Heiners Filmseiten – The White Dove (en)

The White Dove (Holubice)

German title: Die weiße Taube
Francaise title: La Colombe blanche
Spain title: La paloma blanca
Russian title: Белая голубка
Original title: Holubice

Alternative titles:
Die Taube / Bílá holubice / Голубка

Drama – CSSR
Production year: 1959
Movie length: 76 minutes

Director: František Vláčil
Writer: František Vláčil, Pavel Kopta, Otakar Kirchner
Cinematograph: Jan Čuřík
Music: Zdeněk Liška

Movie description:

A sick carrier pigeon en route to its home on the Baltic Sea becomes lost and lands in Prague, where it is rescued and nurtured back to health by a small, frail boy. Soon the boy and the bird develop a friendship that touches all around them.

Hundreds of carrier pigeons were released in Belgium and immediately headed for their homes. The white dove comes from the German island of Fehmarn and belongs to twelve-year-old Susanne. The dove gets lost in a storm and ends up far off course above the roofs of Prague. There the bird is shot down by nine-year-old Michal, a boy whose legs remain paralyzed after an injury and who now hates the whole world. But thanks to his neighbor, a sculptor, the boy’s feelings are awakened and he feels the need to heal the injured creature. Meanwhile, Susanne is at home ignoring the taunts of the others and believes that her white dove will someday return...

In his visually stunning first feature, now regarded as an immediate forerunner of the Czech New Wave, Vlacil creates a touching allegory for the universal craving for freedom, infusing two simple parallel stories with powerful psychological complexity. A homing pigeon released in Belgium wings its way across Europe toward the young girl who waits by the sea. A lonely boy in Prague wounds the lost bird with his gun and then remorsefully nurses it back to health, reluctant to set it free.

Boy Actors