I Served the King of England is a gorgeously whimsical film with serious elements swathed in quirky scenes and luscious cinematography. It is carried almost entirely on the back of Jan Dite (Ivan Barnev) whose charming opportunism never cloys. The mischievous little character is always popping up in the right place at the right time, learning from his mistakes and telling his story through flashbacks and voiceover.

From selling sausages at a train station, Dite climbs the rungs of the service industry ladder in the pursuit of money. He sees to what lengths people will go to make money and he exploits their greed to make his own. He works in Prague’s most beautiful hotel, the Hotel Paris; “so beautiful I almost swooned” under the tutelage of a maitre d’ who once served the King of England. All is excess and opulence; gold and gilt; and fanciful illusion. To a background of brass bands, angelic choirs and string orchestras, the waiters dance around tables in stylised choreography; old men in suits whirl around the floor with beautiful girls who sashay in see-through summer dresses, giggle kittenishly, drink champagne and have food fights. Food plays an important role in the film; it is delectable, sensual, spicy, and often combined with sex.

And then Hitler declares war. The film is in Czech and German with English subtitles, but there is no translation of these words: they must be as chillingly famous as Churchill’s response is to me. The jolly humour turns sour. Dite falls in love with Liza (Julia Jentsch), a propaganda-propounding Nazi who makes love to Dite while staring at a portrait of the Fuhrer. Sex is no longer fun but programmed to protect and promote the Aryan race. The corridors down which people previously skipped are no longer farcical: now people disappear through doors and are never seen again.

As Dite recalls his story, his mirror image reflects many aspects of his personality as he charges and defends himself. Mirrors are used to great effect in the film to reveal and obscure. With each of his conquests, Dite covers their naked body (in flowers; food; money) and then shows them the result. His latest flame seems honest because she lives in the forest and has no mirror to preen before. The image that she (and now he) presents to the world is the real deal.

There are many light moments in this film, which contains Chaplin-esque sequences of black and white silent pictures. These prove that humour transcends language, but so does the horror of the Holocaust. The beauty of Bohemia is destroyed and the film returns full circle to the forests of fairytales. Much of the camerawork revolves around a single point, with Dite always on the outside. At first glance this is an ethereal little number, but some of its impressions are haunting and provocative. While hard to categorise its genre (comedy; farce; historic drama; political satire; parable), it has all the ingredients of a great film.


Run, delightful short film, crams a lot of feeling into 15 minutes. Written by Lois Sutherland (who plays the father), it is a story about a Samoan brother and sister who live in fear of their widowed father. He forces them to run around the block and times them with his homemade stopwatch – he likes to keep his house in order with military precision. The children are brilliantly portrayed by Tyrrell Samia and Helayna Seiuli, who retreat into their own worlds of comic books and piano, respectively. They also feel alienated from their surrounding community, but they learn to band together to overcome their biggest obstacle. Fear and anger emerges in equal parts from the discordant piano which is not pretty but certainly resonant. Mark Albiston’s subtle direction includes images that suggest an all-too recognisable world behind a broken picture frame.—Kate Blackhurst