Miloš Forman - Černý Petr (Black Peter)

Sixteen-year-old Peter, as a trainee in a local grocery store, does not quite understand the meaning of his work, let alone the inexplicable values of the “adult” world, represented by his father. This crucial early work of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Miloš Forman first feature film, presented Czechoslovak viewers with something unfamiliar—a true testimony of young people’s search for identity and family estrangement. Utilizing mainly non-actors and with the help of cameraman Jan Němeček, Miloš Forman was able to capture not only the authenticity of ordinary summer days in the atmosphere of a Czech small-town during the early 60s, but also the feelings of eastern bloc teenagers in nascent rebellion on the cusp of the Prague Spring.

I worked with all my non-actors in a similar way, never showing them the script. I had the screenplay memorized word for word and I’d start by acting out the scene for them, explaining what I was looking for. I made sure they understood what the scene was about and their character’s attitudes. Then we would go right ahead and shoot the scene. My non-actors would always remember a few lines of the written dialogue that I’d used and they would make up the rest. When everything went well, the performers were merely themselves and the words that came out of them were right on the money.