Wow! Such a good movie.

Good concept, poorly executed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS is a comedy drama, in which, the paradox of a point is included in the title. This is a reference to a shy youth, social and political turmoil, while arrogant trains of life passing by. The film is based on a 1965 novel by Bohumil Hrabal.The young Miloš Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. The stationmaster is passionate breeder of pigeons and rabbits. The train dispatcher Hubička is preoccupied with women. Miloš holds an as-yet platonic love for the pretty, young conductor, but he is still a virgin. The Nazi-minded Zednicek periodically visits a train station. However, it seems that his propaganda has no effect on the station staff. Problems arise when Máša wants sex with Miloš...It is a coming-of-age story about a nervous young man who is going through a kind of "sexual crisis" to a desperate knowledge. Mr. Menzel has showed a birth of a heroic act from an indifferent social environment and internal youthful anxiety. This is a charming and witty deflection from false problems.The atmosphere is very good, while the characterization is excellent. Some scenes are imaginative to tragicomic proportions. I would not characterize this film as a kind of ideological criticism. This is only a preview of a touching reality.Václav Neckář as Miloš Hrma is a funny and tragic hero who constantly volunteers in a suicide mission. Josef Somr as train dispatcher Hubička is enough perverse, aware and sympathetic to one member of the resistance. Jitka Bendová as conductor Máša is girl who is full of understanding. Jitka Zelenohorská as telegraphist Zdenička has realized that the stamps can be very creative. Vladimír Valenta as stationmaster has understood that nothing can be black and white. Libuše Havelková as stationmaster wife is a clever woman. Naďa Urbánková as Viktoria Freie is a kind of salvation, which, unfortunately, take a young life.

This film of the Czechoslovak New Wave has a gentle sense of the absurd, as if young Milos was still stuck in his childhood and unable to reconcile with what was looming to be a second world war. These events of course always spurned a sort of accelerated growing up because there was battles to be fought and every able young man was necessary to the war effort. So what we see is Milos trying again and again to lose his virginity and fix his premature ejaculation because only then would he become a man - not the awkward, gangly teenager that bumbles around the place and takes after his lazy father. In a amusing twist, his despondent suicide attempt because of his masculine shortcomings is actually interpreted as an attempt to get out of the war effort. Elsewhere we see a lot of bad advice that sticks to Milos with an anxious, unshakeable presence. His mother wishes him luck as he takes over the mantle as a station guard and encourages him to work hard so that he might also be able to retire early and relax on the pension like his father. Both Hubicka and the doctor push him into losing his virginity with an older, experienced woman so that he might finally be a man, which leads to a series of comedic conversations where Milos asks nearly everyone in sight, including his colleague's sisters and wives. "Think of football", he is advised, so that he might not ejaculate early. What this really does is make it even more important in Milos' mind. The war is coming. The trains must be blown up. He hastily agrees to anything that might prove his worth. What Menzel has done here is fully embrace the comic nature of chasing and sexual advances, even in wartime. Soldiers are briefly frozen as girls wave at them from the other side of the tracks. The stationmaster fidgets and bellows to calls of dinner like child unable to stop playing with a new toy. In the most absurdly whimsical sequence of them all, Hubicka slowly makes his way up a young girl's skirt, but he is not applying kisses, but station stamps on her skin. Even the most intimate of sexual activity is quietly being sanctioned and recorded bureaucratically. Later, in the farcical 'trial' of this event, Menzel continually cross-cuts away to suggest the roar of the train is soon to arrive. Milos, in his new-found, supercharged confidence (and therefore recklessness) becomes the standout Czechoslovakian figure, breaking free of the oppressive communist regime and representing a movement that would no longer be satisfied with watching trains patiently - for the Fuhrer or any other target.

1st take: The year is 1944, just before the last stages in the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. The setting is a small-town railway station, and the main characters are those involved in its operation. The film's narrative traces the attempts of a young man, Milos--an apprentice station agent--to be comfortable with his manhood despite suffering from premature ejaculation on his first attempt at sexual relations with his girlfriend; she's a very inviting, pretty conductor on a local train that often stops at his station.My only problem with this is that its story-line depends on 2 small town, Czechoslovakian young (18? 20?) women in 1944 having the kind of sexual liberation that would be more typical, say, of sexually liberated girls in the 1960s (and probably then mainly in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, too).How did this happen in 1944 to these two girls and not to other Czechs? Some time-traveling spirit went back and infected just them?The movie doesn't explain how or why but, when we accept this is the way they are, it leads to many comedic touches as well as setting up some unexpected pathos.One young lady, the RR station's telegrapher, plays a game similar to strip poker with the much older station manager (a lothario). As she progressively loses clothes, he uses the station's rubber stamps to progressively decorate her exposed skin with "tattoos" up to and including her bare butt. She finds this funny and a proud accomplishment. But her mother, unbitten by the time-traveling bug of sexual liberation, still labors under a 1930s-40s morality and, after seeing these on her daughter, wants authorities to punish the station manager (displaying her daughter's skin to them--(and us)--in evidence).Milos is smitten with the young lady conductor; she keeps inviting him to have an adequate sexual relation with her--not one marred by their one previous premature ejaculation experience--and her continual invitings continually heightens Milos's anxiety.Will Milos ever achieve a comfortable sense of his manhood? He finally does although not in the way either he or we expected.In a sense this is a 1944 coming of age film tweaked and spiced by some 1960s sexual themes. If you can put aside the incongruous sexual freedom of the two girls, it works very well.SECOND LOOK: This film was made in 1966 when Czechoslovakia was under Russian domination. For more about Czech film makers using Nazi Germans as stand ins for their Russian occupiers, see the thread (Dec. 2011) on this film's Message Board which has "anachronism" in its title; it has some very worthwhile comments (IMO) bearing on this issue and also the film's sexuality.I'm revising my vote up, to an "8"

This movie is all about sex. It has trains going in and out of tunnels. It has images of inflation and deflation. It has the preoccupation with getting laid. Oh, there is something about a war, but in the little train station, every once in a while someone pulls a lever, signals the train, and then goes back to his or her boring lives (made not-so-boring) by one encounter after another. Everyone winks and looks the other way. As a matter of fact, even thought the young man gets a really prestigious job, he doubts his own manhood because he can't perform one time and actually tries suicide. This is such an over-the-top movie and so unlike anything I've ever seen, I became fascinated with this. The images of the little station and the culture that revolves around it, the cinematography is outstanding. I especially enjoyed the office Casenova who remained unflappable in every circumstances, even when he is accused of misuse of government property for using official stamps as he spanks the young woman he works with. It's a great moment of humor. See this movie. You won't forget it.