I Served The King Of England

Synopsis

Jan Dite (John Child) is short in height, but high in ambition. To put it bluntly, the young provincial waiter wants to become a millionaire. And he knows just how to do it: by hearing everything, seeing everything, and using what he heard and saw. Armed with this knowledge and an irrepressible wish to please, he soon leaves his first place of employment, a pub, for a luxury brothel and, finally, an elegant Art Nouveau Prague restaurant. But by now it's the late 1930s, and things are changing: Hitler has taken the Sudetenland and is breaking apart Czechoslovakia. Jan falls in love with Lise, a Sudeten German proud of her Aryan blood. They marry, and when Lise returns from the front, she has a fortune in rare stamps that Jews had "left behind"... After her less than heroic death, Jan sells the stamps and becomes ... a millionaire. But he only has three years to enjoy his fortune: the new Communist regime puts him behind bars for 15 years, one for each of his millions... Upon his release from jail, Jan is sent to live in a decrepit border town that was abandoned by the Germans. Here he finally finds the leisure to think about the events that shaped his life - and to reflect on what might have happened if he had played a different role in these events...

Cast & Crew

Director

Jirí Menzel
Screenwriter

Jirí Menzel
Director of photography

Jaromír Šofr
Main Cast

Ivan Barnev (Jan Dítě, young), Oldrich Kaiser (Jan Dítě, old), Julia Jentsch (Líza), Marian Labuda (Walden)

Film Info