This Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film is considered one of the crowning achievements of the Czech New Wave movement of the late 1960s. This investigation of sexual liberation will seem a bit more innocent today than it probably played in its day of release, however it hasn’t lost its power to entertain and make one laugh.

Milos Hrma (Václav Neckár, LARKS ON A STRING) is following his father’s footsteps and training to become a train dispatcher. His great-grandfather, his grandfather and his father are embarrassments to the family and he is to change that. However, he’s only taking the job at the train depot because it’s easy work. Milos is far more interested in losing his virginity. Not even World War II and the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia can distract him from his goal.

In painting the Czech lackies of the Third Reich as buffoons and subversively degrading positions of responsibility, the film takes on a political dimension that irritated the Communist rulers of Czechoslovakia at the time. The material seems far more pedestrian in today’s standards. However, Milos charming and frustrating courtship of conductress Masa (Jitka Bendová, only film performance) is timeless. Ladies man, train dispatcher Hubicka (Josef Somr, My Sweet Little Village) is a wonderful character, who doesn’t take his “important” job seriously at all to the great frustration of his boss stationmaster Max (Vladimír Valenta, BLOOD FOR BLOOD).

The film observes the innocent observations and curiosities that Milos has about sex. There is a tragic side to the film, which adds an unusual weight to the material. Comic, dramatic and well observed — this simple film is a winner from start to finish.