Stars of Prague’s avant-garde Liberated Theatre, Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich wrote this Depression-era slapstick unionist comedy with director Frič and legendary screenwriter Václav Wasserman. The revered “V+W” double-act play, respectively, a workers’ rep who goes off-script live-to-air and a bankrupted factory owner who team up to make something of their and others’ lives. Often compared to René Clair’s À nous la liberté and Chaplin’s City Lights, it also parodies Eisenstein’s The General Line and was banned during the Nazi occupation.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.