Jan Dítě is released from prison. The grey-haired man’s first steps into freedom are hesitant, as if he’s sorry to leave the bleak compound. Behind him lie fifteen years of imprisonment – because he was a millionaire. When the Czech Communist Party came to power three years after the end of World War II, its dislike of millionaires was made very obvious. Jan Dítě, whose main goal in life had always been to get hold of a lot of money, paid for each million with one year in prison. Outside the prison gates he remembers how it all began. The young man who sold sausages at the railway station and short-changed the customers. Waited upon the Emperor of Abyssinia in a grand hotel in Prague and received an imperial order. His meeting with Lisa, a blonde Sudeten German, whom he married although his workmates were contemptuous. How he placed himself in the service of the Germans. How he got rich, at last, after the war.

The Oscar-winning director adapted for the screen Bohumil Hrabal’s novel “I Served the King of England”. The tale of the lowly waiter Jan Dítě, who pursues his personal advantage regardless of the political system in power, can be viewed as Jiří Menzel’s  parable on the Czech “Everyman”. An affectionate and visually painstaking portrait resplendent with opulent images.