PRAGUE • Influential Czech director Jiri Menzel, whose 1966 movie, Closely Watched Trains, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, has died at age 82, his wife Olga Menzelova said on Sunday.

Menzel was part of the Czech New Wave of film-makers of the 1960s that included One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984) director Milos Forman and avant-garde director Vera Chytilova.

Menzel struggled with serious health problems and rarely appeared in public after brain surgery in 2017. Menzel's wife said he died at home last Saturday.

Menzel gained fame for Closely Watched Trains, the coming-of-age story of a young train dispatcher in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II.

It was based on a novel by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, whose works were a source of other Menzel films, including I Served The King Of England in 2006.

"I had more luck than reason," he said in 2016, recalling his Oscarwinning movie. "More than all the prizes and medals I received for this movie, I valued the lifelong friendship with Hrabal."

Like other directors of his generation, Menzel faced problems with the communist authorities.

His 1969 film, Larks On A String, depicting a group of politically persecuted people forced to work in a scrapyard, was not shown in his home country until 1990.

It went on to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1990.

Menzel excelled in bittersweet depictions of life, with doses of humour and nostalgia. Many of his works are revered among Czech audiences.

His 1985 film, My Sweet Little Village, was nominated for an Oscar. A number of his other movies have become classics for Czech film watchers and directors.

Menzel also acted in dozens of movies and plays. A bachelor late into life, he and Menzelova, a film producer, married in 2004.

REUTERS