František Čáp

František Čáp (7 December 1913 – 12 January 1972), also known as Franz Cap in Germany, was a Czech and later a Yugoslav film director and screenwriter.

Čáp's first Yugoslav film, romantic comedy Vesna (1953), had elements of Heimatfilm and pre-World War II Czech and Austrian melodrama, and proved highly successful both artistically and commercially, as did its sequel Ne čakaj na maj (1957).

He directed Am Anfang war es Sünde (Sin / Greh, 1954, Saphir Film) and the romantic drama La ragazza della salina (Sand, Love and Salt / Kruh in sol, 1957), which featured Marcello Mastroianni.

In 1956, Čáp shot Die Geierwally (The Vulture Wally), based on the novel by Wilhelmine von Hillern, in Germany, while X-25 javlja ("X-25 Reports", 1960), a World War II spy thriller set in Zagreb, saw extensive international theatrical release as well.

[3] However, after his poorly received comedy Naš avto (Our Car, 1962), Čáp was unable to find work in Yugoslavia and he turned to direct for television.

Though struggling with negative criticism in his own time, today Čáp is praised as a craftsman who helped the undeveloped Slovene and Yugoslav cinema – at the time infected with dilettante technical standards, problematic focus on local issues and stiff literary adaptations – to rise to the level of an exquisite craft with universal intelligibility.

The orthodox communist reviewers saw in it a bourgeois threat to socialist values, and a conservative return to the middle class phantom concepts (e.g.

[5] Contrary to complaints regarding the generic nature of the films, it is well recognized that Čáp contributed drastically to the adaptation of the Slovene language for cinematic use.