Made only three years after Closely Watched Trains but in a world apart-the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968 interceded- Larks on a String was Jirí Menzel and writer Bohumil Hrabal's most trenchant satire. It is set literally upon the scrapheap of Czech culture in the early 1950s following the Communist takeover. The opening pan of a factory and its towers and yard seems like forever, and that is the feeling for hapless members of the “defeated class” who are undergoing reeducation working in the factory's scrapyard. A philosophy professor, a sax player, a rebellious Jewish cook, a prosecutor are among the men; women are interned nearby, and between the two groups the inevitable though improbable happens. An absurdist setting reminiscent of Svankmajer or Boro, this is a bleak wonderland, an island of love and small philosophies in a world where typewriters and films and souls are relegated to the heap, waiting to be rescued, or melted down.