Nothing Really Happened

The last title in the filmography of director Evald Schorm (1931–1988) is psychological drama Vlastně se nic nestalo (Nothing Really Happened, 1988). Schorm, among the most important filmmakers of the Czechoslovak New Wave, had experienced a 17-year-long break from directing – and his previous film was a short, Psi a lidé (Dogs and People, 1971). Schorm died in December 1988, a day before his birthday. He did not live to see the premiere of Nothing Really Happened, which screened in April 1989, nor the political transition he had so longed for. In the 1970s and 1980s, the filmmaker was banned from working in film and television.

And not even in Nothing Really Happened, a dramatic film inspired by Jaroslava Moserová’s novel and screenplay, was Schorm allowed to freely express his opinions on the state of society. So the story of a relationship between a mother and daughter is restricted to more intimate, interpersonal themes. It is resigned to addressing the more general society that formed both heroines: the widowed book editor Blanka Halerová and Šárka, her 20-year-old daughter. Blanka cannot overcome the fact that she once spilled boiling water on her baby daughter, leaving her with serious burns. She devotes herself to Šárka to the point of neglecting her son Vojta. Meanwhile, Šárka tries to live her own life, though her mother underestimates her and in doing so thwarts her efforts to find a boyfriend. Blanka in time discovers that her daughter has been studying in secret, is in a relationship and has friends…

Although Nothing Really Happened falls short of Schorm’s previous work, it has an excellent cast. Jana Brejchová (Blanka) and Tereza Brodská (Šárka) – mother and daughter in real life – play the leading roles. The actresses had already been cast as such in the psychological drama Citlivá místa (Sensitive Spots), which Vladimír Dlouhý directed a year before Schorm made his final feature.