I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND
Director: Jiri Menzel Stars: Ivan Barner, Oldrich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
A film set in pre-World War II days as well as offering glimpses of the war itself. It comes from the Czech Republic, from veteran director Jiri Menzel who began making ironic, tongue-in-cheek comic portraits of his people in the freer moods of the mid-1960s. He returns to this vein to quite some effect in I Served The King Of England, presenting the picaresque adventures of a short young man, Dite, whose ambition is to become a millionaire and who is not above some trickery to achieve this. The episodes (even one filmed as a silent comedy) are amusing, sometimes charming, sometimes bawdy in a very genteel way as Dite rises through the ranks of the staff of the most elegant hotels.
Then Hitler comes into the picture and the film turns more serious as well as critical. Dite defends a young German woman (Julia Jentsch) who is attacked by some Czech youths and he is smitten. She is the very model of a Hitler-infatuated, racist, supremacist ideologue and Dite sides with her.
We know how it ends right from the beginning as we see an older Dite coming out of gaol after fifteen years. After the war the communist regime caught up with him.
There is quite a lot to think about as we watch the seemingly idyllic luxury 30s, the transformation of the German occupation and the hold of Nazism. And the older Dite has the opportunity to become wiser.