Father

"A drama of peasant pride and avarice", which sacrifices the happiness of its own children to the vision of wealth. Kopecký, a peasant, and Divíšek, a quarter-peasant, are close neighbours, fathers of grown-up children. When Divíšek's younger son Jan falls in love with Kopecký's daughter Anna, it looks as if the two families might be related. But that would not be Jan's father, who is obsessed with accumulating wealth, to which he is willing to sacrifice good neighbourly relations and the happiness of his own offspring. The farm on which the Kopecký family farms once belonged to Divíšek's ancestors, and the miserly farmer is willing to do anything to get the property back. Alois Jirásek again found the theme for his fourth play in a row in the surroundings of Litomyšl. The inspiration for the character of the greedy and cruel Divíšek was the peasant Zahálka from Sloupnice, famous for his strange behaviour, intolerance and seeking court cases. In Jirásek's drama, the character of the country miser takes on a tragic dimension; in the pursuit of money, Divíšek achieves everything he set out to do, but as a father he fails completely. Persons and cast: Kopecky, peasant (Karel Pavlik), his wife (Svetla Amorta), Anthony, lawyer (Karel Fořt), Václav (Otakar Brousek st. ), Anna (Eva Klenova), Weirdo, quartermaster (Antonín Zíb), Jan, graduate (Josef Chvalina), Bobes (Rudolf Hrušínský st. ), Janac, lawyer (Miroslav Doležal), Wrong, said Dr. Smetana (Emil Bolek), Vashina, cottager (Rudolf Široký), Jilek, cottager (Arthur Kalous), a country woman (Jaroslava Drmlová), a country woman (Štěpánka Holečková), a country boy (Petr Hermann), a country boy (Zdeněk Matějka), narrator (Bedřich Bobek). Directed by: Miroslav Jareš.