The Three Veterans

Three soldiers are discharged and set out. One is old and shrewd, one middle-aged and methodical, one young and simple. They camp in open country for the night, and one by one they wake and meet three dwarf brothers, and each is given a gift: a harp that produces servants on request, a purse that never empties, and a hat that can make anything at all except money and people. With these they head for a kingdom, and in the kingdom they lose the gifts. Oldřich Lipský directs the Czechoslovak film; ninety-three minutes, adapted from Jan Werich's children's book, with Rudolf Hrušínský and Zdeněk Svěrák in the cast. It uses the shape of a fairy tale, but what it is really about is what power that arrives for nothing does to people; the magic objects are not the solution, they are the problem.