There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

'All my compatriots' (original title ' Vsichni dobrí rodáci') tells the story of seven friends from a small town in Czechoslovakia and we join them in 1948, they are on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and the new Communism is thrust on this agricultural society. The seven friends are used as a vehicle to shine a light on the shortcomings of collectivisation and the corruption that seemed to be concomitant when power is used to deprive others of wealth.The story slowly distils to one of resistance albeit within the spirit of the law and that is in the shape of Frantisek. This was promptly banned by the Soviets after the 1968 invasion and sadly never had the impact it should have done and that is despite winning Best Director and the Jury Prizes at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.It is filmed and framed very beautifully and all of the acting is of the highest calibre. It has a maudlin quality that is juxtaposed against the strength of will displayed by some of the main players. Some of the shots will stay with you too and very real people have been used to give added authenticity to the whole thing. This is a film for those who really appreciate cinema in all its glorious forms.

This may not be a good place to start to enjoy Czech film - there are more accessible New Wave films - but it is a very powerful film which should not be missed by anybody who has more than a passing familiarity with the country and its history. With actors such as Radoslav Brzobohatý, Vladimír Menšík, a young Jíří Kodet, and the ever-popular singer and actor Waldemar Matuška, the film has a first-rate cast. In Jaroslav Kučera, it had a great cinematographer. Jasný was by now an accomplished screenwriter and, the countryside of the Pardubice region was as beautiful a backdrop as the machinations of the early communist period and, in particularly, the collectivisation of agriculture, were a fascinating subject. Still, the excellence of the film was not a given. The structure, given in large part by alternating dramatic changes of the environment as the seasons change and those first years after the communist takeover roll on, is effective and well-paced and permits a continuity of tone and subject with certain more episodic elements. The plot, on the page, might come across as busy, but on the screen, there is plenty of breathing space, and room for exquisite shots of the countryside, of work, even of play. So too does the heroic refusal to compromise of one of the characters, František, which becomes of increasing importance as the film moves into the mid 1950s, do nothing to detract from the well-balanced portrayal of the various characters of the village, described and referred to by their silly nicknames from the opening scenes in the months after the war. The history and fates of these characters are handled deftly, often with a brevity and telling detail of a John Cheever story. Neither is the film as unremittingly brutal as others handling similar material, such as the excellent, and thematically similar Smuteční slavnost of the following year. Like that film, I hope to return to Všichni dobří rodáci many times yet, and am sure it will repay repeated viewing.

When you see "All My Compatriots" today, it seems like a reasonably innocuous film. However, back in the late 60s, it was quite radical because it did NOT show the post-war years in Czechoslovakia as a workers' paradise nor did it show a just system. So, in context, it's pretty interesting but it just seems to lose something here in 2011.The film picks up immediately after the Germans are forced out of Czechoslovakia and takes place in one small town. The folks are grateful for the Russians for liberating them and the future is very bright and hopeful. During much of the beginning of the film, the folks seem quite happy and celebrate the joy of living. However, the film is episodic and as the years pass, things turn a bit ugly. The town now has a new committee to enforce the Communist system--and it seems a bit capricious and is run by petty tyrants. Folks in the town who were nice folks at the film's beginning now let the power run to their heads. Still, despite this, life goes on and you see the town over a 15 year plus period of time.None of the film seemed especially exciting to me, though the beautiful red-head and the subsequent things that happen to each of her admirers is interesting--and possibly a metaphor for the nation as a whole...perhaps. A decent film but one younger audiences would probably not especially appreciate.cheesy goring scene

'All My Good Countrymen' is a curious little Czech movie that tells how a small village fell into Communism.A small little blip of a town suddenly has a pro-communism group banging their fists on the table demanding that farmers give up their land for a new farming policy that is more in line with party policy. The villagers not surprisingly, are dead set against it. The village then goes through almost a cycle of mysterious arrests of townspeople who are anti-Communism, trying to pressure the farmers to sign a commie card, and the very curiously high mortality rate of the Party members, I actually liked the variety of characters in this movie, and their interactions with each other. The big problem I have with this movie is it's lethargic pacing. The film just crawls and crawls to its conclusion, which is sort of well, anti-climatic.