In 1980, Ji?rí Menzel once again drew on the much-loved contemporary writer Bohumil Hrabal, author of Menzel's groundbreaking Closely Watched Trains. Set in a brewery town in the 1920s, Cutting It Short is Hrabal's rambling musings on his parents, and how he came to be. The center of the family, and in fact of the town, is Marja (Magda Va?sáryová of Markéta Lazarová), whose long golden locks and indomitable spirit give life to "the miracles of ou ordinary days." Her husband Francin, the brewery manager, can't keep pace with her appetites and also has no taste for the pork sausage feast she whips up. Luckily, other men in the town do. But time, like that sidecar motorcycle of Francin's, refuses to stop, and progress brings "short cuts" to all of life's lingering pursuits. Marja's hair, like her hemline, soon will be bobbed. "Cutting It Short?is Menzel's best film since Capricious Summer and deserves to be ranked among the gret film comedies. Beautifully constructed but balanced by some typically Hrabalian vulgarity, it pays explicit homage to the tradition of Chaplin, Lupino Lane, and the Keystone Kops." (Peter Hames, The Czechoslovak New Wave)