Forman's feature debut was this screen adaptation of Jaroslav Papousek's story about 16-year-old supermarket worker Peter, his bathhouse partner Pavla and their circle of friends. Set in the late 1940s, the film has a distinctly ‘60s mindset: Peter and Pavla can, arguably, be credited as the film that kicked off the short-lived Czech New Wave. While Peter trolls the aisles in his dead-end grocery job and listens to the droning lectures of his parents, subtle humour, allegory, and easy familiarity mingled to create the hallmarks of the movement. Forman expertly crafts an ironically dual critique through the observational tone of the picaresque generational narrative: there’s less a conflict as there is an equal amount of frustration.
Golden Sail Award at Locarno International Film Festival
It reconfirms that an artistic work created by the cinema verite method can also be a full expression of stylized reality. Peter and Pavla proved Forman's exceptional ability to see in detail, to capture the unrepeatable, small incidents of life, incidents chosen with uncanny insight as being socially representative.