Films of the Czechoslovak New Wave aren't normally associated with musicals, but there were a handful -- and one of the first and most popular, 1964's The Hop-Pickers (Starci na chmelu), is very different animal from its more famous compatriots. An ode to youth, a proletariat fantasia, and a colorful translation of Hollywood conventions into a local setting, this was initially intended by filmmaker Ladislav Rychman and co-writer/lyricist Vratislav Blazek as a stage production. When that proved impossible, they took a page from the same year's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg by casting photogenic, appealing actors and had them dubbed by professional singers, resulting in the best of both worlds. The film's teen-friendly attitude could also be read as part of the zeitgeist that had already propelled the previous year's Beach Party into a generation-defining hit at U.S. drive-ins, with pop-flavored teen musicals popping up all over Europe in its wake. Eastern Bloc countries got busy making their own variations with Soviet and East German offerings served up for local audiences, including the occasional belated crossover like 1968's cult hit Hot Summer.

The Hop-Pickers grabs your attention right away with a striking overture of sorts featuring three young guitar-strumming men in the countryside, a kind of Greek chorus for our tale set during a summer of collective labor picking hops for dozens of young students. Among them are the intellectually curious Filip (Pucholt), who dabbles in philosophy and Marxism, and the fashionable but smart Hanka (Pavlová), with a possible romance budding between them. However, sexual liaisons are prohibited in this mini-society where everyone lives together under one giant roof and communes in a dining hall; on top of that their relationship draws the ire of the charismatic and apparently shirt-allergic Honza (Zavadil) who could throw a wrench in their plans.

At least superficially, you can draw comparisons to plenty of other contemporary musicals including West Side Story (especially the gym dance), Elvis Presley vehicles, the Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptations' balletic dream sequences, and plenty more. The setting and language make all the difference here, with the flamboyant visual style serving as a counterpoint to the recurring ideas of comradeship and individualism among the young when they're being supervised by supposedly wiser adults. The songs themselves are bouncy and fun, with an occasional detour into the meditative and a folk feeling at times that you'd never hear in Hollywood around this time. It's all beautifully shot in wide 2.55:1 CinemaScope, which takes full advantage of the format right from the striking opening shot.

Though it didn't get a ton of theatrical play outside its native country, The Hop-Pickers is a pop culture staple at home and first hit Blu-ray there following a meticulous 4K restoration by the Czech National Film Archive. That release came with eight short films all tied to the film in some way, primarily through hop-picking and beer production: 1964's The Processing of Hops (Posliznova uprava chmelu) by Josef Suran, 1934's Gift of the Earth (Dar Zume), 1940's Liquid Bread (Tekuty chleb) by Josef Vilimek, 1952's One Hundred and Ten Years of the Pilsen Brewery (Sto deset let plzenskych pivovaru) by the great Karel Zeman, 1937's Capital of the World (Hlavni mesto sveta) by Otto Lampel, 1938's Science Speaks (Veda mluvi), 1942's One Hundred Years of the Burgher Brewery in Pilsen (Sto let Mestanskeho pivovaru v Plzni), and 1964's Modern Beer Production (Moderni vyroba piva) by Vladimir Voves. The 2024 U.K. Blu-ray from Second Run is taken from the same excellent restoration, which presents the film in its intended spacious glory with its very stylized (and presumably accurate) color scheme intact. DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 stereo LPCM Czech audio options are provided with optional English subtitles; both sound very good with modest but appreciable separation during the song sequences. In addition to a newly created trailer, the three most significant shorts from the Czech release are included here: Gift of the Earth (45m34s), One-Hundred and Ten Years of the Pilsen Brewery (22m25s), and The Processing of Hops (12m57s). An insert booklet features a very detailed and informative overview of the film and the local political and film scene circa '64 by Jonathan Owen, including background on the two creators and useful explanations for some of the double meanings in the lyrics that could easily fly past most viewers.

Reviewed on November 19, 2024.