Zdeněk Erben

On an early Sunday evening, people of the small town are reading lottery results that are hung on a board. Young man Karel Antos is annoyed that his lottery-ticket missed the main prize, a car, by only one number. Karel is going to the pub to drink away his bad luck with his friend Jirka Broz. The old accountant auditor Zelinka drops a wallet. Karel picks it up and before he gives it back he notices the winning lottery-ticket in it. Both young men accompany the old drunk man. Karel steals the ticket and exchanges it with his own. Next day, Zelinka is found dead. Investigators, Captain Tuma and the Lieutenant Líbal, soon discover that this is a murder case covered up as an accident.

Good-natured and garrulous, Schweik becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I -- although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle.

Based on a novel by Maria Majerova, this well-photographed but routine romantic drama is directed and co-scripted by Vaclav Krska. Set in a more old-fashioned time, the story centers around Lenka (Suzana Fisarskova), a young woman with a domineering, psychologically abusive father. When Lenka falls in love she suffers the ultimate injustice when her father and her family forbid her to marry the man. They see no advantage in such a union and want her to marry a wealthy local landowner instead, for obvious reasons. But Lenka is not as submissive as they think and she runs away to the city to look for the man she loves -- only to find a serious problem, though a surmountable one, is waiting for her.

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