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Equally significantly, Black Peter was also a notable box-office hit, scoring just under a million admissions – which is no mean feat in a country whose 1964 population was less than fifteen million. To put this in perspective, out of the 35 Czech-language films released domestically in 1964, Black Peter came a very creditable fifth, and the only two films that were substantially ahead of the pack were both made on a much bigger scale: the comedy musical Western pastiche Lemonade Joe with a whopping four and a half million tickets sold, and the musical The Hop Pickers, which was designed to rival its Hollywood counterparts in production values: it was made in colour, widescreen and with four-channel sound. Incidentally, it starred Vladimir Pucholt: 1964 was very much his breakthrough year. And it was also Forman’s, as the double-bill package of Audition and If There Were No Music had opened two months before Black Peter to a very impressive half a million admissions – and all three of Forman’s films combined cost far less than even a typical Czech feature, never mind something like The Hop-Pickers. So Forman was starting to look like a rather canny investment.

MichaelB wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2024 8:10 am Deaf Crocodile have their eye on it, but I gather it's not available to them right now.

MichaelB wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2024 7:07 pm If it's the one I have, it's not very good.