared in advance. The 1981 episodes have more things in common with the 1979 episodes and feel like a holdover from that era.
