General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Ear

The Ear (Czech: Ucho) is a 1970 Czechoslovak psychological political thriller directed by Karel Kachyňa, written by Kachyňa with Jan Procházka, and starring Radoslav Brzobohatý and Jiřina Bohdalová as a Communist official and his wife who spend one night convinced that the secret police are about to arrest him¹. Banned immediately after completion for its depiction of State Security surveillance methods, it was shelved for twenty years and first shown publicly in 1990, after the fall of the regime it had attacked². It is the Czechoslovak film most closely identified with the term "vault film", used for features locked away by censors without distribution³.

Key fact	Detail
Original title / director	Ucho, directed by Karel Kachyňa; produced by Filmové studio Barrandov, Czechoslovakia¹
Production dates	Literary screenplay approved 21 April 1969; filming 5 August to 17 October 1969; first film copy completed 29 December 1969, not approved for distribution⁴
Running time	95 minutes per the National Film Archive; other versions are listed at 91, 94, and 96 minutes⁵^•¹
Leads	Radoslav Brzobohatý as Deputy Minister Ludvík; Jiřina Bohdalová as his wife Anna⁶
Suppression	Banned right after completion; apart from closed-door screenings for Barrandov management and party officials, no one was allowed to see it until 1989³
Release	Czech premiere in 1990 (January 1990 per the National Film Archive and SFS; 1 June 1990 per Filmový přehled); in competition at Cannes 1990⁷^•⁶^•⁴^•⁸
Restoration	4K restoration completed in 2022 by the Národní filmový archiv with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; world re-premiere in the Venice Classics section of the 2022 Venice Film Festival⁹

Spoilers

Plot

The film takes place over a single night. Deputy Minister Ludvík and his wife Anna return late in the evening from a reception with the President to their villa. Their keys are missing, the house is unlocked, the electricity and telephone line have been cut, and a government car sits outside under a streetlamp⁹^•¹⁰. At the reception Ludvík learned that his superior, the minister, has been arrested along with others, and that a critical report on brickworks, which Ludvík himself helped write, may have been the reason⁵. Convinced he is next in a political purge, he burns incriminating documents while the couple's quarrel brings up a decade of accumulated resentments⁵.

The couple know their home is bugged; they call the hidden microphones "the ear" and try to keep sensitive talk out of its range, at one point covering themselves in the kitchen to make love away from the microphones¹¹. When unknown men ring the doorbell, both assume Ludvík is being arrested; instead the uninvited guests drink and make merry with him¹. After they leave, Ludvík finds a listening device in the house¹. At dawn a telephone call startles the exhausted pair: it is the President, informing Ludvík that he has been appointed minister in his arrested superior's place. The reprieve brings no relief; Anna says only, "Ludvík, I'm scared," and the film fades to black⁸.

The setting is deliberately vague. An opening title placed the story in 1952, but it was cut at the director's request for the 1990 premiere⁹. One character is identified with Czechoslovak President Antonín Novotný, which would place the action between 1957 and 1968³. The National Film Archive notes that while the film can be read as a comment on the Stalinist 1950s, its rich style makes it a more abstract and timeless critique².

Production and suppression

A hurried production. Jan Procházka and Karel Kachyňa began the script in early 1969, after the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops⁶. Judging that they would not have much time under the changing political climate, they finished the literary script in about two months, and filming took another two³. The interiors were built at Hostivař Studios, and according to Brzobohatý parts of the film had to be shot in secret, without deviations from the script³. Procházka drew on personal experience: in the early 1960s he had discovered that the State Security was following and wiretapping him³. Kachyňa later wrote that the two "wrote the script in haste, and we filmed it in haste too. We thought we didn't have much time"¹.

The first copy was completed on 29 December 1969, though it was not approved for distribution⁴. A March 1970 censorship report called it an "outright anti-Communist film" that cunningly used the devices of Western-style films such as James Bond with far more refined execution¹². The film went into the vault, shown only in closed screenings for studio and party officials³.

The suppression shaped both authors' lives. Procházka was removed from or withdrew from all public functions, the State Security continued to follow him, and Czechoslovak Television broadcast an inflammatory documentary about him containing a deliberately edited wiretap; he succumbed to mounting pressure and serious illness in February 1971³. Kachyňa was able to keep directing, but at the cost of creative compromises¹³.

The Ear was the last official joint film of the Kachyňa and Procházka partnership, which through the 1960s had chronologically revised Czechoslovak history, from the Second World War (Long Live the Republic!, 1965; A Carriage Going to Vienna, 1966) to collectivization and the Stalinist show trials (The Nun's Night, 1967; A Ridiculous Gentleman, 1969)³. Procházka's friendship with President Novotný is assumed to have helped greenlight their politically direct projects¹⁴.

Style and reception

The film alternates between the couple's villa at night and flashbacks to the reception, the latter shot largely in subjective camera (first-person viewpoint shots showing what a character sees) from Ludvík's viewpoint as he tries to learn why his minister was arrested and whether he himself is next⁸. The East European Film Bulletin's Julia Zelman argues that this first-person camera is remarkable for its emphasis on conscience and guilt: Ludvík is a Party man shut out of the system he helped run, and the film refuses to make his status as victim clear-cut, with Anna attacking him for cowardice and opportunism⁸.

Critics have repeatedly compared the marital warfare to Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Sight & Sound calling the film "a bugged version of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF"¹⁵^•¹⁶. The BFI lists it among great films about surveillance¹⁷, and the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose Oscar-nominated The Secret Agent drew on it, has described it as having "the logic of Kafka", with a sense of dread and mystery that is never explained⁹.

After its 1990 release the film won the main prize (Ledňáček) ex aequo at the FINÁLE festival of Czech and Slovak films in Plzeň, and at the 1991 FITES Trilobit awards it took prizes for direction (Kachyňa), screenplay (Procházka, in memoriam), and female acting performance (Bohdalová); in a 1998 critics' poll on the best Czech-Slovak feature film of the century it placed tenth⁶. At Cannes 1990 Kachyňa was nominated for the Palme d'Or⁸. In 1983, Pavel Kohout re-filmed Procházka's script as Das Ohr for the Austrian station ZDF/ORF².

Restoration

The Národní filmový archiv restored the film in 4K in 2022, funded by a donation from Milada Kučerová and Eduard Kučera and carried out with the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the Czech Film Fund, and the laboratories UPP and Soundsquare⁹. The 1990 premiere version served as the reference, and the sources were the original image negative and the original magnetic mixing tapes⁹. The restoration premiered in the Venice Classics section of the 79th Venice Film Festival in 2022 and then returned to Czech cinemas¹⁸.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1970s films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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