The Good Soldier Švejk

A picaresque, darkly comic satire of military bureaucracy and war's absurdity, told through the misadventures of a lovable, cunning everyman who stumbles his way through WWI.

Good-natured and garrulous, Schweik becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of World War I -- although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards and getting drunk, he uses all his cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the police, clergy, and officers who chivy him toward battle.