Pavel Jurácek's A Case for the New Hangman is a grotesque satire freely inspired by the third book of Gulliver's Travels. But even that great satirist and pessimist Jonathan Swift could not have predicted the alarm with which Jurácek's film was greeted. After being stalled in production on various pretexts for five years, it saw a brief run in 1969 and was quickly relegated to the censor's storage vaults. But critics have recognized A Case for the New Hangman as a masterpiece. The labyrinthine fantasy begins when Gulliver (portrayed with hapless wonderment by Lubomír Kostelka) wrecks his car and finds himself in the country known as Balnibarbi, over which floats the land of Laputa. It is a dream world in which absurdity is the daily reality and fighting it usually proves self-defeating. The film is marvelously shot on location in South Bohemia, an old castle providing the exterior, and several old buildings the appropriately baroque interiors, for Gulliver's adventures. The rural, outdoor setting rings with a kind of timelessness in which a white rabbit dressed as a man and a motorcar with a man in it look equally absurd.