“He was simply lovedâ€: Actor Josef Somr dies at 88
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Loading... - Peter Larsen
- 17 Oct 2022
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Popular Czech actor Josef Somr passed away on Sunday at the age of 88. He played the womanising train dispatcher HubiÄka in the Oscar-winning 1966 film Closely Watched Trains and starred in The Joke, released in 1968.
Josef Somr was born on 14 April 1934 and had a long and successful career as a theatre and film actor. His two most famous roles, according to Michal Bregant, the head of the Czech National Film Archive, were in Closely Watched Trains by JiÅ™í Menzel, where Bregant describes his performance as “legendary”, and The Joke by Jaromil Jireš.
“In both Closely Watched Trains and The Joke he was able to play ridiculous things seriously. He was not pretending anything – he was in his role but not overdoing it.”
Somr started out working in theatre, but in the mid-60s began appearing in films, starting with a small part in the 1964 film The Accused by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos. His very next film, released in Czechoslovakia in 1966 and abroad in 1967, was his most famous – Closely Watched Trains. Based on Bohumil Hrabal’s book of the same name, it picked up the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film at the 40th Academy Awards in 1968. Read More...
