The night that changed everything: Menzel and Forman recall the 1968 invasion
On August 21, 1968 Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring and ushering in a long period of political and moral decline. More than 130 people died during the invasion and thousands fled the country in the years that followed. The late Czech filmmakers Jiří Menzel and Miloš Forman share their personal memories of that fateful night, reflecting on the shock, fear, and surreal experiences.
The occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was an event of immense global significance, but for millions of Czechs and Slovaks, it was deeply personal. Among those affected were two renowned Czech filmmakers, Jiří Menzel and Miloš Forman. Their memories of that fateful night reveal the profound impact it had on their lives and careers.
In 1968, Jiří Menzel was a young but already well-known filmmaker, having won an Oscar for his movie Closely Observed Trains in 1966. Reflecting on that night years later, Menzel shared a vivid recollection of his experience. For context, Jiří Šlitr, whom Menzel mentions, was a prominent Czech musician and dramatist, while Jiří Trnka was a well-known puppet maker, illustrator, and animator.
"We were recording music for the film Crime in a Music Hall when Šlitr asked me what I was doing that evening. He suggested I join him for dinner at Vikárka with Mr. Trnka and Šlitr’s girlfriend. We spent a lovely evening together, and afterward, we parted ways. Later, a friend told me that the Russians were here. There were already rumors that the signatories of the Two Thousand Words would be sent to Siberia and that I should hide. So, that night, I got in my car and drove through Prague, where I saw people gathered in front of the radio station and on Panská Street in front of Mladá fronta. I then drove to the other side of the Vltava to Dejvice and hid in my girlfriend’s apartment. It was quite sad. We sat by the radio, listening to what was happening. I thought to myself that this must have been how my parents felt when the Germans came. And when I later saw the Russian tanks, it was surreal. That’s when the Russians showed their true colors. And it’s the same to this day. They want to own the world. They are backward and don’t want to understand other nations—they want to rule them. Why? Because elsewhere, people are wealthy."
Menzel’s colleague, Miloš Forman, who would later gain international fame for the films he directed in America, was in Paris at the time of the invasion. His memories of that night offer a different, yet equally compelling, perspective.
"On the night of August 20th to 21st, I was with some friends, Jean-Claude Carrière and Jean-Pierre Rassam, at a pub somewhere near Pigalle in Paris. Jean-Pierre, our friend, got drunk and paid a prostitute to go home with him. However, he got so terribly drunk that he no longer wanted to, but she, being an honest prostitute, told him, 'Look, you've paid, you have the right,' so she took him home.
Meanwhile, I went to sleep at Jean-Claude Carrière's place, where he had a large apartment that housed his whole family. It was around three in the morning when the phone rang, waking everyone up. Jean-Claude came to me and said that Jean-Pierre was calling. So, I took the receiver and heard a very drunk Jean-Pierre saying, 'Hey, man, the Russians are invading Czechoslovakia.' I replied, 'That's such a stupid joke; you're drunk, go to sleep,' and hung up. I apologized to Jean-Claude and the others who had been woken up.
Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. This time, Jean-Pierre was already sober, as he later told me. When he had called me while drunk, the prostitute, a kind girl, had pushed him into the bathtub under cold water, so he sobered up. Suddenly, he realized that what he had said was true, and he called again, telling me to turn on the radio. So, I decided to turn on the radio, and there they were, announcing that the armies of the 'brotherly' forces had entered the territory of Czechoslovakia, and so on."
When asked how he felt about the invasion, Forman reflected on the shock and disbelief that followed:
"Well, the feelings were interesting because there had been a lot of talk about that situation. What was interesting was that none of the Czechs believed it would happen, whereas my foreign friends, the French and the English, all insisted it would. And none of the Czechs believed it. So the first moment was such a shock that I immediately called my friends to tell them they were right. And that's how we spent the next two days. There were a few people from Prague, so we spent time at Agence France-Presse, where news was coming in."
Forman shared this story a few years ago in the United States, where he eventually found success after being forced to emigrate from Czechoslovakia by the communist authorities. The invasion compelled him to leave his homeland, a move that, in a strange twist of fate, helped him achieve fame in Hollywood.
