Jiří Just: The Avogadro Case

How to motivate talented workers to innovate production processes in a socialist planned economy? Well, by supporting the so-called. improvement suggestions! Luboš Panáček, a young graduate of the industrial school, fresh out of school and starting a job in a factory, submits his improvement proposal. And despite the intrigues of his leader Kalousek, who feels threatened by the capable young man, he brings his idea to a successful conclusion. Jiří Just's extremely witty and, by the standards of the time, sharp text exposes the system of socialist labour organisation and comradely relations in the workplace as completely dysfunctional and unsustainable. Director Jan Lorman had an extremely lucky hand in casting all the characters that appear in Just's story. Whether it is Josef Bek as the sharp and dangerous leader Kalousek, David Vejražka as shy, but a tenacious young improviser, Jaroslav Moučka as "the only righteous one", who wants to help the right cause, Vladimir Krška, who listens with increasing amazement to the narrative of the intricate case, but Jiří Ornest in the episodic role of Wintra, a union man, should not be left out, which perfectly captured the diction and character of the social opportunism so characteristic of the time. Above them all, however, stands out Zdeněk Řehoř, as a narrator and insightful glossator of events in the factory, who one late afternoon bursts into the manager's office with a request for a well-deserved retirement. The production won the main prize at the Prix Bohemia Radio Festival in 1981.