Coach to Vienna

Set, like Kachyna's previous film, Long Live the Republic!, during the Nazi retreat from Czechoslovakia, this is a far more spartan affair, more sensible as a result, but perhaps less involving. Janzurová is a war widow captured by two German deserters and forced to drive them by cart to the border. Sullenly vengeful, she makes the most of each pit stop to squirrel away the soldiers' weapons and make ready her own, stony to the amicable advances of the fit younger German. Set entirely in a monolithic misty wood, it's filmed (in b/w) with a great sense of dank and feral atmosphere. All the same, you get the point after a while. It's the ending that delivers the real kick in the teeth: by the time the Czech partisans finally arrive on the scene they can only offer the sourest, most vicious note of spite in their own cause.