Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970)

In January and February, the new Uitkijk series is dedicated to Invisible Forces. For this program, we have selected films in which characters are confronted with elusive, all-encompassing forces that shape their lives in different ways. The films move between horror, magical realism, and existential nightmares, showing how people struggle, falter, and sometimes break under the weight of the unknown.

CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN (1970) is inspired by Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. After a car accident, Gulliver continues his journey on foot through an unfamiliar landscape. Along the way, he picks up a ticking pocket watch from the lifeless body of a well-dressed hare. The inscription on the watch marks his introduction to the wondrous land of Balnibarbi, whose capital, Laputa, floats above the ground. In this alternative universe, the paranoid inhabitants live according to the absurdist laws of a shadowy regime.

Director Pavel Juráček, an outsider of the Czechoslovak New Wave and co-writer of Daisies (1966), guides his unfortunate protagonist through a series of surreal and tragicomic scenes. Interpreted as a critique of the totalitarian communist regime, the film was quickly banned from Czechoslovak cinemas. With the masterful and rarely screened CASE FOR A ROOKIE HANGMAN, Juráček’s career was effectively brought to an end.