Or, to give it its original Czech name, Dobrý voják Švejk.

I had stumbled across this film, highly rated as a satirical anti-war comedy set during World War I, and given that I enjoyed an earlier Czech comedy I’d seen (The Firemen’s Ball), I decided I should give this one a try as well.  The film is based on an unfinished novel by the Czech humorist Jaroslav Hašek, who intended this as a collection of vignettes and incidents centering round a World War I soldier. The novel, despite being incomplete, has since been translated into more than sixty languages, making it the most-translated Czech novel ever. It has been adapted for screen several times, including once in German, and more recently, in 2018, in English.

The film begins in Sarajevo in 1914 with a dramatic event: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There’s the gun firing, the troops parading down the street, the band playing as they march—and the archduke crumpling over in his carriage.