Tichá radosť (Silent Joy). 1986. Czechoslovakia. Directed by Dušan Hanák. Screenplay by Hanák, Ondrej Šulaj. With Magdalena Vášáryová, Jiří Bartoška, Jana Brejchová. 35mm, courtesy Slovenský filmový ústav. In Slovak, Czech. 89 min.
In this elegantly understated feminist drama, Magda Vášáryová plays a nurse who divorces her husband and begins an affair with the head doctor on her ward. Silent Joy arrived after a decade in which director Dušan Hanák’s more experimental work had repeatedly run afoul of the censors; Pictures of the Old World sat shelved for 17 years, and I Love, You Love, shot in 1980, would remain banned until 1988. Made as the vise of normalization had begun to loosen, Silent Joy marked a conscious attempt on Hanák’s part to investigate the inner lives of women in a more straightforward dramatic form. Within a few years, Vášáryová, a feminist icon in her own right, would leave acting behind for a major career in diplomacy. Indeed, Václav Havel later asked her to be his vice president after the Velvet Revolution, an offer she politely declined.