Pearls of the Czech New Wave is one of the more ingeniously conceived sets in Criterion’s Eclipse series. Normally, Eclipse is the repository for lesser-known works by known directors or career surveys of lesser-known directors. This set gives an overview of a movement. But instead of simply packaging a bunch of films from the Czechoslovak New Wave, this set uses the omnibus film Pearls of the Deep as a starting point to explore its topic. The subsequent disks then offer a feature film from each of the directors included in Pearls of the Deep—Evald Schorm, Jan Němec, Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, Věra Chytilová—along with short but dense and informative essays about their careers.
In his personal history of Czech film, All the Bright Young Men and Women, Josef Škvorecký writes that “Pearls in the Abyss [different translation for title] (1965) was in a certain sense the Manifesto of the New Wave. With the exception of Milos Forman, who was at the time working on Loves of a Blond, all the major representatives of the movement took part in the film.” It could certainly be argued that not all of the major directors were represented. Ivan Passer, for example, is notably absent. (Škvorecký’s book includes a tantalizing note about a short that he shot that was cut out of Pearls of the Deep.) But the directors included are undoubtedly crucial and together demonstrate the breadth of the movement and the commonalities that tied them together.