The Conversation + Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? + Alphaville = Ucho (The Ear)

A tense, enthralling, and masterful depiction of the entwining of the personal and political as a part of life under a totalitarian regime. Ucho was filmed in 1969 in Czechslovakia and was unsurprisingly banned for 20 years, receiving its first wide release in 1990.

❝ The creation and suppression of The Ear were political events in themselves, and the film refers fearlessly to many taboo subjects of the Stalinist era: Party debauchery, anti-Semitic arrests, favoritism and corruption. But as courageous as is the film’s content, it should not overshadow [director Karel] Kachyňa’s innovative style. The film alternates scenes of the couple at home and flashbacks showing their increasingly sinister evening at the Party soiree. These flashbacks make extensive use of subjective camera from Ludvík’s viewpoint as he tries to find out why the minister he works for, Košara (né Karpeles — a Jewish name), has been arrested, and whether he himself might be next. ❞ *