DIVIDED WE FALL.  Dir. Jan Hrebejk.  2000.

Cinematography:

Divided We Fall, titled We Must Help Each Other in the original Czech, is an award-winning film directed by Jan Hřebejk and starring Boleslav Polívka as the main character. It tells the story of an average Czech couple, Josef Cizek (Polívka) and Maria Cizková (Anna Sisková), who live in a German-occupied Czech town during World War II and must decide on the spot to hide an old Jewish friend and employer, David Wiener (Csongor Kassai), who has escaped from the Terezín concentration camp. In many ways, Hřebejk’s Divided We Fall is decidedly and intentionally different from other World War II films. Rather than emphasizing the stark contrasts of the time, Hřebejk offers us a world in which the complexities of human nature and the paradoxes of our morality are revealed under strenuous and desperate circumstances.

The use of the two shot allows us to observe the development of these complexities and paradoxes and gives us insight into the characters’ personalities. The two shot underscores character connectedness, reinforcing the film title’s message -- the importance of putting aside individual emotions and priorities to come together for others in time of need.  This kind of shot subtly highlights and juxtaposes the main characters’ reactions and personalities -- their peculiar idiosyncrasies, common facial expressions, and most human of reactions.  Indeed, it is this subtlety, manifested in the way Maria frowns, Josef rolls his eyes, and Horst frequently wipes his brow, that truly highlights what stressful times and the fear of the repercussion can do to regular people.

When the two shot is used for Josef and Maria’s conversations, it creates an intimate space between husband and wife. We see early on how Josef’s humorous and almost flippant attitude contrasts with Maria’s more reserved, slight somber personality. In their stairway, before Josef prepares for his trip to the Wiener house, the shot creates a private space between a nervous husband and a worried wife. Josef, normally much taller than Maria, is positioned here eye-level with his wife, and the two appear to be equals.  In another two shot scene, husband and wife are arguing with each across the dinner table, ignoring the presence of a dead pig they have had to remove from David’s hiding place. As their argumentation closes, Josef realizes reluctantly that he must maintain the obligation Maria says he automatically undertook; the overhead shot captures the two reaching over the pig to hold hands, agreeing to be partners in what the Nazis have declared a capital crime.

The relationship between Josef and Horst Prohazka (Jaroslav Dusek), the Volksdeutsch who collaborates with the Nazis, grows more complex over time. They go through a cycle of trust and distrust. For much of the film, their scenes together show Horst in control, but during the final scenes their roles are reversed. In his conversations with Josef, Horst frequently repeats (using different words) the maxim of the film’s title, “ We need to help each other.” Initially, he puts these words into action by giving gifts –food, medicine, or items for the house. Horst’s table conversations with Josef late in the movie, however, indicate that material goods will no longer suffice – the Germans are losing the war and retreating from the advance of the Czech resistance and the Red Army. At his point, Horst’s help becomes action instead of objects: he offers to hide “anything or anyone” in his own home and that of his relatives, implying that he knows Josef and Maria are hiding a fugitive. Ultimately, Horst convinces the Nazis not to search Josef’s house for hidden Jews during a raid. When Josef thanks him, Horst replies,  “Divided we fall.” At this tipping point in the war, Horst stands with Josef and Maria in victory or defeat.

The characters thus rely upon each other for survival and realize how important it is for them to help one another. Joseph and Maria hide David. David impregnates Maria, since Josef is sterile, and thereby saves them all from the Nazis invading their home and his hiding place. Horst protects everyone by swearing their house is clear during the Nazi raid. Josef saves Horst by pretending he is Maria’s doctor. Wartime and occupation force ordinary people into difficult situations and compromises in which they must maintain a strange solidarity.

Perhaps the most ironic two shots in Divided We Fall shows David and Josef’s neighbor Frantisek (Jiři Pecha) forced to sit side by side.  It demonstrates the stark necessity of lying for each other.  Earlier in the film Frantisek had tried to betray David to the Nazis to save his skin, even though he represents a key member of the Czech resistance.  At the end, Frantisek must identify David as a hidden Jew to the resistance and David saves Frantisek by not denouncing him. Frantisek, embarrassed and fearful, tries to hide his identifying armband so as not to aggravate the situation.

Boleslav Polívka incarnating the “little hero”

Balancing its peculiar and often humorous script with the monstrosity of the Nazi occupation, Divided We Fall relies heavily upon the performance of its main character, Josef Cizek.  At the film’s onset, Josef, played majestically by Boleslav Polívka, has lost his youthful energy and decides he can survive the war by passively acquiescing.  He admits that he could “watch [the war] pass by from the window.”  While he feels a deep disdain for the Nazis, Josef’s cynical tendencies and despondent attitude do not obscure his habit of surrendering to inertia.  Polívka does not play Josef as a quiet hero, but quite the opposite.  While his morality and hatred of “those German swine” might call him to act, Josef seems unwilling to do so, and, in the end, it is this reservation which reveals his humanity.  While Josef seems to possess an adult’s moral character, he also displays a child’s anger, fear, and pettiness.  He loafs around his house, often making wild hand gestures, and regularly protests Marie’s distribution of his “possessions” in a manner that seems more likely to come from a petulant child than than a grown man.  Other interactions with Marie, such as when she brings him a goofy leather cap and tries to help him tie his shoelaces prior to his departure to the Weiner estate, demonstrate his childishness.

On the surface, it may seem as though the Holocaust and World War II are not appropriate topics for Polívka’s specific brand of humor in Divided We Fall; the contrast between Polívka’s comedic performance and the gravity of the situations in the film is striking. Josef’s facial expressions, while often funny, are concessions of honesty, and his frequent loss of composure expresses his desperation and fear. After several close calls,  he can be seen grasping his chest with a sigh of relief, or crossing his heart in a hopeful prayer, almost as though he is saying “God help me, this is crazy.”  His attempt to regulate his expression in front of the enemy demonstrates how unnatural the enemy’s expectations are.  When Maria announces her pregnancy in front of Horst and the Nazi commander, Josef’s reaction ranges from surprise to fear to confusion to blankness.  When Josef tries to mimic Horst’s expression of irreproachable loyalty before the Germans, he looks like an idiot with his mouth open and his gaze unfixed.

These varied, often comedic actions and facial expressions play a major role in portraying his evolution from a bored, sardonic, cranky loafer into one who strives, with astonishing resolve, to ensure the survival of his family from the Nazi oppressors. In order to distract Horst from Maria who has hidden David in her bed, a deadly situation, Josef chooses to play a crazy drunkard, singing and dancing freneticallly.  Josef also convey powerful emotions through his body language.  He often touches the person he is talking to in order to persuade or comfort them in a way a parent touches a child when they explain something to them.  When David appears just in time to save Josef from being shot, he at last gives way to his feelings, beginning to weep, but he also clutches David’s head and kisses him repeatedly.

When Josef initially discovers David, however, he automatically decides to act out of friendship and loyalty, and that decision steers him through the rest of the film.  Josef unwittingly becomes a “little hero” who does his best, albeit at times almost unwillingly, to save David, himself, and his wife.  Simple sacrifices, such as working for the Nazis and tarnishing his reputation with neighbors in order to disseminate suspicion about David’s location, are the best he can manage.  Indeed, it could be argued that Josef’s acts to protect those under his roof can and should be seen as acts of heroism, given his constant fear and worry about violent punishment.  His inner conflict and the moral dilemmas that consume him as he contemplates his actions, and his reactions to these, ultimately reflect his bravery.  For example, when chaos breaks out on the streets, and riots, destruction, and death loom all around him, Josef appears extremely worried for another reason: his wife is pregnant and he is only concerned about finding a doctor to deliver her baby.  In these scenes he represents a little hero by braving a war-torn town to ensure the lives of his wife and “their” baby.

Edited by Eshita Singh and Joshua Neal, January 2015