Pavel Branko


Pavel Branko was a Slovak film critic, film theorist, translator of fiction and non-fiction literature, and author of articles that critique questionable use of language. He has been called "the doyen of Slovak film criticism."
After the fall of real socialism, he has received many prizes that honour the man and the work of a lifetime. In his life and work we find many traces of the impact of the history of Czechoslovakia. Branko was married to Emilia Brankova.

Life and work

Youth and early career

Pavel Branko was born on board a French ship heading to Trieste, a port city on the Adriatic Sea. His birthplace was registered as Trieste which had just reverted from Austrian rule to Italy. Branko's father was a Slovak Jew converted to Protestantism, a clerk in Hatshava, Hnushtya county, Slovakia and thus a citizen of Austria-Hungary, a multi-national state, till 1918. His mother was Russian.
Branko spent his childhood in Hatshava. He moved to Bratislava in 1931. Between 1932 and 1940, he attended high school in that city. After having obtained his high school diploma in 1940, he enrolled in the Technical University of Bratislava for 1940–41. The next year he was rejected because of the Jewish roots of his father. Then he had three short-lived jobs until the summer of 1942.

Political activity and imprisonment

The Slovak clerical-fascist regime of Jozef Tiso brought Branko into the resistance while he was still a high school student. In 1939, propelled by an "enthusiasm for leftist ideals", Branko joined the illegal Communist Party, the most outstanding antifascist force in Slovakia at the time.
His political activism ended abruptly in June 1942, when he was arrested along with four other party members. Soon after his arrest, he received a life sentence.
Between 1942 and 1945, Branko was a political prisoner in Bratislava, Nitra, and Leopoldov.
During the winter of 1945, fearing that the advancing Red Army could liberate the political prisoners, the Tiso regime made a dirty deal with the German Gestapo. The prisoners were formally released, but in fact transferred to the Gestapo directly at the front gate of Leopoldov prison. In this way, Branko was transferred together with many others to the Mauthausen concentration camp in February 1945. The three months in Mauthausen, until his liberation by the U.S. army in May 1945, were the hardest of the entire period of Pavel Branko's imprisonment.

Literary translation and film criticism

After liberation, Branko worked as a freelance translator of fiction, as well as philosophical non-fiction from English, Russian and German. From 1945–1949 he gradually became disillusioned with the real practices of the Communist Party and the Comintern which ended in his public withdrawal from the CP in 1949, with many consequences involved. His reputation as a former Resistance fighter and political prisoner saved him from significant criticism, and when he began to write film reviews, he quickly became a respected freelance film critic.
Between 1948 and 1952, his film reviews were published in many journals and daily newspapers, such as Kultúrny život, Ľudovýchova, Náš film, Pod zástavou socializmu, Práca, Pravda, Slovenská reč, Slovenské pohľady, Smena, Svet socializmu and others.
The year 1952 brought such a tightening of the ideological limits imposed that Branko's value hierarchy could not accept it. He decided to resign as a film critic and withdrew with his first wife Mary to a lonely cabin in the High Tatras, a mountain range in North-Eastern Slovakia, where he restricted himself to translating books.
In 1956, a year referred to as a "thaw" period, Pavel Branko returned to Bratislava, invited to assume a steady job as film editor of the newly founded bi-weekly journal Film a divadlo.
Since 1956, Branko specialized in documentary film, attending regularly the short-film festivals in Karlovy Vary, Oberhausen, Leipzig and Cracow, as well as the national Pula Film Festival in Yugoslavia. In the 1950s, 60s, and early 1970s he published his reviews and essays mainly in Slovak and Czech. The Slovak media that published his film criticism in this period included Čítanie o ZSSR, Film a divadlo, Kultúrny život, Ľudovýchova, Mladá tvorba, Národná obroda, Nové slovo, Práca, Pravda, Predvoj, Príroda a spoločnosť, Rodina a škola, Slovenský rozhlas, Slovenka, Slovenská reč, Slovenské pohľady, Slovenský jazyk a literatúra, Smena, Svet socializmu, Učiteľské noviny, Új szó, Umelecké slovo, Televízia, Večerník, and Život. The Czech media included Czechoslovak Life, Divadelní a filmové noviny, Estetika, Film a doba, Filmové a televizní noviny, Reportér, Rudé právo, Plamen, and Tvorba.
Abroad he was occasionally published by Les Lettres Françaises, by Telegram, and in Poland, by three renowned film journals: Ekran Warszawski, Film polski, and Kamera. In West Germany, his film criticism appeared in Filmstudio, in East Germany in Filmspiegel and in Deutsche Filmkunst, in Sweden in Filmrutan. In what was then the Soviet Union, two high quality film journals printed his film reviews: Iskusstvo kino and Sovetskij ekran.
"As a publicist he was fully recognized in the sixties."
In 1968, while the Prague Spring was still flourishing, Branko was in charge of a seminar offered for budding screenwriters at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. In the summer of 1968, he was a member of a delegation of Slovak filmmakers and critics who came to Bochum, W.Germany, to show and discuss non-conformist Slovak films, including such films as Juraj Jakubisko's Deserters and Wanderers.
While being already a respected film critic, Branko continued to work as a literary translator. In 1967, he obtained honorary awards from the SÚKK and the SV ČSSP for his translation of Maxim Gorky's "Life of Klim Samgin".

Blacklisting

In 1970, Pavel Branko resigned on his own accord as film editor of Film a divadlo. This was two years before his official blacklisting. At the time, he found already that his convictions were irreconcilable with the political line imposed by the new editor-in-chief.
All this was due to his support for and involvement in the movement that the media in the West referred to as the Prague spring.
In 1970, Branko briefly managed to land a one-year job as scientific collaborator at the Slovak Film Institute. In 1973, being 52, he was forced into ‘retirement’ for good. This was, incidentally, also the time of his divorce. He married his second wife, Emily, in 1979.
As film critic he was blacklisted during the entire "normalization" period of real socialism, and as translator from 1972 to 1978. From 1972 until 1976 he occasionally published film essays on uncontroversial topics. This was possible because friends and former colleagues agreed that he might use their name as a cover.

Later life

Between 1990 and 2007, Pavel Branko published film criticism in such journals and daily newspapers as Dialóg, Film.sk, Film a doba, Filmová revue, Kino-Ikon, Kultúrny život, Mosty, Nové slovo, Pravda, and Sme, and on the air waves via Radio Free Europe.

Honours

In 1997, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Academy of Performing Arts .
Three years later, in 2000, various honorary prizes were bestowed on him by the SFZ, the ÚSTT, and the LFSR for his collected works that contained much of his film criticism. The 3 volumes are titled Straty a nálezy, I, II, III.
Also in 2000, Pavel Branko was awarded the Zlatá kamera at the MFF Art Film Fest, together with a laudatory diploma by the Prime Minister. And in the same year, he received the prize Cena slovenskej filmovej kritiky for his Straty a nálezy, 1948 – 98.
In 2007 he received the Slnko v sieti Award of the Slovak Film and TV Academy for a lifetime's achievement.

Two Documentary Films about Pavel Branko

In 2009, the documentary filmmaker Zuzana Piussi made the documentary A Hero of our Time about Pavel Branko. The title refers to Lermontov's novel that depicts a "superfluous man" – a hint which serves to remind us that Branko sees himself ironically or skeptically as a ‘superfluous man.’ Indeed, neither the Tiso regime nor the Stalinists ‘needed’ somebody like him, who ‘swims against the current.’
In 2010 Jaro Rihák shot a portrait of Pavel Branko for the Slovak TV series GEN.

Death

Branko died in August 2020 at the age of 99.

Selected list of publications by Branko

Books

  • Pavel Branko, Od začiatkov po prah zrelosti slovenský film 1945–1970. Bratislava 1991; .
  • Pavel Branko, Mikrodramaturgia dokumentarizmu. Bratislava, 1991, 95pp.; . – Micro-dramaturgy of documentary film; theoretical reflections.
  • Pavel Branko, Straty a nálezy I, 1948 – 98. Bratislava 1999. 225pp.;. – A collection of film reviews published between 1948 and 1998 in various film journals and in the culture page of major daily newspapers.
  • Pavel Branko, Straty a nálezy II, 1963–2005. Bratislava 2005, 260 pp.;. – Like Part 1 but short-film topics only.
  • Pavel Branko, Straty a nálezy III, 1963–2007. Bratislava 2007, 294 pp.;. – Miscellanea.
  • Pavel Branko, Proti prúdu. Bratislava 2011, 219pp.; ; 978-80-8518759-5 – Sociocritical autobiography.
  • Pavel Branko. Úklady jazyka. Bratislava 2014, 270pp;. – Playful and ironic comments on misunderstandings caused by literal transplantations that occur in the context of interaction between kindred languages.
  • Pavel Branko. Úskalia a slasti jazyka. Bratislava 2015. 311 pp;. – Continuation of Schemes of Language, with more stress put on the critical sting directed against ways of masking hidden aims by using politically correct newspeak and euphemisms.
  • Pavel Branko, Ráno sa zobudím a nie som mŕtvy : Rozhovory o láske a sexe, o bohu a smrti, ale aj o Trumpovi a populačnej explózii. Bratislava 2016; .
  • Pavel Branko, Gegen den Strom. Wien: New Academic Press; . ; 3-7003-2004-3.
  • Pavel Branko, Úlety a istoty jazyka. Bratislava 2018. 167pp;. – Drawn up in the spirit of Cliffs and Delights of Language, enriched by a selection of aphorisms characterized by black humor, by playing on words, persiflages – and parodies – of proverbs, ballads and myths.

Articles by Branko that can also be accessed online

  • Úklady jazyka alebo slovgličtina, A series of articles published in: Romboid. – In the years 2004–2010 regularly every month, since 2012 intermittently. The articles that appeared in volumes 2004–2010 are accessible completely on the website

Literary works translated by Branko (A Selection)

NOTE: Publishers in Czechoslovakia did not make use of ISBN or ISSN before 1990.
  • Maxim Gorkij, Klim Samgin I-II – Orig.: Žizň Klima Samgina I-IV; Z rus. orig. prel. a štúdiu napísal Pavel Branko. Bratislava 1967. Vol. 1, 989 pp., Vol. 2, 801 pp.-
  • Alexej Tolstoj, Krížová cesta . – Orig.: Choždenije po mukam I-III; z rus. orig. prel. Pavel Branko ; štúdiu nap. Ivan Slimák; ilustr. Ľudovít Ilečko. Bratislava 1956; 944pp. – 2nd edition 1960; 3rd edition 1965.
  • Othar Čiladze, Kam ideš, človek..., transl. by Pavel Branko. Bratislava 1985. 531pp.
  • Jack London, Volanie divočiny ; Biely Tesák ; Morský vlk ; úvod. štúdia Viktor Krupa; z angl. orig. prel. Pavel Branko. Bratislava 1979. 508 pp.
  • Jack London, Elam Ohnivák, transl. by Pavel Branko; Železná päta, transl. by Štefan Kýška. Bratislava 1980. In this combination: 1st edition.
  • Bertolt Brecht, Rozhovory utečencov, transl. by Pavel Branko. In: Revue svetovej literatúry, Vol.26, No.6, 1990, pp. 136–147.