---
name: "Elmar Klos"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/elmar-klos"
fi1m_id: "elmar-klos"
imdb_id: "nm0460033"
tmdb_id: 544699
wikidata_id: "Q2980777"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "26 January 1910"
died: "19 July 1993"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "director"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-26T15:44:53.041690+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Elmar Klos

## Identity

Elmar Klos

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/elmar-klos
- **Type:** Person
- **Fi1m ID:** elmar-klos
- **IMDb ID:** nm0460033
- **TMDB ID:** 544699
- **Wikidata ID:** Q2980777
- **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmar_Klos, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2980777, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0460033/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/544699

Director. Born 26 January 1910 in Brno, Moravia, AustriaHungary [now Brno, Czech Republic]. Died 19 July 1993.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 26 January 1910, Brno, Moravia, AustriaHungary [now Brno, Czech Republic]
- **Died:** 19 July 1993
- **Also known as:** Эльмар Клос
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmar_Klos, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2980777, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0460033/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/544699

## Streaming the US now

- **HBO Max:** [*The Shop on Main Street*](https://film.one/film/the-shop-on-main-street.md) (90)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Elmar Klos

> Elmar Klos was the half of the Kadár–Klos partnership who stayed off the set. Their films are built the way he worked, from the script outward, and the best of them let ordinary people be funny for an hour before history arrives.

For most of its first hour *The Shop on Main Street* (1965) is about a carpenter and a deaf old widow learning to share a button shop. He shambles, she misunderstands, the town gets on with its business. We laughed a good deal, and then the town's cowardice arrives at the shop door and we found we had been laughing at the set-up for a trap. That is the film's method: keep the frame small, keep the tone light, and let us see, before the man does, what the piece of paper in his hand means. Nothing in it is hurried and nothing in it is spared. We gave it 90, and it is one of the few films on its subject we would send a stranger to.

Klos was the half of the pair the audience never saw at work. From 1952 to 1969 he and the Slovak director Ján Kadár made eight features together and shared the credit on all of them, but the division of labour was clear: Kadár took the actors and the set, Klos took the script, the production, the music, the design and the cutting room. He had been in film since the 1930s, had founded a studio in Zlín at twenty-five and turned out shorts for Baťa, and he brought a producer's patience to the partnership. What you watch in a Kadár–Klos film is Kadár's people moving through a structure Klos had already built.

The structure took a while to earn its edge. Their early films, *Kidnapped* (1953) among them, did what the decade's official taste asked of them. *Three Wishes* (1958), a comedy about the postwar housing shortage, was sharp enough to be shelved for two years. Then came the run: *Death Is Called Engelchen* (1963), a war film told in flashback that finds damage on both sides; *The Accused* (1964), a courtroom drama about what a job does to a conscience; and *The Shop on Main Street*, written with Ladislav Grosman from his own novel. We have reviewed only the last, and it shows the pair at full strength: steady shots, dry humour, the odd dream sequence, and a whole town of non-professional faces around Kroner's carpenter.

What holds these films together is that they do not go where the big events are. Kadár and Klos stay on one street and ask what an ordinary, decent, weak person does when the system comes to the door, and they neither excuse him nor sneer at him. That is harder than it sounds, and it is why the button shop has lasted.

After 1968 there was little left for Klos to build. *Adrift* (1971), a co-production on which he was only associate director, closed the partnership. He worked for years as a construction engineer, made one more film, *Bizon* (1989), and taught at FAMU after 1989. Start with *The Shop on Main Street*. It is where the method is clearest, and it is the film he seems to have spent thirty years of production work getting ready to make.

## Biography

Elmar Klos (26 January 1910 – 19 July 1993) was a Czech film director and writer. Born in Brno, he began working in the film industry in the 1930s and later collaborated for 17 years with Slovak director Ján Kadár.

Their joint credits include *Death Is Called Engelchen* (1963) and *The Shop on Main Street* (1965), for which they shared the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Klos also received writing and directing credits on several other films made with Kadár, including *The Accused* (1964).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, nytimes.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *The Shop on Main Street* (1965), Fi1m 90, Screenplay, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/the-shop-on-main-street.md)

## Complete filmography (39)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Nemocný bílý slon* (1990), Actor
- *Adrift* (1971), Director
- *The Shop on Main Street* (1965), Director, Screenplay — Fi1m 90, [page](https://film.one/film/the-shop-on-main-street.md)
- *Defendant* (1964), Screenplay, Director
- *Three Wishes* (1963), Director, Story, Screenplay
- *Death Is Called Engelchen* (1963), Director, Screenplay
- *Zkouška pokračuje* (1960), Screenplay
- *Laterna magika II* (1960), Director, Writer
- *At the Terminus* (1957), Director
- *Spartakiáda* (1956), Director
- *Mladé dny* (1956), Director
- *Hudba z Marsu* (1955), Story, Director, Screenplay
- *Matka Riva* (1955), Director
- *Kidnapped* (1953), Director, Writer, Story
- *Píseň o sletu – II. část – Bratři a sestry* (1949), Field Director
- *Píseň o sletu – I. část – Mládí* (1949), Field Director
- *Revolution in Toyland* (1947), Story
- *A Dead Man among the Living* (1947), Screenplay, Production Manager
- *2x Bail* (1946), Director, Production Manager, Screenplay, Story
- *Přístav v srdci Evropy* (1946), Story, Screenplay
- *Kdo je vinen?* (1946), Screenplay
- *Tři knoflíky* (1945), Story, Screenplay
- *Ferda the Ant* (1944), Screenplay
- *Nejvýnosnější prodej* (1942), Director
- *The River of Life and Death* (1941), Director, Screenplay, Editor, Story
- *Chvála révy* (1941), Director, Story, Screenplay
- *Slovácká kubaňa* (1940), Production Manager
- *Poslední léto presidenta Osvoboditele* (1937), Director
- *Round and Round* (1937), Director, Writer
- *The Highway Sings* (1937), Director
- *A New Song* (1935), Director of Photography
- *A Little Shoe* (1935), Screenplay, Director, Story
- *School Assignment* (1935), Director
- *Three Steps from the Body* (1934), Screenplay
- *Before Graduation* (1932), Actor
- *The Innkeeper 'At the Wild Beauty'* (1932), Screenplay
- *The Lovers of an Old Criminal* (1927), Screenplay
- *The Loves of Kačenka Strnadová* (1926), Screenplay
- *The Fake Sweetheart* (1926), Screenplay

## Gallery

- ![Elmar Klos](https://film.one/media/person/3911027/gallery-eb4c43784be7.jpg) Elmar Klos — Ron Kroon for Anefo, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Elmar_Klos_%281966%29.jpg/1280px-Elmar_Klos_%281966%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Collectie / Archief : Fotocollectie Anefo Reportage / Serie : [ onbekend ] Beschrijving :Aankomst op Schiphol, De Tsjechoslowaakse filmregisseur Elmar Klos en d (1966)](https://film.one/media/person/3911027/gallery-a507e9da5446.jpg) Collectie / Archief : Fotocollectie Anefo Reportage / Serie : [ onbekend ] Beschrijving :Aankomst op Schiphol, De Tsjechoslowaakse filmregisseur Elmar Klos en d (1966) — Ron Kroon / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Filmfestival_te_Utrecht%2C_aankomst_op_Schiphol%2C_v.l.n.r._regisseur_Elmarklos_en_d%2C_Bestanddeelnr_918-7330.jpg/1280px-Filmfestival_te_Utrecht%2C_aankomst_op_Schiphol%2C_v.l.n.r._regisseur_Elmarklos_en_d%2C_Bestanddeelnr_918-7330.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

## Awards

### Other awards — 1 won

- Národní umělec 1968: Národní umělec (won)

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/elmar-klos