Closely Watched Trains

Set at a small railway station on the edge of occupied Czechoslovakia toward the end of World War II, the film follows the young Miloš Hrma, Václav Neckář, a trainee train dispatcher who comes from a family of misfits and malingerers. The station’s routine is overseen by Lanska, a middle‑aged, balding stationmaster with a kind wife, yet he harbors envy of Hubička’s success with women, a rivalry that simmering tensions at the edge of the war only intensify. The periodic visits by Councillor Zedníček, Vlastimil Brodský, a Nazi collaborator who spouts optimistic propaganda even as the German retreat gathers pace, add a chilling, brittle note to the everyday lives of the staff.

Miloš finds himself in a budding relationship with the pretty young conductor Máša, Jitka Scoffin. Hubička, eager for details and control, presses for intimate specifics, but the pair have only shared a kiss and Miloš remains a virgin, anxious and unsure. Máša invites him to spend the night at her uncle’s place, a photography studio where the connecting door between the rooms fails to close, and the uncle sleeps nearby. The moment spirals into discomfort and fear for Miloš, who ejaculates prematurely; Máša, frustrated and hurt, moves to sleep somewhere else. The next day brings a desperate act of self‑harm—the young man slits his wrists in a bathtub at a brothel, only to be saved. A compassionate young doctor explains that ejaculatio praecox can be normal for a man his age and suggests he try to redirect his thoughts, even mentioning football, and to seek guidance from an experienced woman to help him through his first sexual experience.

During a night shift, Hubička flirts with the telegraphist Zdenička and leaves his mark on her with the office’s rubber stamps, a brief transgression that will soon draw attention. By the next morning, Zdenička’s mother reports the incident to Hubička’s superiors, and Miloš finds himself swirling in a broader sense of trial and danger. In the meantime, Miloš tries to reach out to nearly everyone around the station for help, but finds little guidance or support. Hubička hints at a larger, dangerous plan: he and other partisans are intent on destroying a large ammunition train as it rolls past the station the next morning. Miloš is urged to signal the train to slow down, and a bomb will be dropped onto the train from a semaphore gantry.

That night, an alluring resistance agent coded Viktoria Freie, played by Naďa Urbánková, delivers the time bomb. Hubička has arranged for Viktoria to spend the night with Miloš, and the experience sharply boosts his confidence and sense of purpose. The following day, as the ammunition train nears, trouble erupts: Hubička endures a disciplinary hearing overseen by Zedníček for his affair with Zdenička. With the plan moving forward, Miloš takes the bomb, climbs the gantry, and drops it onto the roof of a train car. He is spotted and shot from the train, tumbling onto the roof of another car as the convoy plows ahead.

Zedníček, upon determining that Zdenička was not coerced, dismisses the Czech people with the cruel phrase that echoes a much darker memory: “nothing but laughing hyenas.” Then, just around a bend in the track, the train detonates in a catastrophic explosion. Máša, who has watched Miloš’s fate unfold from a distance, retrieves his uniform cap, blown to her feet by the blast, a haunting and aching reminder of what was risked and what was lost. The film closes on the stark, unsettled note of a war‑torn world where courage and frailty coexist, and where the cost of resistance is paid in human lives and fleeting, hard‑won moments of connection.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 10:46