REVIEW: DVD Release: The František Vláčil Collection























Film: The František Vláčil Collection
Release date: 13th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 430 mins
Director: František Vláčil
Starring: Josef Kemr, Magda Vásáryová, Petr Cepek, Jan Kacer, Emma Cerná
Genre: Documentary/Drama/History/Romance
Studio: Second Run
Format: DVD
Country: Czechoslovakia

Coinciding with BFI Southbank’s František Vláčil Season, the rehabilitation of the Czech filmmaker’s cinema continues with the release of this box set, containing three of his greatest films alongside Tomáš Hejtmánek’s documentary.

For too long František Vláčil has been overshadowed by his internationally better-known compatriots Miloš Forman and Miklós Jancsó. Though often compared to the cinematic giants of the 20th century, he remains a generally unknown figure outside his homeland. His films contain elements reminiscent of the great visionary directors (from the poetic lyricism of Tarkovsky to the textural richness of Kurosawa, from Bergman’s existential mysticism to Welles’ epic grandeur), but Vláčil’s vision was always distinctly and unmistakably his own. The achievements of Vláčil in three extraordinary films released between 1967 and 1969 guarantee his place among the true greats of international cinema.



Marketa Lazarová (1967)
Adapted from Vladislav Vančura’s 1931 avant-garde novel, Vláčil’s 13th century historical epic deals principally with the conflict between the rival Kozlik and Lazar clans, and the doomed love affair between Mikolaš Kozlik and Marketa Lazarová…

Vláčil’s masterpiece, and a film which manages to explore more ideas and themes than most directors approach in a lifetime. With scenes depicting wild pagan rites, incest, rape and numerous brutal acts of violence, it would seem exploitative in the hands of a lesser artist, but such is our immersion in Vláčil’s painstakingly recreated world that it never feels in any way sensational. By filtering our viewpoint almost entirely through the eyes, thoughts and feelings of the characters, the film allows us to inhabit a world where we take as perfectly natural that a family should believe they are descended from werewolves, a father avert a curse by dismembering his son’s arm, or the heroine fall in love with her rapist.

Vláčil had spoken of the sense he got from most historical films was of watching contemporary people merely dressed up in historical costumes. In order to avoid this pitfall in his own picture, the director relocated his cast to the depths of the Šumava forest for a two year period of preparation, where they were put to constructing the various sets with traditional implements, living in period clothes and speaking in the dialects of the time. As a result, the acting feels less like performance, and more as though the actors are living and breathing their respective roles.

As dedicated to historical veracity as Marketa Lazarová is, Vláčil’s films were also intended as dialogues with their own times - with themes of paganism vs. Christianity/organised religion, German vs. Czech, the film is open to political interpretation. That the powers that be did take this view would eventually result in Vláčil’s cinematic output being severely restricted in the years to come.

With its extensive cast, and constant dislocations in time and perspective, it can be a difficult, often confusing watch, and you may only get your bearings about an hour into its 159 minute running time. Stick with it, though, and it rewards you with astonishing imagery, and a depth that is as visceral and emotional as it is intellectual.

Voted the best Czech film of all time by a survey of the country’s critics in 1998, it has been described elsewhere as one of the greatest films ever made about the Middle Ages. More than that, it is simply one of the finest films produced in the history of world cinema. A staggering achievement.


The Valley Of The Bees (1967)
Also set in the 13th century, the story was written in collaboration with the novelist Vladimír Körner, and deals with the conflict between human nature and dogmatism.

After years of hardship within a society founded on the precept that suffering is the way to God, Ondřej makes his escape from the Order of the Teutonic Knights and returns to his homeland, only to be tracked down by the zealous Armin, tasked with bringing the prodigal son back to the Order…

Opening with the image of a beehive and the busy drones working within, it’s easy to draw a parallel with the politics of Vláčil’s time, and after Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, it’s almost impossible to view a film featuring Teutonic Knights without thinking of the 20th century aggressions of Nazi Germany.

It’s a far more straightforward film in terms of its chronological structure than Marketa Lazarová, and while not quite as daring in its aesthetics, it still contains some breathtaking images. There is beauty both in the austerity of the Baltic coastal setting and in contrasting scenes set in Bohemia that contain a vibrancy and use of light that shines through the black-and-white film. Some of the most memorable images are also some of the most horrific (a deserter knight thrown into a pit of savage dogs played out like a nightmarish ballet, or a sword fight set against a backdrop of smoking kilns).

Again, Vláčil manages his trick of immersing us in a world almost unrecognisable from our own, allowing us to identify with characters even when their actions appear inexplicable by a modern understanding. When Armin is compelled to his shocking act of violence towards the end of the picture, it seems beyond comprehension and yet also perfectly in keeping with the film’s logic and internal conflicts. It may appear an alien world, but in a 21st century still plagued by dogmatism and religious fanaticism, it is one we must finally recognise as our own.

The Valley Of The Bees possibly suffers through inevitable comparisons with Vláčil’s previous piece, but it remains an immensely powerful work in its own right. Had Vláčil only produced this one film, it would be enough to assure his reputation as a director of singular genius.


Adelheid (1969)
Another Körner collaboration, this time set in the aftermath of WWII and depicting the relationship between a Czech lieutenant who is assigned a manor house on the Czech-German border and Adelheid, daughter of its previous Nazi owner, who is allocated to him as a servant.

The first film to address the brutal post-war expulsion of the ethnic Sudeten German population from Bohemia and Moravia, it remains a taboo subject for many Czechs even today…

This was Vláčil’s first colour film, and if it perhaps lacks the ravishing beauty of his medieval works, there is still much to admire. Vláčil’s gift for evocative landscapes and expertly framed images remains in tact, wonderfully demonstrated by one scene as Adelheid returns to the manor house beneath an archway of snow covered trees. His camera has neither lost its ability to find beauty in images that should rightfully inspire horror (the bars of a cage, allegedly used by the Nazi Heinemann to torture prisoners, reflected in a puddle).

On the surface, the story would seem to deal with yet another doomed love affair; but it is less about love than in it is about a basic human need to connect - one constantly frustrated, in Vláčil’s film, by ideological and historical divisions. In a world in which even this fundamental need is repeatedly stifled, the possibility for love seems very distant indeed.

It is Vláčil’s most heart-wrenchingly sad film; mining a deep well of loneliness and pain, ably captured by the naturalistic performances of its two co-leads. Adelheid’s apparent stoicism masks an inner turmoil that even the most psychologically resilient would struggle to bear (her father awaits execution, her brother presumed dead in Russia - her future, like that of most Germans, appears a bleak one). The clearly (perhaps terminally) unwell Lieutenant Chotovicky is drawn to Adelheid mainly because he has no-one else in the world, as he admits during the almost unbearably poignant final scene between them. When he wakes up to Adelheid after they’ve presumably made love and says: “Now I am home,” it is an ambivalent moment. The manor house he occupies is really no more home for Chotovicky than it is for Adelheid.

Closer in feel and appearance to the humanist films generally associated with Czech cinema of the period, Adelheid forms a link with Vláčil’s other films through its dense network of poetic imagery and symbolism that achieves an effect closer to that of poetry or literature. A very human and deeply moving picture.


Sentiment (2003)
Tomás Hejtmánek's documentary on Vláčil is sourced from interviews conducted before the director’s death, which are re-enacted by the actor Jirí Kodet. It intertwines sketches from Vláčil’s life, the memories of his colleagues and abstract shots of his film’s original landscapes, to create a documentary film quite unlike anything you may have seen before…

Hejtmánek’s film is marked by a sense of absence and loss more than anything, most pertinently that of the late director that is its subject. Belying the suggestion of its title, it is, in fact, the most unsentimental of tributes, achieving by means of it a greater sense of poignancy.

It neither attempts to fully explain nor simplify its subject, be that the artist or his films. It can’t be considered an introduction to Vláčil’s cinema (having very little to say about the films, and actually requiring a prior familiarity with them to make it work). Instead, it presents a great artist simply as a man, unapologetically and with all his contradictions. Assuming the words spoken by Kodet are, in fact, Vláčil’s, it reveals a man as difficult as he was brilliant. It is, at times, very funny, as when he rants against an unseen assistant of Hejtmánek’s, referring to him as “that mute automaton,” in spite of Hejtmánek’s attempts to explain the poor man’s shyness is only because he feels intimidated in the presence of Vláčil. But there are other times when his conversation becomes quite moving, when he talks about the break-up of his marriage or his gangster son. Another theme that constantly comes up in his conversation is his craving for solitude, but then he tells a story about the deep loneliness he felt while hospitalised in China, or even, more touchingly when he thanks Hejtmánek for providing him with someone to talk to. Kodet’s performance, it should be said, is excellent, and it never feels like we are actually watching an actor.

Interspersed with these re-enacted interviews are shots of the locations used for key scenes in Marketa Lazarová, The Valley Of The Bees, and Adelheid, sometimes with the original actors returning, now aged almost beyond recognition. Often when documentaries about films return to locations, they’re barely recognisable, a McDonalds or a Starbucks where a location once stood. Vláčil’s locations remain largely unchanged, and even without the clips of dialogue and sound Hejtmánek sometimes overlays, these landscapes seem haunted still by the ghosts of Vláčil’s cinema. The technique is repeated most poignantly when the camera pans over Vláčil’s empty apartment.

It can be quite bleak. As Vláčil asks why some were recognised while he was passed by, the film seems to question the ultimate reward for an under-appreciated artist approaching the end of his days. The answer lies in a remarkable body of work that assures the immortality of Vláčil’s cinema and, through it, that of the artist himself.

An unusual documentary that does not tell us anything so much as it makes us feel - one less about facts than it is about emotion. Its title, then, is an apt one. A fine tribute to a truly great director.


Though issue could be taken with the decision to include in the box set three films already available in their present format (two of which Second Run released only this year), the highly reasonable price makes it a minor quibble taking into account the inclusion of Hejtmánek’s documentary. If you are unfamiliar with the cinema of František Vláčil, this collection cannot come recommended enough. A strong contender for box set release of the decade. GJK

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