Karel Doležal, insurance clerk and exemplary father of a family, leaves for a business trip with his secretary Vlasta. After spending the night together, they both return home. However, thanks to a small moment of inattention, they run over the boys. Karel runs away from the scene of the crime. He won't tell anyone what happened. Then when he reads in the newspaper that the boy did not survive the accident, he begins to feel guilty. He confides in his wife about the accident, not the infidelity. Their son Jirka overhears everything. His father has always been his role model, and that's why he doesn't want to accept his guilt.
Acting
Miloš Nedbal's suffocating panic as the cowardly everyman
Direction
Krejčík's claustrophobic framing traps you in Karel's guilt
Writing
Confessing the accident but hiding the affair — brutal irony
Director
Jiří Krejčík
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made during Czechoslovakia's Communist consolidation, the film's focus on individual conscience over collective good was quietly subversive.
The newspaper scene — Karel learning the boy died — was shot in one take, Nedbal reportedly vomiting between takes from genuine emotional exhaustion.
XC
