Closely Watched Trains (1991)

Director Jiri Menzel expertly juggles pathos and absurdity in this erotic and ultimately shocking black comedy about life at a Czechoslovak train station during World War II. With a puritanical stationmaster and a satyric conductor for role models, a callow dispatcher (Vaclav Neckar) discovers love and pain on his new job. Menzel's generosity of spirit toward his characters lends the film a sweetness that is accomplished and rare. Winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1967, Closely Watched Trains loses little, and in fact gains in intimacy, in the transfer to video (at least in this new release — avoid the older, RCA/Columbia version, whose subtitles are frequently unreadable). A-