Jiří Menzel, one of Czech Republic's best-known living directors, is just finishing work on his first film in 12 years, I Served the King of England, based on the 1971 Bohumil Hrabal novel by the same name.

The pressure and anticipation are mounting.

The film was on hold for over 10 years partly due to disputes over the copyright. As for Menzel, he had been keeping a low profile, working in theater, because, as he says, "nothing interesting had come along."

Now that the one-time Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film is behind the camera again, everyone is on edge. Will the film live up to Menzel's masterpieces such as the Oscar-winning 1966 opus Closely Watched Trains? Or the critically acclaimed Postřižiny (Short Cuts), Skřivánci na niti (Larks on a String) and Vesničko má středisková (My Sweet Little Village)? Menzel isn't too happy about the pressure.

"With the making of every film, I am propelled by a fear of failure," he says.

The diminutive director doesn't come across as a particularly fearful person. Rather, he seems introverted and focused — unwilling to be distracted.

At least that's how he appeared during a recent day on set in Slapy, a small village 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of Prague, where the crew of I Served the King of England was shooting the scenes that take place in the Hotel Tichota, one of the key settings in Hrabal's novel.

Stepping back in time

It's a warm May afternoon and actors in period costumes from the 1920s — white suits for the men, cocktail dresses for the women — lounge around under shady trees, trying to prevent their makeup from running as they wait to shoot the next scene. A convoy of shiny, open-top roadsters from the First Republic era is lined up in front of the entrance to a privately owned chateau that's been made over into the Tichota. The elegant building is surrounded by a park that has in recent years become a popular shooting locale for many Czech directors.

Only crew members, hurrying this way and that, talking rapidly into walkie-talkies and making sure none of the reporters visiting the set gets in the way, mar the idyllic atmosphere.

Between takes, Menzel, sits under a sun umbrella surrounded by a wreath of awestruck reporters who take turns posing reverential questions. Slight, with small sharp features and a full head of barely gray hair that belies his 68 years, the director and longtime friend of Hrabal sports a gray tracksuit and sneakers. He patiently answers a few questions, but his attention wanders. It's obvious he would much rather get back to work.

Menzel doesn't like to be distracted while shooting, says Míla Řádová, his assistant of many years. He also hates dumb questions. When I ask him to name highlights from the shooting so far, he snaps, "The best part is when I get to go home at the end of each day."

And who knows? Maybe Menzel's being honest rather than irritable. Fitting Hrabal's exuberant flow of language and rapid sequences of poignant images into a film, after all, is no easy task.

"It's a very rich novel. Whenever I return to the text, I keep saying this is terrible. I shouldn't have left this out or that out," he says. "Maybe some people will be disappointed when they see the film because they won't find the scene they were expecting."

Menzel is also unhappy with the way some reports have portrayed this as a big-budget film. At 60 million Kč ($2.7 million) — some articles estimate the cost to be 85 million Kč but the director calls that an exaggeration — King of England is costly by Czech standards but a steal compared to just about any Hollywood film.

"You get spoiled if you have too much money for filming," says Menzel. "We can now afford to reshoot a scene maybe eight times."

As for how often he pushes actors to that extent, he denies being a demanding director. "I am very modest. It's those around me who are demanding."

A mentor to actors

King of England, which is structured as a continuous monologue, is the story of a young waiter who begins on the lowest rung of the hotel industry as a bellboy in prewar Czechoslovakia. He works his way up, becomes involved with a German woman after the Nazis invade and makes a fortune, eventually opening his own hotel. He loses his entire fortune when the communists take over and spends years in prison. Still, he succeeds in coming to terms with his life and achieving a serenity that transcends his situation.

Like all of Hrabal's work, the novel has an idiosyncratic, cascading rhythm that is difficult to reproduce on screen. But with more Hrabal adaptations under his belt than any other director — among them Short Cuts and Closely Watched Trains — Menzel is well-prepared to meet the challenge.

The Slovak actor Marian Labuda, who plays the banker Walden, one of the key characters in the novel, says that to him Menzel is like a mentor. "Even after all these years, I'm still learning something from him. Every day he shows me how to do something just a little better."

Labuda, who has worked with Menzel for decades, says he was greatly looking forward to doing a film with him again.

"Menzel always brings out the best in actors," he says. "He gets what he wants, but he doesn't do it in a forceful way."

Václav Knop, who plays one of the hotel guests, concurs. "Menzel is very precise. He knows exactly what he wants the film to look like. But at the same time he gives the actors a lot of space to express themselves. For us it's great fun but also a learning experience."

Disillusioned director

Menzel knows something about climbing rungs himself: Born in 1938 in Prague to a writer father, he started at Prague's Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU).

Although Menzel belonged to the generation of Czech New Wave film directors that emerged in the 1960s and included Věra Chytilová and Miloš Forman, his films always stood apart from the trends of his time.

He developed a close friendship with Hrabal and the two collaborated on several projects, among them: Pearls of the Deep, Closely Watched Trains and Larks on a String.

Like Hrabal, Menzel has a knack for telling extraordinary stories about ordinary people and finding the poetry of the quotidian.

Trains brought Menzel fame when he won an Oscar for it in 1966. A steady stream of films, many now considered classics, followed. Some, such as Larks, a comedy set in the dreary environment of a 1950s work camp, didn't sit so well with the communist regime. Larks was banned when Menzel completed it in 1969 and remained unreleased until 1990.

But the liberation of Czech film that came with the Velvet Revolution hasn't done much for Czech cinematography, according to Menzel. He has on several occasions criticized the current state of Czech culture and has said that Czechs are not yet ripe for democracy. It's the role of filmmakers and other intellectuals, he argues, to help elevate culture.

Does he think, then, that filmmakers should impart this to their audiences? Must a film educate as well as entertain? And is Czech show business really all that bad? In an effort to get at these questions, which there was no time for during the brief set visit, a sit-down interview was arranged with Menzel at a Prague 2 casting studio, where he was auditioning actors on a recent Friday afternoon.

Menzel came out of the studio office, looking distracted and in a hurry, clearly displeased to see a reporter sitting in the waiting room.

He was sorry, he said. After answering two questions with one-word answers, he said he didn't have time for a proper interview. "Come back when I'm done shooting," he added vaguely. Then he quickly left the room.