“I remember a story like that. The boy I was dating had a classmate, and he and his entire family were interned in a concentration camp for about a year. When my boyfriend learnt that his classmate had returned, he ran to see him immediately. He then came to me about two hours later and he was disappointed. I asked him: ‘Aren’t you happy that you saw each other?’ He replied that this friend of his was somehow strange. He did not even ask him what was happening at the grammar school, and what were they now studying. But that boy was a boy who has returned from Auschwitz! I realized the full context only a long time later! This was a terribly paradoxical situation! An excited boy comes to him and starts telling him about the dancing lessons they attended and about the plays they saw in the National Theatre, while the boy sitting next to him has been to Auschwitz.”
“People did not talk about it at that time, and I learnt the details only later because I enquired about it. The poor boys, they wanted to do something against the Germans by themselves without any help. They were posting some handwritten pamphlets somewhere and calling German institutions such as the Gestapo and cursing them in their poor German which they had learnt in school. Obviously, it was no problem for the Germans to find out from which phone they called and to arrest them. The boys thought that they were doing some resistance activity.”
“For instance, as the first choice – that is the place to which the editor-in-chief pays the greatest attention during the approval process – I would write the name of some actor whom I certainly did not want to have in my film, but who was a politically acceptable actor. Meanwhile, however, I would have already checked with the actors’ department that this particular actor already had another work scheduled for television, or a premiere in theatre, and I thus knew that he would not be able to accept the offer. A person like this was ideal, and I would thus quickly write his name in the first place in the casting proposal, where the boss would notice him, but I already knew that the actor would not be available. Then in the second place I would write somebody neutral – uninteresting, and in the third place, where the boss nearly did not look at all, I would write somebody whom we really wanted and who did not have many opportunities to appear in television. Those were actors whom the managers did not like to see on the screen. Actors like them were thus able to appear in important roles as well. For example: once I cast Vlastimil Fišar. I remember him very well. He was not strictly banned, but he was not supposed to receive offers of roles and he was not to be seen too much. That was because he had served as the president of actors’ association before 1968. I knew of two actors who would have liked to take the role, but who were not available at that time, and thus I wrote their names in the first and second position of the proposal. Vlastík was available, but he was not allowed to act. When the film was completed, edited, and finished, the boss came to see the final approval screening. As if on purpose, this actor Vlastík appeared right in the first scene. There were opening scenes without actors, and then in the first shot the boss saw Vlastík and he stopped the screening. He immediately asked me how come that Fišar acted in that film. Of course, I gave him a surprised look and showed him the casting proposal which he had signed and approved. He read it and the screening could then continue. When we wanted to have some actor who had troubles with the regime, even Jan Tříska, we would put his name in the third position and we knew that the actors approved by the regime did not have time. We wanted them, of course, but unfortunately, they were not available, and we thus had to choose from those who had time.”
Věra Jordánová, née Nováková, was born April 15, 1928 in Prague, but she lived with her parents in Šternberk in Moravia until she was ten years old. The family had to leave Šternberk in 1938 because the area became part of the Sudeten region. Prague became a new home for her, and she has been living there since then. Věra studied grammar school in Prague, and then she continued her studies at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU). She worked as an actress in the theatre in Liberec where she also met her lifelong partner Zdeněk Procházka. Shortly after the birth of her daughter in 1957 she was offered a short-term contract with the Czechoslovak Television as a director’s assistant, but eventually she remained working in this state-owned television company until her retirement. At first she became a director’s assistant, and after graduation from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) she worked as a director of children’s programmes. She directed a great number of fairy tales and performances, the most famous of which were Tales from the Krkonoše Mountains, a four-part series Jane Eyre and Magical Rings. Věra Jordánová died on November 13th, 2022.
