Der fünfte Reiter ist die Angst

Superlative camera angles for a Sixties film! Zbynek Brynych is one of the most important Czech directors after Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel and animator Jiri Trnka. The film is about the Nazi Holocaust while it is never openly stated in the film. The confiscated property of the Jews sent to concentration camps and a chimney emitting black smoke are the only close indirect indicators of the main subject. I couldn't spot the word Jews in the English subtitles. The visuals did show the Swastika in a casual manner on printed matter. The use of a young boy and the ominously empty streets are the highlights of the director's creativity. There are two different sequences of two different men on a bicycle--the differences speak volumes, even though the location is the same one. Varied reactions of the building's inhabitants, who knew each other, in the final sequence are amazingly well-captured by the director and his incredibly talented cinematographer Jan Kalis.