Capek's Tales is a filmed adaptation of five stories written by the Czech writer Karel Capek. Capek is little known in America, although his play RUR was a big hit here during the 1920s and it introduced the word robot to the English language. Capek wrote works in many genres, including crime stories, and it is five of those stories that are adapted here. The first story is about a man who was serving a life sentence and who is struggling to find his way home after being paroled. The second story is about a young mother whose baby goes missing. The third story is about the murder of an old peasant woman. The next story is about the theft of a secret document from the home of a military official. And the last story is about a trial in heaven of a murderer who has just died. Unlike most anthology films, the stories are woven into a narrative of sorts. When one story ends, another character picks up the next, whether actively or passively as the narrator. Tonally, the movie is all over the place. Mostly it is light hearted, but often it shifts to darker moments, sometimes within the same story, which can cause some mental whiplash. All in all, a diverting enough movie, if not particularly memorable.
