Lucernafilm

Filmed during the Nazi occupation, this panoramic drama set in a Prague department store follows the divergent destinies of four female coworkers, each of whom seeks happiness in a different way.

A morally questionable lord comes to the aid of a working class man who is to be executed for speaking out about thieving rich scoundrels sticking it to the poor.

A dashing but mysterious man saves a gambler from suicide, crashes the posh party of a prominent industrialist, falls in love with his daughter, and finds himself in a web of intrigue revolving around her blackmailing fiance and a gang of counterfeiters.

A young man has led his whole life with his grandfather. When he was in school, he was the only one who was refused to join the Youth Brigade, since his father was sentenced to death for spying. When it is time for him to do the compulsory military service, he has to do it in a platoon for "unreliable" persons.

Josef Houbička, the owner of the U pěti veverek apartment building in Malostran, is a kind and forgiving good man who allows himself to be ruthlessly oppressed by his proud wife, Filoména, and secretly fixes her problems with the tenants. He lends rent money to two poor painters and bribes offended maids just to keep the house quiet. He would like to restore the old soap factory in the house, but Filoména promotes more profitable garages. And since neither of them wants to back down, Houbička eventually leaves the house after one of the arguments. He makes friends with the innkeeper Pulec, who runs the not-so-prosperous inn At the Leaky Jug...

Eva's aunt is jealous of her neighbor's excellent roses and wants to know the secret. To help auntie out Eva applies for secretarial work at the neighbor's house in order to find out the formula. Things get complicated when it turns out that Eva's brother is in love with the daughter of the house and also wants to get in there under false pretenses.

Mother-Hen

Prague, the beginning of the 17th century. Rozina falls in love with Italian glass worker Nikolo, but after returning home, she gets a message that will never come to Prague. She falls for the promise of an older man to marry her, but when Nikolo does return, the tragic fate of Rozina is sealed.

"Grandmother" is a highly romanticized autobiographical novel by a Czech 19th century writer, Bozena Nemcova. It's a classical, compulsory reading in Czech schools, about a wise, working-class woman, happier in her simplicity and good heart than the nobles whom she serves.

Mist on the Moors examines fates of just about a few people. Their stories are outlined in a short space of time and are a symbolic representation of the drama of life, struggle for justice, human cognizance and the healing power of love. One of the most important components of the film is the nature, which ceases to be a mere stage for its plot—it serves almost as an autonomous plot agent. The movie landscape is a precisely defined and localized one. Only the South Bohemian ponds can serve as the right environment for development of such earthy and typically human stories as we encounter in the Mist on the Moors.

Venice Film Festival 1941