Streamlined from Milan Kundera’s novel of the same name into a trim 81-minute film, Jaromil Jireš’s The Joke is nevertheless one of the most forthright condemnations of Communism to emerge from the Czechoslovak New Wave. As a result, it was banned by the authorities shortly after its original run in 1969 and didn’t see the inside of a cinema again for another two decades.
Frankly, it’s remarkable that the film received a theatrical release at all. Unlike some other celebrated works of the period that took issue with the regime, The Joke doesn’t distance itself through allegory (such as Miloš Forman’s The Firemen’s Ball) or surrealism (Věra Chytilová’s Daisies). Those movies were censored, too, but Jireš’s quiet yet powerful adaptation of Kundera’s book comes right out and says it: People who didn’t toe the line (either wilfully or by misfortune) routinely had their lives shattered by the authorities.
The film opens as our cynical protagonist, Ludvik Jahn (Josef Somr), a middle-aged scientist and self-confessed womaniser, returns to his hometown in Moravia after a long absence. He meets Helena (Jana Dítětová), a reporter who wants to interview him for an article. By coincidence, she happens to be married to Pavel Zemánek (Luděk Munzar), a man Ludvik went to college with in Prague many years before. With this newfound knowledge, Ludvik decides he will seduce Helena to cuckold his old school chum and get belated revenge.
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