Otakar Vávra

Biography

Otakar Vávra (28 February 1911 – 15 September 2011) was a Czech film director, screenwriter and pedagogue.

Vávra attended universities in Brno and Prague, where he studied architecture. During 1929–30, while still a student, he participated in the making of a handful of documentaries and wrote movie scripts. In 1931, he produced the experimental film Světlo proniká tmou. The first movie he directed was 1937's Panenství.

His 1938 film The Merry Wives was praised in Variety for "first-rate direction, a salty yarn and elaborate production effort", even though it had undergone certain cuts because it was considered too "ribald" by American censors.

Vávra was a member of the Communist Party fr...