The Secret of Great Narrator (1971) and French-Czechoslovak cultural transfers

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the Czechoslovak film The Secret of Great Narrator (1971) directed by Karel Kachyňa as an example of cultural transfers between French and Czechoslovak culture, especially literature and cinema. Made and released during the dramatic time following the Soviet-led invasion of August 1968, this family-friendly film is ostensibly an adaptation of the biography Les Trois Dumas, known in the English translation under the title The Titans (1957). However, the book’s author André Maurois is eclipsed by the filmmakers due both to their strongly experimental project and to the overwhelming popularity of Alexandre Dumas as well as the general francophilia in the Czech lands and Czechoslovakia. Under the new regime, the film’s ambitious artistic direction, offhand tone, and the very references to France and French joie de vivre become a stark contrast to the return of socialist realism in cinema. These factors indicate the film’s value in the building of the so-called imaginary West in Czechoslovak “normalization”-era culture.