The Image of the Artist in Czech Feature Films after 1948

After the Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, the cultural politics of the Communist Party became the only power that should organize, regulate and evaluate cultural affairs. This brouht radical changes of the status of artists. That artists who belonged to the rank of intellectuals had to follow needs of the new kind of society. They accepted orders from above and their activity was strictly controlled. Proletarian amateurs and folk art were officially encouraged. The examples of the progressive art were found in the USSR and also among personalities from the history of the national culture. Cinematography, to which was placed a requirement of topicality, also presented the new image of the artist. The most noticeable results were reached in biografical films about our classics and films exposing folklore and cultural life of the working class. The integration of an intellectual artist into the new society became a pivotal theme in movies Písnička za groš and Nezlob, Kristino. As episodic characters, we can find also completely negative types of artists - enemies of that new society. This spectrum corresponds to a general typology of people that was used in art, journalism and public speech in general: mature, confused and totally inadaptable (designed to be displaced). Exeptional cases of..