Lemonade Joe

Directed by Oldřich Lipský, this Czechoslovak western parody remains one of the most watched films in the country's history. In 1885 Arizona, the virtuous gunslinger Joe, who drinks nothing but Kolaloka lemonade, arrives in Stetson City where the whisky saloon rules, wages war on alcoholism and converts the whole town to lemonade through sheer marksmanship. He clashes with the gangster Hogofogo, is repeatedly undone by his vulnerability to alcohol fumes, and in the finale it emerges that all his enemies are in fact his own brothers, separated in a prairie storm, whereupon the rival companies merge to create the Whiskola brand. The character began life as a magazine parody in 1940, and writer Jiří Brdečka developed him under Nazi occupation while gorging on Hollywood westerns during the years those films were banned. It was shot in black and white with each scene individually tinted, Lipský borrowed undercranking, freeze frames and trick shots from silent comedy, and Brdečka's animation background added animated smoke rings and bullet trajectories. It drew over four and a half million admissions in Czechoslovakia, third for the year behind two actual westerns. In Cuba it became the first western shown since the government banned Hollywood westerns in 1961. Its ideological message is messier than it looks: Joe is, after all, an entrepreneur selling a soft drink. Who it's for: Fans of genre parody and of Central Europe's long argument with the myth of America. Who it's not for: Not for viewers wanting a gripping western, since it is slapstick mocking its own genre from beginning to end.