"Protektor" is one of the most unusual Holocaust movies I've seen. For starters, it takes a playful attitude--not quite dark humor but definitely quirky--with its plinky soundtrack (much of the music consists of a single staccato chord thrown in a scene) and with an odd fixation on bicycles. But what makes it really unusual is the complex, imperfect characters who serve as the protagonists.The story spans 1938-1942 during the Czech occupation by Nazis. Our heroes are Hana, a Jewish movie star, and her husband Emil, a radio announcer who is not Jewish. Right at the outset we see that their marriage is not ideal. Emil is violently jealous of her flirtations (and possible infidelity) with other men while he himself gets involved with indiscretions with other women. I did not find either character particularly likeable, and this may have been deliberate on the part of the director. What follows once the Nazis take over is a slow escalating tension as Emil fraternizes with Nazis, supposedly to ensure is wife's protection but possibly also to further his selfish interests. Meanwhile Hana begins sneaking around with a mysterious young man who photographs her doing illegal things, flaunting her rebellion toward the Nazis.So you see, it's not your standard Jewish victim vs. Nazi bad guy story. While there's no doubt that the Nazis are the brutes, there's a more subtle antagonsim between Hana and Emil which provides the real conflict amidst the backdrop of the Holocaust. There is also a cleverly-spun subplot of an assassination attempt against a high-ranking Nazi, and we don't get that full story until the end.Visually, "Protektor" is very stylish, presenting a nostalgic 40s prism without the obvious clichés like black & white. Instead certain colors are muted while others pop out. There's a lot of high contrast which is pleasing on the eye, and there are a few moments of surrealism that add a nice original touch.If you think you've seen all the Holocaust flicks out there, check this out. Or even if you have just a casual interest in Europe under Nazi occupation, this provides a great window on how life changed in the early years. If you don't necessarily like Holocaust flicks and just randomly picked up this movie based on its striking DVD cover (like I did), you may find it frustrating at first but ultimately it's a worthwhile experience.

You don't have to be a big fan of foreign film to like this movie, though you might require some patience. The beauty of PROTEKOR is how well it depicts the WWII lives of semi-elite members of society in both a place, Prague, and a profession, film and entertainment, having more physical and social distance from the conflict. That is - at first. Of course the war catches up with our characters and we see what they are truly made of. Our leading characters, overly ambitious husband and wife, are vain, flawed and often reckless. But we manage to become attached to both of them and the story revolves around their hidden reserves of fortitude and, ultimately, their shining hour. There is one film devise that some may see as "artsy-foreign". But it's well used and never overly so. You should enjoy PROTEKOR.

It's 1938 and the Nazis are just one step away from invading and occupying Czechoslovakia. Hana is a young Czech film actress who also happens to be Jewish. She's just appeared in her first feature with her leading man, an older Jewish actor, who warns her that her career is over and that their picture will never see the light of day since the Nazis will never allow its release. He hands her a forged passport and papers to get out of the country but she throws them in the trash, not believing what he says about the imminent German invasion one bit.As the filming of the 'film within a film' is on the verge of completion, we see the two actors riding stationery bicycles with a moving image in the background. As was the usual practice in creating films in earlier days, the illusion of motion is created when the moving image flickers in the background but the object in the foreground is static. Thus, the bicyclist becomes a symbol for the man who pedals furiously but is actually going nowhere. That man is the Czech everyman of 1938 who desperately wishes to escape his tragic circumstances but in reality remains motionless, trapped by the forces of tyranny. Throughout the film, we catch glimpses of the film's protagonist, Emil, pedaling furiously, superimposed over the screen's larger canvas.Hana is married to Emil, a journalist, who is conscripted by collaborating Czech officials, to serve as a radio announcer for the occupying German forces. A colleague at the radio station, Franta, won't keep quiet and he's taken away presumably by the Gestapo and later executed. Emil, no hard core collaborator, chooses to accept the job working as the mouthpiece for the Nazis in order to save his wife from being deported to the death camps. Emil's boss at the radio station is a Nazi sympathizer who offers him the job with the agreement that no one will bother him about his wife as long as she remains holed up in their apartment.Soon, Emil has become popular hosting a cultural program in Prague entitled, "Voices of Our Home". Meanwhile Hana becomes bored sitting at home and jeopardizes Emil's position by leaving their apartment, usually attending the cinema. Hana is not depicted as one who is to be pitied—rather, she's a narcissist who refuses to accept her position as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as well as living under the illusion that she's someone important--the up-and-coming film star that she used to be.Emil begins having an affair with a former colleague at the station who is now engaged to his boss. Meanwhile Hana starts hanging out with a former medical student and now a morphine-addicted projectionist. He wants to go to bed with her but she resists his advances, eventually allowing him, however, to take pictures of her in the nude. At this point in the film, things slow down considerably since Hana is no longer talking to Emil with the conflict between the two principals, grinding to a halt.The plot picks up when Hana's former co-star shows up at their apartment having just escaped from a death transport (it's revealed that his forged papers were discovered and he never made it out of Czechoslovakia). Emil is horrified that Hana allows him to take a bath in the apartment and throws him out on the street. Enraged at Emil for throwing her ex-colleague out, Hana dons her blond wig and adopts the persona of her character from her movie and crashes Emil's boss's wedding. Emil is on the verge of being fired for his 'transgression' when Reich Protector Heydrich is murdered by Czech partisans. Nazi soldiers do a house to house search and discover Hana is in the apartment. When they realize who Emil is, they take no action against Hana, despite the fact that the soldiers know she's Jewish. Later the Nazis broadcast a description of a bicycle used by one of the partisans who's killed Heydrich. Emil has another affair with a ditsy gossip columnist and takes her family's bicycle back to his apartment and attempts to hide it; this leads Hana to believe that Emil has switched sides and is now helping the partisans.Now Emil's boss orders him to prove his loyalty by reading a loyalty oath over the airwaves after the Heydrich assassination places all Czech citizens in jeopardy. Meanwhile, Hana has come down to earth after she escapes arrest during the house-to-house search. She packs her belongings and turns herself into the authorities. Emil decides not to show up at the broadcast to read the loyalty oath and goes looking for Hana.In the final scene, Emil finds her in a crowd of Jews being marched to the death transports; as he stands impassively, preventing the group from marching forward, Nazi soldiers club him in the head, pushing him off to the side of the road.Why does Emil choose to stop collaborating and not read the loyalty oath as he promised his hard core Nazi boss? The way I interpret it is that despite being estranged from his wife he still was devoted to protecting her (perhaps deep down he still loved her). Now with his wife gone, he feels that his career is no longer important and no longer sees any point in helping his oppressors.'Protector' does a fine job of depicting how the Czechs coped with the Nazi occupation of their country during World War II. The filmmakers do not seek to judge those who collaborated; their view is only 'this is how it happened'. The film ably draws a distinction between those who enthusiastically collaborated (as in the case of Emil's boss) and Emil himself, who was much more of a reluctant collaborator (always placing himself in jeopardy in an effort to protect his Jewish wife). "Protector" is a welcome addition to the pantheon of Holocaust-themed films.

This is a review I posted on another forum.Let me get the beauty of it out of the way first - it looks astonishing. The colors are fantastic, the highlights are beautiful and the shadows are surprisingly tense and deep. Take a classically beautiful noir film and make it even more beautiful, on better film stock, and add a better DP. Whoa man! However, with the editing, it throws you into many different spirals always wondering what is actually happening to the man, changing which characters you care about more and changing how you think a character is going to act - sending all of your ideas about what could happen next all over the spectrum.My one complaint about the editing was that sometimes to relate scenes (relating scenes as in the way Tarantino did it with Pulp Fiction by having diegetic music in one scene that spills over into the next scene. It's done very often), the editor would show clips from the next scene in the current scene. Now it's very interesting, because it doesn't give you any idea what's going to happen next, it just adds to the emotion you are supposed to feel during that scene. While it adds a lot to the storytelling, it is noticeable. Like sound design, 99% of the time, good editing should go nearly unnoticed by the viewer. It's not at all that I don't like the editing, I just found it awkward at some points.I won't even get into the score and music. See the movie! There was also one big problem with the ending - and I won't give any important information away, it's just that there should be no credit music. Once you see it, you'll know exactly what I mean.Now maybe it won't win Best Foreign Film, but I'll be surprised if it isn't nominated.