The Cassandra Cat

Lore & Background

The film is set in an undisclosed Bohemian village, where school teacher Robert is under stress from the controlling mayor Charlie and his unfaithful lover. Robert is forced to teach a 'black and white' view on life. During an art class, castellan Oliva tells a story of a cat with sunglasses whose eyes reveal people's true nature through color: red for lovers, yellow and purple for the unfaithful and envious. The 'normal' people killed the cat to hide who was good or bad. When a circus arrives, Robert's cat goes missing, leading him to actress Diana and a magician resembling Oliva. During the performance, Diana removes the cat's sunglasses, revealing everyone's colors and driving the town into chaos. Robert, whose true color is red, falls for Diana. The cat is later found by children, but the school servant, orchestrated by Charlie, tries to have it killed. Robert gives a speech against studying a dead stork, angering authorities who frame him for killing the cat. The children go missing until the cat is returned. Diana and the circus expose Charlie as a 'chameleon' of personalities, and he is chased out. Robert loses Diana to the departing circus and returns to the town square, greeted by children holding paintings of the cat.

Reader's Guide

The Cassandra Cat is a celebrated and influential picture of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Though on its surface a family-friendly, light-hearted fantasy dramedy, it is subtly a political allegory for authoritarianism, false appearances, and hypocrisy, with the symbolic cat able to see people for their true colors. The film won two major awards at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival: the C.S.T. Prize and Special Jury Prize. In a 1990 review, The New York Times critic Caryn James described it as a 'Czechoslovak allegory from 1963 meant to expose political hypocrisy,' praising its photography but finding fault with Jasný 'overdoing every effect.' Jonathan Rosenbaum called it a 'genuine oddity' and 'whimsical, likable, and inventive,' likening it to a cross between the Pied Piper and Bye Bye Birdie, and concluded it qualifies as 'one of the best early examples of the Czech New Wave.' It has since become a cult classic. The film was digitally restored by the Czech National Archive from original 1963 copies found in Hungary and Poland, and shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

Did You Know?

• The film was shot in the Czech town of Telč.
• The film's original Czech title translates literally to 'When The Cat Comes'.
• The digital restoration used original 1963 copies found in archives in Hungary and Poland.
• The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival.