Panenka

This is one of the missing links in the series of films featuring the popular Věra Ferbasová and Jiří Dohnal couple and was made by Robert Land, a Bohemian from Kroměříž, who had worked with bilingual or early international actors in Germany in the 1920s (for example, with Oscar Marion or Marlene Dietrich). In The Doll, he assumed a couple of dreams from Vladimír Slavínský. The Doll is a very interesting film and can be realistically described as the only Czech science fiction of the 1930s. Beyond that, the detective storyline references the best from Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence. If I had discovered this theme in Hollywood, I would have thought it was a natural science-fiction offshoot of Universal. (2009.02.18)