CaSFFA 2021 – Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace (2020)

Concluding my trawl through the Czech & Slovak Film Festival of Australia’s offerings for 2021 is Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace [Alchymická pec] (2020), a documentary about the Czech surrealist animator, filmmaker and artist Jan Švankmajer. I fell in love with Švankmajer as a filmmaker from my very first encounter with his work – Darkness/Light/Darkness [Tma/Svetlo/Tma] (1989) – part of a showcase of animation from around the world which aired in Australian cinemas around 1990. It wasn’t long before SBS devoted an episode of Eat Carpet (1989-2005), their weekly showcase for short films, to a wider selection of his work – an episode which I recorded on VHS and watched repeatedly, happy to take any excuse to share his work with others.

Although this isn’t the first time anybody has thought to make a documentary film about Švankmajer and his work, this is the most personal, having been made under the aegis of Švankmajer’s own production company Athanor – which is very much one of the film’s strengths. Both of the directors have a prior creative relationship with their subject, having worked on his most recent (and likely final) film Insect [Hmyz] (2018) – an adaptation of one of Karel Čapek’s satirical plays – for which Jan Danhel was the editor and Adam Olha was a cinematographer. Danhel’s association with Švankmajer stretches back even further to the beginning of his own film career, starting as an assistant on short film Food [Jídlo] (1992) before graduating to assistant editor on his features Faust [Lekce Faust] (1994) and Conspirators of Pleasure [Spiklenci slasti] (1996). Insect took an unusual approach to its source material by including footage of the creative process which went into making the adaptation. Danhel & Olha have repeated that approach here, including early behind-the-scenes discussions of how the movie should be made and structured. Many of the interview segments are broken up by cutting between the conventional talking heads you would normally see in a documentary and shots of the camera crew filming those same segments – sometimes they even omit the more conventional segments entirely, allowing us to hear Švankmajer’s words but showing only what is going on around him while he speaks. Švankmajer himself made the decision to open the film by addressing the audience directly, telling them that in viewing the final cut he was disappointed to realise that it’s a parade of old people, due to the lack of any extant footage depicting either him or his wife in their youth. In an attempt to provide this vital injection of the youth which drove their creative process – a youth neither of them ever lost from their inner being – he holds up a small black & white photo of the two of them back in the day, bringing it out twice in the hopes that the audience can take that image with them for the succeeding two hours.

Key aspects of Švankmajer’s creative process and artistic decisions are explored through the course of the film, with Danhel & Olha incorporating those same techniques into the finished piece. Early on Švankmajer talks about his preference for close-ups rather than long shots. By peppering his films with extreme close-ups on insignificant details, he aims to kickstart the audience’s creative engagement with his works, encouraging them to think about what the focus on those details means in the context of the completed work. Long shots for him are a creative dead-end – they only really work if they are consciously composed for a specific effect, which draws attention to their artificial nature. Any attempt to use long shots without this conscious intent is meaningless as the image will be empty of any content or affect. His love for close-ups ties into the most significant aspect of his films and of his artistic output in general – his love of the texture and sensation of physical objects. As film is an audiovisual medium, he takes a great deal of care to invest his films with a strong tactile quality – the selection of objects, editing choices, sound design, music and of course the visuals themselves all have a purpose in creating a final experience which comes as close as possible to evoking real physical sensations.

Although “surreal” is often overused and misapplied as an adjective, Švankmajer self-identifies specifically as a Surrealist and there is plenty of discussion among his artistic associates about what this actually means. Švankmajer views surrealism as collectivist in nature – while art is an expression of an individual’s unique internal vision, surrealism is a collaborative creative activity which unites those individual expressions to create something new which could not have otherwise existed. It has no political content because it’s an exploration of inner conflicts rather than a critique of external processes – an approach which generates suspicion in authoritarian regimes whose failure to understand makes them suspect that it must be hiding something. Švankmajer expresses discomfort with receiving awards for his art – not just because he thinks that art shouldn’t be subject to that sort of qualitative judgement, but because he generally has the impression that he’s being honoured for somebody else’s inaccurate perception of his achievements. He makes an interesting comparison between his experience of Kabuki and Japanese perceptions of his work. As he puts it, western societies often view Kabuki as exotic, mysterious and inexplicable – but this is simply because they lack the cultural context to understand the specific meanings that particular gestures convey to a Japanese audience. He finds that this specificity of meaning gets in the way of his Japanese fans, who expect to find a specific network of hidden meanings that simply isn’t there. Whether this characterisation of the Japanese as having a “collectivist” imagination is valid is not something on which I feel confident to comment, but the comparison does effectively express his wider point.

The film also devotes time to two of his key associates and their very different importance to his work. Jaromír Kallista, Švankmajer’s business partner in Athanor and the producer of all of his work since 1988, has played a vital role in allowing Švankmajer to make his films and in taking care of his creative legacy – but, perhaps unsurprisingly for such a grounded individual, doesn’t really get Švankmajer as an artist. Early in the film they have an impassioned discussion about the conflict between creative and commercial urges. Kallista expresses the opinion that many of Švankmajer’s works are too long and could stand to be trimmed to better suit the (ill-defined) needs of audiences. Švankmajer, of course, disagrees vehemently – while he agrees that many films are too long, he counters that some films need to be long and that there is not one redundant second in any of his work. He questions the notion of the “average viewer”, stating that there is no such thing and any attempt to change his work to suit each individual’s taste would result in an empty mess. But while Kallista doesn’t seem particularly suited to understanding Švankmajer’s perspective, he clearly sees value in the promotion and preservation of Švankmajer’s work. His suggestion that Švankmajer would be content to watch his films once after completion and then stick them in a cupboard comes across as plausible, highlighting the importance of Kallista’s role in bringing his work to the world.

The most important figure of all is of course Švankmajer’s wife, artist and writer Eva Švankmajerová, who he identifies as the heart of his work. Although she was unable to participate in Athanor due to her death from breast cancer in 2005 – a death which impacted Švankmajer deeply – her presence permeates the film. Danhel & Olha have done their best to plug the gap, sourcing interview, on-set and home movie footage from the early 2000s and showcasing many examples of her paintings. However there is only so much material to work with and as a consequence much of her presence in the film comes courtesy of Švankmajer’s personal recollections. She was the extrovert to his introvert, the one who forged their social and business connections – including the connection with Kallista – and was responsible for creating a warm atmosphere on set. Although she worked with him on many of his films, it was always on her own creative terms. He only called on her expertise to fill the gaps for which she was best suited and she maintained a healthy artistic output in her own right. The last section of the film is devoted to her physical absence and lingering presence, with her workspace left untouched and her seat kept unoccupied at all social occasions. After discussing Švankmajer’s brief institutionalisation in the wake of her death – an experience that was uncomfortable close to material in his just-completed film Lunacy [Šílení] (2005) – the film closes on a note of silliness with a characteristically cheeky nod to his animation style.

Although primarily of interest to fans of his work, Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace should be accessible to any Švankmajer novices and provides enough examples of his work – both on film and in physical media – to be an effective primer. For Švankmajer aficionados it’s essential viewing.

CaSFFA 2021 – The Ear (1970)

Yesterday’s excursion into Slovakian cinema didn’t go so well for me, but today’s experience with a Czech classic was far more successful. The Ear [Ucho] (1970) captures the paranoia of life in Czechoslovakia under Soviet rule and specifically with the circumstances of living under the constant threat of state surveillance where you never know which minor misstep might come back to bite you.

The film is largely a two-hander, following a night in the lives of Ludvik (Radoslav Brzobohatý), the Deputy Minister of Transport, and his wife Anna (Jiřina Bohdalová). It begins with their return home after an official State function as the sober Ludvik and less-sober Anna find themselves unable to find their keys. What might normally be a fairly innocuous (and not unusual) event is swiftly invested with a frisson of menace as Ludvik gazes uncertainly at the dark car which has just pulled up further down the street. He knows that he left his keys at home and remembers his wife locking the gate as they left, so what could have happened to her keys? As he ponders how to get into the house his wife discovers the gate is unlocked – and after makes his way inside, he finds his keys sitting in the now unlatched front door. Perhaps their son was playing games before bedtime? The power is out, although the neighbours’ houses are lit as normal, and the telephone isn’t working. And people are visible at sporadic intervals observing the house from the garden and/or the street.

As Ludvik racks his memories for a clue as to what might be going on, the action periodically flashes back to the event they attended earlier that evening. Various interactions are replayed from his point of view as we gradually piece together evidence that a ministerial purge of individuals deemed unsound is underway. A military man observes that there is currently no Minister of Transport, which is news to Ludvik – didn’t he see that very man arrive earlier in the evening? Although he doesn’t appear to be anywhere now… Some of his fellow ministers appear to know more than he does, but they quickly clam up and move on once they realise Ludvik isn’t in the loop. A scene for which he wasn’t present plays out as, back at home, he presses his wife for details of her interaction with the most senior Communist Party representative – did he use her first name, which would indicate they are still in favour, or not? Much of the night is spent with feverish attempts to recall exactly what they said to whom at the party, while simultaneously dissecting their memories of which conversations they’ve had in different areas of the house, as Ludvik tries to locate any personal notes or documents which might now be interpreted as politically suspect.

The Ear of the title – also capitalised in the English subtitles – is the Ear of the State, i.e. the pervasive use of bugging devices to keep track of the citizenry. As Ludvik and Anna go back over the assumptions they have made about the locations of any potentially hidden microphones, the fragility of their conclusions becomes more apparent – some of the received wisdom about which areas are never bugged comes from people who have since been taken into detention, and how reliable can general “knowledge” about such matters really be in a highly monitored society? The choice to shoot most of Ludvik’s recollections of the State function from a first person perspective emphasises the theme of surveillance, reminding the viewer that the camera has an intelligence behind it which is paying attention to its observations. Sometimes the camera angle rotates through 180 degrees to give us a glimpse of Ludvik’s reaction to the ongoing conversations – a technique which is subverted in one instance as the camera continues to move on to the real Ludvik, revealing that the first shift showed only his reflection – and raising the possibility of another layer of observation through one-way mirrors.

As the evening of the couple’s 10^th anniversary wends its way to the following morning, all of the faultlines in their personal relationship are laid bare – but where a more conventional drama might turn this night of paranoia into the crisis point which changes everything, here it comes across more as a heightened expression of the daily strains that living in such a society have put upon them as they veer between bitter personal recriminations and mutual comfort. By the time they learn what this night’s events mean to them, it’s been made very clear that even those who are successful in such a tightly policed society are wavering in a constant state of uncertainty as to their future.

Although the film was completed in 1970, it will probably come as no surprise that it was banned by the Communist Party of the day, only receiving a formal release after the regime change in 1989 (and being nominated for the Golden Palm at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival). Although there are clear signs of damage to the film stock in some sections, the National Film Archive in Prague have done an excellent restoration job. This wasn’t the first of director Karel Kachyňa’s films to be banned – both Coach to Vienna [Kočár do Vídně] (1966) and The Nun’s Night [Noc nevěsty] (1967) were removed from distribution after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion. Having begun his filmmaking career with social-realist documentaries before moving into more politically critical territory, he found himself relegated to less controversial historical material and children’s movies for the remainder of the 1970s, including the beloved fantasy The Little Mermaid [Malá mořská víla] (1976). His screenwriting collaborator Jan Procházka, who wrote all three of Kachyňa’s banned films, is better known to me as the writer of Karel Zeman’s animated Jules Verne adaptation On the Comet [Na kometě] (1970). He also contributed to the production of Jan Němec’s acclaimed debut feature Diamonds of the Night [Démanty noci] (1964), which dealt with two boys’ escape from a train destined for a Nazi concentration camp. Svatopluk Havelka also deserves mention for his intriguing score, contrasting the conventional folk music present at the official function with more abstract atmospheres which help draw the audience into the protagonists’ sense of unease.

The Ear is a tense, self-contained piece which could easily have worked as a stage play but makes good use of the possibilities of film. Thirty years after initially being rescued from oblivion, Second Run made it available to a wider audience on Blu Ray – and it’s their subtitled version that is airing as part of the Czech & Slovak Film Festival of Australia. They’ve rounded out their release with the inclusion of The Uninvited Guest [Nezvaný host] (1969), a film made by one of Kachyňa’s students which was deemed controversial enough that Kachyňa lost his job as a teacher – I may just have to track that one down.

CaSFFA 2021 – Pacho, the Thief of Hybe (1976)

The 9th Czech & Slovak Film Festival of Australia (7-16 October 2021) has crept up on me unawares, so I intend to spend the next few days sampling this year’s offerings. First up is Pacho, the Thief of Hybe [Pacho, Hybský zbojník] (1976), a digital restoration from the Slovak Film Archive, a fairly broad and simple comedy parodying the local equivalent of Robin Hood.

The “King of Thieves” Juraj Jánošík (1688-1713) is a Slovakian folk hero reputed to have robbed from the rich and given to the poor, a symbol of resistance to oppression so popular in the region that one band of anti-Nazi Slovak partisans named themselves in his honour. His appearances in popular literature date back to 1785 and there have been at least nine different film versions of his story since 1921, the most recent being Agnieszka Holland’s Janosik: A True Story [Janosik. Prawdziwa historia] (2018).

Pacho (Jozef Kroner), on the other hand, is a hapless bumbler only slightly more intelligent than everybody else in the film, fumbling his way through the story thanks to what is either a brief outbreak of supernatural powers or a series of astonishing coincidences. Returning to his village of Hybe after a fourteen-year absence, Pacho hopes to reunite with his sweetheart Hanka (Eva Máziková), whom he rather unreasonably expects to have remained piningly devoted to him the whole time. Happening across Count Erdödy (Marián Labuda) beating one of the local peasants, who has sent his daughter to work in his place while he gathers wood, Pacho snatches the whip from the hands of the unwary nobleman – but his efforts go unappreciated as the old man keeps handing the whip back to the Count, until Pacho finally gets frustrated and beats the Count himself. Both Count and peasant run off, at which point Pacho is immediately surrounded by the local brigands who force him to join them. Asking hopefully whether he could be their leader, Pacho is challenged to a contest of strength by captain Jano (Karol Cálik). A series of Pacho’s sneezes appear to fell the brigands and a nearby tree; the birds appear to obey when he asks them to start and stop singing; and he wins a drinking contest by pulling out a flask of liquid gunpowder.

Their initial attempt at robbery isn’t very successful, netting them a large amount of fine clothing rather than the money for which they’d hoped. Considering the clothing ruined, Countess Erdödyová (Ida Rapaicová) poutingly instructs her husband to burn it and the fire spreads to the village, leading Pacho and his men to burn the chateau. This turns into a sequence of retaliatory burnings which he and his band extend to all of the other local noblemen in a form of petty class warfare. An eventual confrontation between the noblemen and the bandits ends up with the noblemen defeated and their wives delightedly having their way with the willing bandits, followed by a spate of newborns nine months later. All except for Pacho, who spurns the attentions of Erdödyová and seeks out his beloved Hanka only to find that she’s been married for seven years – and although she’s more than willing to dump her husband immediately, Pacho runs off cursing his misfortune. The disgraced noblemen seek the assistance of Empress Mária Terézia (Slávka Budínová), but their description of him is so exaggerated that when her troops finally arrive (with the intent of carrying Pacho away to be the Empress’ husband) none of them are willing to believe that they’ve found him.

Martin Ťapák has a long career in Slovak cinema, with 40 directing credits to his name and additional work as an actor and choreographer, and this film in particular is apparently well regarded – but I assume that I lack the necessary cultural background to appreciate its achievements, as I simply cannot see what all the fuss is about. If not for the fact that the film otherwise appears to be competently made, from the way the various characters shamble around in front of the camera I would have assumed the director was a novice – I can only assume that this was a deliberate stylistic choice as a part of puncturing the myth. It’s in line with the general style of comedy in the script, but to me it all seemed very heavy-handed and uninteresting. There are some attempts to satirise the relationship between noble and peasant, but since almost everybody in the movie is an idiot it doesn’t really go anywhere. I can at least offer some positivity in relation to Svetozár Stracina’s jaunty folk-based musical score, which evokes a strong sense of place and supports the general antics going on around it.

As a counter to my fairly harsh perspective, I feel that I should point the interested reader to Nicholas Hudáč’s essay “Disarming the Bandit – Pacho, Brigand of Hybe and the Attempt to Neutralize an Ethnic Symbol” (East European Film Bulletin Vol 51, March 2015). Thanks to his greater understanding of the cultural context, he was able to find far more to appreciate here than I was – and while he hasn’t won me over to a better appreciation of the form of comedy on display, I found his analysis of the way in which the film engages with Juraj Jánošík’s cultural legacy to be fascinating.

Dino Double Feature – The Lost World / Journey to the Beginning of Time

As a child of the 1970s, the fantastical productions of Irwin Allen formed a significant part of my imaginative backdrop. Popular TV series Lost in Space (1965-68) and Land of the Giants (1968-70) were constantly being repeated and I would watch them religiously, along with their stablemates Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-68) and The Time Tunnel (1966-67) (which must have been on just as frequently but felt more elusive). But preceding all of these, and occupying much the same child-friendly spot in the TV schedule, was Allen’s first non-documentary feature film The Lost World (1960), which offered the holy grail of many a child’s viewing desires – dinosaurs!

The Lost World is loosely adapted from the 1912 novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle, which introduced his personal favourite character – the violently obnoxious Professor Challenger, a fictionalised mashup of explorer Percy Fawcett (who would later go missing while looking for a lost city in Brazil) and physiology professor William Rutherford (under whom Doyle had studied). Although I personally fail to see the appeal of a character who would rather shout down or physically attack his opponents than explain himself, I imagine Doyle found him to be a cathartic contrast to his more famous creation Sherlock Holmes – and such a character is certainly a useful plot catalyst for adventure stories. In this instance, Professor Challenger (Claude Rains) has recently returned from an expedition to South America where he claims to have seen dinosaurs atop a distant plateau, although none of the supporting evidence has survived the return journey. To his credit, he recognises that his story isn’t particularly convincing and proposes that his chief critic Professor Summerlee (Richard Haydn) should accompany him on a return journey to visit the plateau and obtain further evidence. Seeking volunteers from the audience of the public lecture in which he aired his claims, Challenger agrees to accept the experienced big-game-hunter Lord John Roxton (Michael Rennie) and Global News reporter Ed Malone (David Hedison) – although the latter is only accepted under protest after his employer (John Graham) agrees to fund the expedition. Joining them in South America as a fait accompli are the editor’s two grown children, Jennifer Holmes (Jill St. John) – an adventurous woman pursuing an ill-advised relationship with Roxton – and David Holmes (Ray Stricklyn), talked into coming by his big sister. The final expedition members are their local guides, helicopter pilot Manuel Gomez (Fernando Lamas) and his cowardly assistant Costa (Jay Novello).

Allen’s decision to shift the story forward from 1912 to contemporary times doesn’t affect the plot in any substantial way besides the introduction of a helicopter as a means to shortcut a lengthy jungle trek, although this does undercut the idea that we’re travelling to an obscure location completely unknown to western explorers. As helicopters aren’t generally designed for long-range transport, I found myself going down a rabbit hole to learn that the Sikorsky HRS-2 in which they travel had a maximum range of 720 km before refuelling – perfectly adequate for the Korean War, but implausible when it comes to reaching a remote jungle plateau unexplored by western civilisation. This is, of course, completely irrelevant to most viewers – but as my younger self spent a lot of time poring over books with military hardware specs, it’s a little surprising I never picked up on it back then. Then again, my desperation to get to the dinosaurs is probably sufficient explanation.

More significant than the chronological shift are the changes Allen and his co-writer Charles Bennett have made to the characters from Doyle’s original novel. Challenger and Summerlee make the transition more or less intact. The reporter Malone was originally motivated to join the expedition as a way of impressing a girl – this motivation is carried forward by making him a romantic rival for the affections of Jennifer Holmes. The substantial character revisions kick in with Lord John Roxton, who in his original incarnation helped to end slavery in the Amazon. Here, although he retains his international reputation, he has been re-cast as an inveterate womaniser whose pursuit of one particular woman led him to neglect his duties to another South American expedition three years before – his failure to turn up to an appointed rendezvous resulted in the loss and presumed death of all its members. As an attempt to give his character some depth, it’s pretty perfunctory in the final script, but it does at least add something to the character of Gomez, originally an untrustworthy former slaver (and ethnic stereotype) out for revenge against Roxton for killing his brother (also a slaver). In this new scenario, Gomez’s brother was a member of the expedition Roxton failed, making his desire for revenge more sympathetic to the audience – although his decisions in pursuit of that revenge (and last minute heroic change of heart) make very little sense, owing more to plot-convenience than to any compelling psychological rationale.

As for the new characters, Jennifer Holmes is initially promising as the headstrong adventuress who won’t allow herself to be dismissed on the basis of her gender, but is quickly undermined by the writers’ decision to take a 180 degree turn and make her the type of spoiled city girl who joins a dangerous expedition in order to secure a marriage proposal, while bringing along a tiny poodle with its own carry-bag. The love triangle involving Roxton (whom she has pursued over the last two years) and Malone (who she barely knows) is clumsily handled and fails to engage, a token addition for older viewers which simply eats up screen time while boring the younger audience. But Jennifer does at least have more personality than her brother David, a thankless role which gives the actor very little basis on which to create a character and whose primary function is to act as a love interest for the token dialogue-free Native Girl (Vitina Marcus). As for Native Girl’s tribe, it suffices to say that they’re a typically generic mishmash of primitive stereotypes which don’t bear close inspection.

But what about the cool stuff? Well, the movie starts promisingly by running the opening credits over footage of lava, recognising that its young dinosaur-enthusiast viewers will also be hoping to see a volcano or two – and to provide a bit of visual spectacle to tide them over until the characters reach the centre of the action. Roughly half an hour in, we get to see our first dinosaur, and… well, your reaction to what comes next may well depend on your childhood expectations, because all of the dinosaurs in this movie are portrayed by lizards with bits stuck on their heads and/or backs. This was pretty much the default depiction of dinosaurs in live-action entertainment when I was growing up, so it brings a pleasant rush of nostalgia to see this cheerfully old-hat method of doing one’s best on a budget. It wasn’t Allen’s preferred choice – he had included a 10 minute sequence of stop-motion dinosaur animation in his documentary feature The Animal World (1956), which was realised by Willis O’Brien (responsible for 1925’s original film version of The Lost World but best known for King Kong) in collaboration with Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts) – but it was the best option available to him under the budget he had been allocated. Given these constraints, the one mistake Allen makes is to attempt to pass off some of these hybrid lizard creations under the names of actual recognisable dinosaurs. Having Professor Challenger identify an iguana with glued on horns as a Brontosaurus, or a gecko with horns and sails as a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex, only undermines his scientific authority since any child with the most basic knowledge of dinosaurs would be able to point out that they look nothing alike. On the plus side, casting living creatures as dinosaurs does allow for realistic animal movement that stop-motion techniques of the time were incapable of achieving, even if this opens up a dubious animal ethics question about the fight scene between a monitor lizard (portraying a Protostegosaurus) and a spectacled caiman (appearing as a Ceratopspinus). My favourite creature of the lot, however, was (and still is) the giant glowing-green tarantula which ineffectually blocks two characters’ passage through a tunnel of webbing (Native Girl creeps around the edge of the effect before the pursuing Malone dispatches it with a single shot from his rifle). It may not do very much, but I really liked that green glow – the image of that spider is the single most vivid memory of the movie I retained through all of my childhood viewings.

Claude Rains (The Invisible Man, Casablanca) puts in a solid performance as Professor Challenger, submerging himself in a faithful character portrayal which displays a familiarity with the source material and is sufficiently different from his other more famous performances that I didn’t recognise him until I consulted the cast list. The only other performer who really stands out is Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still), giving Lord John Roxton the calm dignity of a man who knows himself better than he’d like and is quietly attempting to find redemption. David Hedison would go on to become the face I associated with James Bond’s CIA buddy Felix Leiter thanks to his likeable performances in Live and Let Die (1973) and Licence to Kill (1989), but the role of Edward Malone gives him little to work with and my lasting impression was of a petulant tantrum-throwing dullard (although Allen must have liked him since he became a series regular in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea). Jill St. John, who seared herself in my memory as Molly in the first episode of Batman (1966) and was so charismatic in Diamond Are Forever (1971), starts well in her opening scenes but is unable to salvage the less inspiring material after the beginning of the expedition proper. Fernando Lamas (The Merry Widow) attempts to make something more of his character than a menacing locus of impending betrayal, but is undermined by the lack of any psychological reality to his character.

The most surprising name to find on the credits list is co-writer Charles Bennett, a talented screenplay writer best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (The 39 Steps, Sabotage, Secret Agent, Saboteur). His work is at its best in the opening London scenes, which provide the greatest opportunity for the characters to bounce off each other. Some signs of this sparkle can still be seen in an exchange between Jennifer and Roxton shortly after their arrival in South America, but from that point on the dialogue becomes increasingly perfunctory. Director and co-writer Irwin Allen may not have been up to much as a writer, but he certainly got a lot of use out of his dinosaur footage, re-using it in all four of his television series before allowing Hammer Films to recycle it for When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970). Allen’s career peaked with the disaster movie boom of the 1970s, most notably The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), the movies most likely to define his legacy. The Lost World never reaches the heights of those films, but while it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny nearly so well as the far superior Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), it still has its charms for those willing to indulge it.

Far more likely to stand the test of time is pioneering Czech animator Karel Zeman’s Journey to the Beginning of Time [Cesta do pravěku] (1955), a charming family film combining boy’s adventure with an educational remit which I wish I’d had the opportunity to see at a younger age. Rather than perpetuating the division between intellectual and physical pursuits more typical of American entertainment of the era, Journey to the Beginning of Time ties the quest for knowledge to a physical journey down a river undertaken by four boys aged between 12 and 17 years old.

Twelve-year-old Jirka (Vladimír Bejval) discovers a Trilobite fossil while out playing near a cave. The curiosity inspired by this discovery prompts his older brother Petr (Josef Lukás), the narrator, to further Jirka’s education, beginning with a diagram illustrating the different stages of life in the intervening millennia and following up with a visit to the local museum to look at the skeletons of prehistoric life before finally reading Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth [Voyage au centre de la Terre] (1864, rev. 1867). Since this has only increased Jirka’s desire to see a living Trilobite, and “almost everything in Jules Verne books came true”, the obvious solution is for them to set off with two of their friends on a journey down the river into prehistory. Petr will record the travels in his journal, while the oldest boy Toník (Petr Herrman) will take photographs.

Sailing up Slovakia’s Váh River and through the cave where Jirka discovered his fossil, the boys emerge from the other side into an icy river and camp overnight in the Ice Age. Continuing their journey the following day, they observe a mammoth on a nearby riverbank (realised through a combination of practical macro-scale motorised puppetry and stop-motion footage matted over the river bank, depending on the angle from which it’s viewed). Further down the river they discover an abandoned campfire in a cave, admiring the tusks and antlers left over from the cave-dweller’s hunting expeditions and marvelling at the absent occupant’s skill at creating cave paintings. Toník goes off in search of the caveman, snapping pictures of the wildlife (birds and bison) before discovering a spear and promptly falling into a pit. The other boys watch two woolly rhinos battle on the opposite riverbank but hide from a mysterious spear-bearing figure who turns out to be their mud-encrusted friend and not a caveman.

Continuing back into the Tertiary Period they encounter flamingoes, gazelles, vultures, Deinotheria, sabre-tooth tigers and giraffes. If there were an American production, I’d expect at least one of the boys to have brought along a rifle, turning this into a mini-safari – but the focus of the story is very much on scientific observation and recording of data. Although the boys have some close encounters with a leopard and some alligators, their approach is to fend the creatures off with fire and make their escape. An encounter with a Uinthatherium prompts laughter from some of the boys about its silly name, leading to an impromptu lesson about scientific nomenclature and the meaning behind the funny-sounding names of prehistoric creatures.

Petr makes a narrow escape from a Phorusrhacos and they continue downriver to the Mesozoic. After fending off some exploratory dives from a hungry Pteranodon (probably more interested in the fish than them), they observe a Styracosaurus and Trachodon on the riverbanks and encounter a Brontosaurus hanging out in the river. And then, at last, they get to witness the obligatory battle between two dinosaurs – a Stegosaurus and a Ceratosaurus. Although the Stegosaurus is successful in fending off its attacker with a few well-placed thwacks from its tail spikes, it succumbs to its injuries, leaving a corpse for the boys to explore (and climb over) the following day. Disaster threatens when they return to discover their boat smashed to pieces, but the older boys are able to construct a raft and their journey continues.

Their raft finally bogs down in the Carboniferous Period, where they encounter giant centipedes, dragonflies and salamanders. Jirka’s tendency to wander off on his own gets him in trouble with the older boys, but they soon forgive him when they learn that he found Petr’s lost journal. Making the last stretch of the journey on land, they finally reach the Silurian Period (represented here by the shores of Rügen, an island off the coast of East Germany). Jirka’s quest comes to a successful conclusion when he finally gets to meet a living Trilobite, illustrated with a touching picture of the young boy holding his fossil in one hand while the other holds its still-living relative. All that remains is a quick coda featuring Petr back at home paging through his completed journal, and the film comes to an end.

The scientific elements of the screenplay by Zeman and J.A. Novotný were bolstered by consultation with palaeontologist Josef Augusta, with visual inspiration for the prehistoric creatures taken from painter Zdeněk Burian, one of the world’s pre-eminent dinosaur artists. The range of techniques used by Zeman to depict these creatures in a live-action film are still deemed worthy of study today, with one Czech educational institution offering courses which give students an opportunity to attempt to recreate his deceptively simple methods. Zeman’s characteristic reference to Jules Verne early in the film would later be realised in three heavily-stylised adaptations making use of more advanced techniques – Invention for Destruction [Vynález zkázy] (1958), The Stolen Airship [Ukradená vzducholoď] (1967) and On the Comet [Na kometě] (1970).

American producer William Cayton bought the American distribution rights, releasing a dubbed and re-edited version with additional footage in 1966 under the pretence that it was an original creation. Despite the additional footage, the US version is 13 minutes shorter than the original and some of the changes foisted upon it for the local audience actively work against the tone of the original. A reconstructed credit sequence running over abstract patterns of light puts the emphasise on the US personnel, with most of the original crew receiving anglicised names or being omitted entirely. The new footage features four Americans who, despite being filmed entirely from behind, are clearly completely different people from those in the film – they don’t even bother to get their relative heights correct. Gone is the delightful premise that Jirka (renamed Jo-Jo) wants to meet a living Trilobite – instead we are treated to an unmotivated visit to the American Museum of Natural History, as the four young men take a far more extensive tour through the museum than their Czech originals and are peppered with graceless infodumps which integrate less smoothly with the overall story progression. Unable to go along with the fantastical conceit of the original, the US version frames the events of their journey as a vision quest imposed by a funny look from a wooden carving of an “Indian medicine man” – at the end of their journey the four boys wake up sitting on the same wooden bench, with the only difference being the completed and travel-worn journal belonging to Petr (renamed Doc because he likes science). The other American boys have a more cavalier attitude to science than their Czech counterparts, all of whom were equally invested in their journey. The attitude to the cave dwelling shows off some particularly telling differences in approach. The Czech boys initially note the evidence of the caveman’s hunting skills, before being awed that he was not just a brute – he was also a talented artist. The American boys can’t help going into the patronising speculation that cave art must have had a ritual purpose rather than simply being a creative act, before reversing the emphasis of the original – underlining that a talented artist can still be a brutal killer. At the end of their journey, the Americans go even further back in time to the abstract lighting effects seen under the opening credits… accompanied by readings from the Book of Genesis about God’s creation of the world. This ham-fisted attempt to shove religion into proceedings was presumably intended as a sop to creationists, but it’s hard to see how juxtaposing this with pseudo-Native American magic serves either a scientific or religious audience. Leaving such plodding missteps aside, the US version still has its charms, but with the superior Czech original now available on Blu Ray from Second Run and looking better than ever, the US version really only bears watching as a curio.

Eastern European Fairy Tale Triple Feature – Blood Countesses, Rat Kings and Evil Astrologers

Greetings 2021! I’ve been away from this blog longer than intended, due to a mixture of social commitments, excessively hot weather and laziness. Today I’m beginning to catch up on my viewing from the monthly Cineslut Film Club. The theme for October was Eastern European Fairy Tales, a genre niche which is like catnip to me, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to explore three examples previously unfamiliar to me. It’s now been over a week since I watched them, so it’s about time I assembled some of my thoughts before the details have faded from memory.

First up is The Bloody Lady [Krvavá pani] (1980), a feature length Slovakian animation telling the tale of Countess Alžbeta Bátoriová, better known to English speakers as Elizabeth Báthory or the Blood Countess (1560-1614), whose influence as the primary historical inspiration for countless female vampires continues to echo down through the centuries – although you could be forgiven for failing to recognise her at first in this unusual take on her story.

When we first meet the Countess, she’s very much like your traditional fairy tale princess, a sweet blonde girl beloved by all and beset by suitors. Every day, as she looks down to the courtyard from her room, her perpetually present suitors show off with displays of physical prowess. Two of them take turns shooting arrows at each other and attempting to catch them; another must have travelled a very long way to be there, since he’s wearing a karategi and putting on a martial arts exhibition. The Countess isn’t particularly interested in these macho displays, preferring to sneak out of the castle and frolic in the forest with her woodland friends, an assortment of animals who delight her with surprisingly well choreographed performances. One day the weather suddenly turns sour and she’s caught in a torrential storm while the animals flee for shelter and her horse bolts. A handsome woodsman finds her unconscious form in the forest and nurses her back to health, while her animal friends bring her presents of food. (Rather perversely, the bird brings her one of its eggs, and it’s made very clear that the bird is effectively bringing her its own child to eat – but it’s played for comedy, with the bird simply giving a sheepish shrug to the viewer in acknowledgement.) Inevitably, the Countess falls in love with the woodsman, and as she prepares to depart for home she gives him her heart. Literally.

In a delightfully twisted turn of fairy tale logic, her new heartless state has dire consequences. She’s abusive towards her woodland friends on the journey home, presaging a gradual increase in bad-tempered and sadistic behaviour, flying into a rage for trivial reasons and tormenting her servants. And then comes the fateful incident when she scratches a servant girl’s face. Wiping away the drop of blood which landed on her hand, she discovers that the newly uncovered patch of skin has turned the purest white. It’s just a short step from there to her new skin care regime – having her servants murdered and then bathing in their blood. Her suitors soon meet the same fate, invited to her chambers via a secret route only to meet their demise in one death trap or another. The woodsman eventually discovers what’s going on and attempts to restore her heart, but she no longer wants it and he’s barely able to rescue it from her dog’s jaws. After a physical confrontation with the Countess’ henchman – whose death, bizarrely, results in snakes slithering out of his head – the woodsman escapes. Her crimes are discovered, the authorities wall her up in her castle to starve to death and justice is (presumably) served. The end? No, because the woodsman suddenly appears inside the sealed tower and revives her corpse by reinstalling her heart, allowing the two to live happily ever after!

It’s difficult to tell whether or not this film was intended for viewing by children. The sometimes overly cute art style, the Countess’ woodland friends and the odd choice to give her a happy ending suggest that it might have been, but the acts of violence and occasional female nudity are… atypical at best for a child audience. The story is told without dialogue, with only a couple of sentences of opening narration to provide any context – but since the version I watched did not include subtitles, I’m left none the wiser.

Writer/director Viktor Kubal was a pioneer of Slovakian animation, involved with the creation of the first Slovakian animated film in 1943, and frequently incorporated elements of local legend and folklore into his work. It’s difficult to find much information on him in English, but as best as I can tell he turned out a substantial body of work from the 1940s to the 1980s. The Bloody Lady is his second and final feature length animation. Although the art style was sometimes a little twee for my tastes, his animation techniques display a great deal of creativity and slowly won me over. The moment which most stood out for me was the transformation of the innocent Countess as the storm struck. During her sun-soaked frolics, her billowing dress made her look very much like a flower; the sudden onslaught of the storm caused her dress to collapse completely, leaving her looking like a drenched bell flower. (There’s some resemblance to Angel’s Trumpet – which, being a poisonous flower, may be a deliberate hint of what’s to come.) Kubal’s fluid animation style is at its best when the forms of objects or people become mutable and their colours flow (with red and white dominating the palette).

Don’t be fooled by the lurid poster for The Rat Saviour [Izbavitelj] (1976) – the movie itself is far subtler and more interesting than the poster would have you believe. An unidentified town in contemporary Croatia is in the throes of a recession. Novelist Ivan Grajski (Ivica Vidović), desperate for money, approaches his publisher hoping for good news only to learn that his allegorical plague novel has been rejected as unsuitable for the times. Returning home to his apartment, he finds himself expelled by the landlord for non-payment of rent. With only a few books and the clothes on his back to his name, his only recourse is to sell his books at the local marketplace. Sonja (Mirjana Majurec), a young woman selling some of her father’s books, takes pity on him and leaves him with her scarf and phone number. Ivan passes a political rally, where the Mayor (Relja Bašić) is making empty promises of wealth and prosperity, before settling down to sleep on a park bench. The policeman who wakes him turns out to be his local butcher, who covertly grants him access to the abandoned Grand Central Bank building on the condition that he stays for only one night and tells nobody.

At this point things take a turn for the surreal. A disused cabinet turns out to be brimming with fancy prepared meals (and the odd rat or two). Ivan finds a working phone and calls Sonja – much to her surprise, since her phone is broken. And he stumbles on a raucous feast-cum-orgy of ratlike people who are discussing their plans to kill Professor Martin Bošković and his daughter. Attempting to expose the gathering to the police the following day, he finds that the cabinet is empty, the phone no longer works and there’s no sign of any large gathering having taken place. Burgeoning doubts about his own sanity are relieved when he’s accosted by the Professor (Fabijan Šovagović), who narrowly escaped an attack by rat people the previous evening and followed him from the police station. The Professor and his daughter (who of course turns out to be Sonja) are the only people aware of a secret conspiracy of rat people (indistinguishable from regular humans until killed) who are ruled by a rat king, as referenced in a 15^th century text. The Professor has been attempting to wage biological warfare against the rat people, who are gradually taking over all positions of power and privilege within society. Ivan is enlisted into his mission to expose and destroy the rat king for the good of society.

The Rat Saviour was based on the early 20^th century short novel “The Rat-Catcher”, written by Russian author Alexander Grin (aka Aleksandr Green). Director Krsto Papić (considered one of Croatia’s best filmmakers) adapted the novel in conjunction with his frequent collaborator Ivo Brešan and fellow director Zoran Tadić. Although on the surface it’s constructed as a surreal conspiracy thriller, and generally seems to be classified as a horror movie, beneath the surface gloss (or rather surface grime) the movie reveals itself to be a social satire using the rat people as an allegory for political corruption. Given that the movie begins with the novelist protagonist having a similar work rejected by his publisher, it’s tempting to speculate about a connection between his novel and the unfolding story. Was Ivan’s novel denied publication by a lackey of the political elite because it cut too close to the bone? Has Ivan found himself trapped in a nightmare of his own imagination? Do Ivan’s artistic sensibilities provide him with a unique insight which allows him to perceive a reality invisible to most? A definitive answer to any of these questions would be disappointing, but the movie has enough substance and mystery to sustain any or all of these perspectives on the material. It’s certainly possible to watch it as a straightforward fantasy horror, but looking for the subtext makes it a more satisfying experience. Papić clearly felt he was dealing with fertile material, since he would return to the well with Infection [Infekcij] (2003), a movie which is variously described as either a remake or a sequel. The movie poster stirs up vague feelings of familiarity – I’m pretty sure I read about it not long after its release – but I haven’t had the opportunity to see it myself (one for my ever-expanding list).

Finally we come to The Ninth Heart [Deváté srdce] (1979), my favourite of the bunch. Czech director Juraj Herz was responsible for the masterful dark comedy The Cremator [Spalovač mrtvol] (1969). His first entry in the fairy-tale-inflected fantasy genre was Morgiana (1972) which, like The Rat Saviour, was an adaptation of an Alexander Grin novel. While Morgiana didn’t really include any fantastical elements, they are very much an integral part of The Ninth Heart‘s story.

The hero of the story is the penniless student Martin (Ondřej Pavelka), although there’s little evidence on display for his status as a student as he seems to spend all of his time wandering from town to town and admiring the pretty women. Smitten by assistant puppeteer Tončka (Anna Maľová), he falls in with a group of travelling players and tricks a snobbish innkeeper (Václav Lohniský) into feeding the entire troupe, which lands him in jail when he’s unable to pay the bill. Fortunately, he discovers that his newly acquired cloak (a gift from a poor musician to whom he was kind) is actually a cloak of invisibility. Unfortunately, he sabotages his own escape attempt by spending too much time tormenting the arresting officers, losing his cloak when it gets caught in a closing door.

Facing a severe punishment, Martin volunteers to undertake a quest to lift a curse from the Princess (Julie Jurištová), a task which has seen eight other young men disappear never to be heard from again. This turns out to be an elaborate scheme on the part of court astrologer Count Aldobrandini (Juraj Kukura), who is working a spell to make the Princess fall in love with him while using the curse as a pretext to obtain the hearts of nine young men, an essential ingredient for the potion which has allowed him to live for 300 years. The court jester (František Filipovský), who has his suspicions about the astrologer, joins him on his quest, in which a pomegranate necklace bestowed upon him by Tončka to remind him of their love also has an important part to play.

I don’t know what it is about Czech fantasy which resonates so strongly with me, but The Ninth Heart is a gorgeous example of what this type of film has to offer. Herz is in complete synch with his cinematographer, production designers and makeup artists. Among this highly talented group of collaborators, the names which really stand out to a western audience are the celebrated surrealist animator Jan Švankmajer and his wife Eva Švankmajerová, who were responsible for the art direction, visual effects and title design. This was during the period when Švankmajer had been banned by the government from making his own films, leading to several years working in the background of other Czech productions. Although the travelling players’ puppets provide the clearest connections to Švankmajer’s other work, the visual highlight of the film is the astrologer’s Chamber of Time. This beautifully constructed set is a large hall filled with tall flickering candles, requiring careful navigation by the cast members. The back of the set is dominated by a gigantic pendulum straight out of Edgar Allan Poe, swinging back and forth across the fork of a bifurcated staircase, making it impossible for anybody to use unless the pendulum is halted. It’s a stunning piece of work and is heavily featured in the later sections of the film, allowing plenty of time for the viewer to revel in its beauty and construction.

The Ninth Heart was made back to back with Herz’s Beauty and the Beast [Panna a netvor] (1979), which beat it to the cinemas by a month and made the unusual choice to depict the titular Beast of the classic French fairy tale as possessing an avian form. Hopefully the rumours of an impending blu ray release for the English language market will turn out to be true, because The Ninth Heart has left me desperate to see more.

Karel Čapek Double Feature – Krakatit / The White Disease

Like many people, while I’m aware of Karel Čapek as the author of the 1920 play R.U.R. which introduced the word “robot” to the world in its modern sense, I’ve never read or seen the play, let alone had any real awareness of the rest of his creative output. The most recent Virtual Cinémathèque hosted by ACMI, Karel Čapek on Film, features a curated selection of films based on two Čapek adaptations hosted by the Czech Film Classics [Česká filmová klasika] YouTube channel.

Krakatit (1948)

Karel Čapek’s second novel Krakatit (1924) was inspired by his horror at a 1917 munitions factory explosion, killing hundreds of workers (including children) and witnessed by Čapek from 25 miles away through a chateau window. His prescient novel deals with a man who invents a new explosive compound which is effectively a chemical equivalent to the nuclear bomb, named “krakatite” in reference to the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Čapek uses this invention to speculate about its impact on society and to explore a range of issues relating to the imperfect behaviour of humans on an individual and societal level. In the wake of World War 2, writer/director Otakar Vávra simplified the novel to focus more specifically on the impact of krakatite’s creation as an analogue for nuclear proliferation.

The narrative is formed from the fevered recollections/imaginations of Prokop (Karel Höger) as he receives emergency medical treatment for a combination of meningitis and pneumonia. He is initially seen stumbling through the street in full film noir Peter Lorre mode, barely keeping himself together physically or mentally, before collapsing in the arms of Tomes (Miroslav Homola), an old friend from his student days. He was working with a small quantity of his new discovery when it unexpectedly detonated in his face, triggered by the frequency of a late night pirate radio station broadcast. Tomes, who studied chemistry but is unemployed and desperate for money, pumps the delirious Prokop for information about his invention. Prokop wakes the next day to find himself alone and receives a visit from a mysterious veiled woman with a desperate message for Tomes. Still in a precarious state, he somehow makes his way to the house of Tomes’ father, who just happens to be a doctor.

After being nursed back to health by the doctor and his daughter (a nice girl with whom, of course, he falls in love), the chance discovery of a personals ad about krakatite in a discarded newspaper sheet drags him back into the plot – and further from reality. The view from the window of the doctor’s house is a film projection of Prokop climbing the hill to his own house, and suddenly we are inside the house with him as he encounters the person who placed the ad. After a night of drunken abandon, Prokop wakes up in another country, where he is forced to work on his invention. Although not very responsive to direct coercion, Prokop succumbs to the seductive overtures of Princess Wilhelmina Hagen (Florence Marly), who pulls out all of the femme fatale stops to wrap him around her finger. Their initial encounter, after she hides him from her men, is startlingly staged. Stating that she’s heard that he can judge a person’s character simply by holding their hand (a direct appeal to his sense of pride), she offers him her hand. The camera spends a great deal of time focused on their hands as they writhe together, becoming more frenzied, in a clear evocation of sexual congress, after which she pointedly observes that she is ready to explode in the arms of the right man. We next see her walking, seemingly oblivious to his warning cries, near the scene of the first test of his new explosive. When he tackles her to the ground to take cover, landing on top of her, she clutches him to her and bites his neck, leading him to begin kissing her shortly before a huge explosion leaves them both panting.

When Prokop eventually realises the extent to which he’s being manipulated, he escapes (in an increasingly unlikely sequence) with the aid of D’Hémon (Jirí Plachý), the ambassador, who reveals his true (rather unsubtle) name to be Daimon soon after we realise that is car is now travelling through the clouds. Daimon takes Prokop to meet an assembly of aristocrats and military leaders being charmed by an obvious analogue for Hitler, before whisking him away for a blatant “temptation of Christ in the desert” moment at the secret mountain base of the krakatite-triggering pirate radio station to offer him dominion over the Earth.

Far more didactic than the original novel, these elements of the movie are less irritating than they might be thanks to the way in which Vávra stages the material. The style of filming becomes more dream-like and openly expressionist, with perhaps the most effective sequence being the scene where Prokop confronts the Princess about her manipulation, only for her to freeze in place as her face fades away to a featureless mask. Frequent collaborator Jiří Srnka’s score is alternately bombastic, menacing, and gentle, with its experimental style foreshadowing the science fiction movies of the 1950s. Although the film ultimately turns out to be a moralising hallucination about the responsibility of the scientist to consider the repercussions of their inventions and their potential abuse by entrenched power structures, Vávra’s more imaginative sequences within this material create a more lasting impression.

Light Penetrates the Darkness [Svetlo proniká tmou] (1938)

Otakar Vávra worked in a range of styles throughout his career and would later become a mentor to prominent members of the Czech New Wave such as Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Věra Chytilová (Daisies) and the recently deceased Jiří Menzel (Closely Watched Trains). He began his career as a director in a more avant-garde mode with this paean to electricity, frantically scored on piano by Joachin Bärenz, an abstract exploration of the relationship between light and dark which is at the core of black & white cinematography.

The White Disease [Bílá nemoc] (1937)

Just as Krakatit is haunted by the aftermath of World War 2, The White Disease is infected with the pestilential atmosphere heralding the war’s imminent outbreak. Karel Čapek’s play, starring Hugo Haas, debuted in Prague in 1937. Haas wrote and directed this movie adaptation, featuring most of the original cast, for release in December. Before the expiration of another year, Nazi Germany had annexed the Sudetenland, leading to the complete occupation of Czechoslovakia five months later.

The White Disease opens with a nationalistic rallying cry for military expansion into the territory of the unknown country’s “inferior” neighbours, presided over by The Marshal (Zdenek Stepánek) in full-on Hitler mode. We first meet Doctor Galén (Hugo Haas) – named in tribute to the ancient Greek physician Galen – in the middle of the crowd at this rally, appalled at the populace’s eager response to the Marshal’s warmongering.

While the nation prepares for war, it is also suffering from the increasing encroachment of the disease morbus chengi, a new form of leprosy which initially manifests as a white spot on the neck, is only infectious to those over 45 years old, and has no known cure. Professor Sigelius (Bedrich Karen), the self-important doctor in charge of the hospital, is complacently content to shunt the patients off into wards segregated according to social standing – the poor are treated with potash, while the wealthy are treated with Peruvian Balsam. Rather than being of any medical benefit, these “treatments” simply act to reduced the smell of their wounds – the final stage of treatment is the administration of morphine while the patients are left to die.

Dr Galén, a general practitioner who works with the less well off members of society, has a great deal of difficulty in convincing Prof Sigelius to allow him to implement a potential cure that has shown some promise among his patients. Sigelius is extremely resistant, insisting at first that he will only allow tried and true procedures in his hospital, and since the current course of treatment is (to his mind) proving effective (i.e. proceeding smoothly and hiding the problem without curing it), there is no reason to change. When he is convinced, after great persistence, to consider that the new treatment might actually work, he is only concerned with the prestige of discovery, refusing to implement the cure unless he is given the complete solution and allowed to test it himself. Only after the possibility is raised that he himself might one day be infected will he allow Dr Galén to conduct a clinical trial to confirm the cure’s success on the hospital’s “charity cases”.

Although Sigelius tries to crowd Galén out of the picture after the cure is proven to be effective, Galén (an ex-military doctor who was horrified by the waste of life he saw in the trenches of World War 1) announces to the press that he is the only one who knows the cure’s secret, and that until the wealthy and powerful exert their influence to end war and commit to peace, he will only administer the cure to the poor. Rather than negotiate with Galén, Sigelius kicks him out of the hospital, and Galén makes good on his promise.

Much of the rest of the film involves the attempts of those in positions of privilege to convince Galén to treat them. People with varying levels of societal influence are encouraged to do what they can to encourage peace, such as quitting their job in the munitions factory or using their monetary/political influence to campaign for peace in the press. None of them, however, are willing to give up what they have in the cause of peace, even though it will mean their death.

No sooner has Sigelius received approval to set up concentration camps for the infected than the disease begins to become apparent in those further up the national hierarchy. The climactic confrontation between Galén and the Marshal exposes the arrogant self-absorption of the man at the top, who portrays himself as merely being a conduit for the will of the people despite having consciously worked to rile up his countrymen’s aggression, orchestrating faked diplomatic incidents over a period of months and planning for a sneak bombing raid on the enemy prior to the declaration of war, all for the sake of the military glory which he believes his country should want. His ego-driven feelings of divine authority even lead him to deliberately expose himself to the disease by shaking the hand of his infected friend, believing himself too strong to succumb to something which surely only affects the weak (with predictable consequences). The disease finally manifests once he has irrevocably committed the country to a war which will not be the easy victory he expected, and he discovers that he has made himself so indispensable to the military hierarchy that the entire war effort would collapse on his death. After imagining himself leading the war effort on horseback from the front as the flesh decays from his skeletal figure, the Grim Reaper incarnate, he finally succumbs to Galén’s condition of peace and summons him to the ministry… only for Galén to be killed by the crowds outside the ministry before he can enter, due to his refusal to join in with their cries for war.

Haas’ technique as a director technique isn’t visibly on display for much of the film, probably because of its origins as a stage play. One sequence that stood out to me came during the conversation between Galén and the Marshal, when the Marshal attempts to appeal to Galén’s military experience as a way of evoking a sense of duty. The camera focuses on the Marshal’s gleaming military boots, pacing backwards and forwards, before contrasting them with Galén’s ordinary footwear, firmly in place. We then cut to a shot of the Marshal’s torso, chest puffed up, decorated with medals and military braid, contrasted with Galén’s shabby civilian suit. Finally we see a shot of the Marshal’s face as he attempts to pull rank, switching to Galén’s face as he raises his chin high and refuses to comply, demanding to be arrested for insubordination.

Although the movie aims for a message of hope despite the cynical inevitability of Galén’s death, the very forces that Čapek and Haas railed against were soon to overtake their country. Čapek, named by the Nazis as “public enemy number two”, died in 1938 of pneumonia, not long before they seized power. Haas lost his position with the National Theater due to his Jewish background and fled to America with his immediate family, but was to lose both his father and brother to the concentration camps.

Strange Fascination (1952)

After moving to America, Haas found it difficult to reestablish his film career. He broke back into acting in 1944 and finally obtained work as a writer/director again in 1951 with a string of B-movie films noirs, generally involving an older man (played by Haas) who is exploited by an attractive younger woman. In Strange Fascination, selected as a support feature by ACMI, Haas plays an emigre pianist struggling to establish a career in America, enticed into a relationship with a dancer (Cleo Moore) before she dumps him for a younger man. It’s more sentimental than most films of its type, building the pianist’s life back up again at the end with his original wealthy patron. It’s perfectly competently made on a tight budget, but I found little to recommend it, despite the esteem in which it’s held by Martin Scorsese.

We Are One Retrospective – Offerings from Czech Republic

I’ve been enamoured of Czech cinema for some time now, but still have a very minor familiarity with it. Because of this, viewing the contributions of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to the We Are One Global Film Festival was of especial interest. One offer was one feature film and a curated selection of four student short films from Future Frames, KVIFF’s spotlight on up-and-coming filmmakers.

Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet [Adéla jeste nevecerela] (1977, Czechoslovakia, 102 min)

A Czech detective parody featuring pulp detective Nick Carter in a case which involves a carnivorous plant trained to eat people upon hearing a Mozart lullaby by a believed-dead master criminal whose entire career was a build up to taking revenge on his botany teacher for giving him a bad mark which spoiled his chances with a girl. Just the sort of thing I enjoy! The plant is animated by Jan Švankmajer, the script is by Jiří Brdečka (who wrote Karel Zeman’s wonderful adaptations of Jules Verne and Baron Munchausen), and the music is by Luboš Fišer (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders). Very happy to have seen this!

Peacock: A Comedy in Three Acts [Furiant] (2015, Czech Republic, 27 min)

My personal favourite of these short films, a funny speculation on the early years of a famous Czech realist playwright, constructing a narrative around the scanty known facts and labelled with scientific subtitles.

Everything Will Be Okay [Alles wird gut] (2015, Germany, 30 min)

A divorced father picks up his daughter for the latest custody visit and surreptitiously arranges during their day out to flee the country with her. Sad, becomes stressful, but resolves.

Tenants [Lokatorki] (2015, Poland, 30 min)

Even more stressful story about a woman who buys a flat only to find the previous occupant (who is also a full-time carer for her adult daughter) hasn’t moved out and refuses to move.

Warm Comedy about Depression, Madness and Unfulfilled Dreams [Hrejivá komédia o depresii, šialenstve a nesplnených snoch] (2017, Slovakia, 22 min)

Lighter touch than the last two, but conveys the spiky irritability of the family a bit too well. At least it all comes out well in the end.

Witchcraft Double Feature – The Witch (1952) / The Girl on the Broomstick (1971)

I am very grateful to Kat Ellinger (editor of Diabolique Magazine) for the opportunity to see these films as part of her Cineslut Film Club. Both have been on my long-term viewing list and both are worthy of receiving proper blu ray releases – I’d certainly buy them.

The Witch [Noita palaa elämään] (1952)

1952 was clearly a good year for Finnish horror films with strong female protagonists, although The Witch is more comedy than horror. Released a little over two months after The White Reindeer [Valkoinen peura], this story begins with an archaeological dig conducted by Greta (Hillevi Lagerstam) and her husband Hannu (Toivo Mäkelä). They unearth the body of a woman with an aspen stake through her heart, which identifies her to the villagers as Birgit, killed for being a witch 300 years ago. Despite their warnings, Hannu removes the stake and a strong wind whips up, immediately confirming the villagers’ belief that the witch will return to life.

Conceptions of gender are quickly revealed to be central to the film as Greta and Hannu return to their base at the Baron’s mansion. The Baron’s son Veikko (Sakari Jurkka) takes Hannu’s assertion that he has discovered a witch to refer to Greta. Local painter Kauko (Helge Herala) also makes this connection, but with a stronger connection to her sexual allure, as he has not given up his pursuit of her affections despite her marriage (affections which she is steadfast in rejecting in a no-nonsense fashion, making it very clear that she loves her husband and that her views on the matter are paramount). Finally, Baron Hallberg (Aku Korhonen) takes the connection one step further with his statement that all women are witches, and we discover later that his son is reluctant to form a relationship with any of the women in the village as he couldn’t be certain that they weren’t his father’s offspring. The women of the village, rather revealingly, state that Birgit must have been a witch because she resisted the advances of that era’s Baron.

That evening, as the storm worsens, a naked woman (Mirja Mane) is discovered lying unconscious in the grave from which the witch has been disinterred. Seemingly amnesiac, all she can recall is that her name is Birgit. Everybody except Greta is convinced that Birgit must be the witch returned to life, even more so when they discover that the witch’s clothes (in surprisingly good condition after 300 years) fit her. Birgit seems to confirm this impression with her wild behaviour and references to her burial, although the fact that all of the men surrounding her at her return to consciousness have insisted on identifying her as the exhumed witch should throw her self-identification into doubt. Various strange incidents accompany her encounters with the villagers the next day, which could be coincidental or could be signs of her powers.

Mirja Mane is strikingly alluring in her role as Birgit, providing a magnetic performance which throws all of the men in the Baron’s mansion off-kilter in a plausible manner. For the 1950s, she spends a surprising amount of time naked on-screen, but it should be stressed that she spends most of the film clothed and the nudity is not relied on to explain the power she exerts. Without giving away the resolution of the story, the escalation of the effect she exerts on the men during the final 20 minutes is compellingly portrayed, as the staging of the scenes becomes more heightened, the imagery becomes wilder, and events unwind at a more frantic pace, disrupting the narrative and careening towards the climax.

Because this was the 1950s, it’s not terribly surprising when the film attempts to convey a specific moral message during the final scene, likely deriving from the play on which it was based. Whatever the source of the message, it’s not a lesson that can convincingly be drawn from the film as presented. To me, the actual message delivered by the film is a critique of men who project their sexual fantasies onto women and attempt to make them conform to those fantasies while pretending to value their autonomy.

The Girl on the Broomstick [Dívka na koštěti] (1971)

Delightful Czechoslavakian family comedy directed by Václav Vorlícek, who would go on to make Three Wishes for Cinderella [Tri orísky pro Popelku] (1973). I was fortunate to have seen this later film thanks to my wife’s German penfriend, who grew up loving it and bought her a copy of the German dubbed DVD under the title Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel. The Girl on the Broomstick also has a touch of the fairy tale, but more in the “contemporary children’s fantasy” mould.

The titular girl on the broomstick is Saxana (Petra Cernocká), a teenage witch who’s bored by her magic classes. The school setting follows the template of a classic cobwebby castle/dungeon, with a vampire janitor and a four-armed headmaster. Saxana and her classmates exhibit a magnificent range of colourful and exotic fantasy costuming and it’s a great pity that we don’t get to see much more of them. After being given 300 years of detention for failing to do her homework, Saxana turns herself into an owl and flies off to visit our world for 44 hours. Upír the janitor (Vladimír Mensík), who inadvertently assisted her departure, is sent after her to make sure that she doesn’t drink any Hag’s Ear potion during her visit, which would prevent her from ever returning.

Arriving at the zoo in her owl form, Saxana is taken home in a bag by the zookeeper as a gift to his son Honza (Jan Hrusínský), who is pleasantly surprised when Saxana climbs out of the bag in her human form instead. Thankfully the story avoids any sleaziness and establishes a more innocent connection of friendship-which-might-become-something-more-eventually. Saxana accompanies Honza to school the next day. After getting in trouble for too much whispered conversation with Honza, she is moved to sit at the front of class next to Rousek (Jan Kraus), the school troublemaker. Having already decided she wants to stay in our world, she agrees to cast some spells for Rousek in exchange for a hag’s ear. Unfortunately, Saxana is very much the trusting innocent (despite having been raised with the expectation of one day being the sort of witch who traps and eats children), and Rousek and his friends take full advantage of her naivety.

While I got a great deal of enjoyment from this film, I found it very difficult to put up with Rousek and his friends, as they’re just horrible little weasels who seem to have far too easy a time of it for much of the film. After Saxana has turned the school faculty into rabbits (an animal the boys suggested because they’re likely to end up being eaten!) and asks for her hag’s ear, the boys roll around on the floor laughing at her, finding her even more hilarious when they think she’s about to cry. When she threatens to leave, they shove a gag in her mouth, tie her up and push her into a cupboard. Although Saxana quickly rescues herself and flies away on a broom, I wasn’t convinced they would have been able to get away with their behaviour that easily, and they get away with a lot more in the course of the film, before their ultimate comeuppance. I suppose the exaggerated level of success in their villainy fits in with a children’s fantasy, but it still bugged me.

Having said that, Saxana and Honza do manage to wrap things up neatly, with Saxana retaining her agency while setting everything to rights. None of the transformed humans come to any harm, Rousek and his friends are punished, Upír meets a nice cleaning lady and Saxana achieves the life she wants. It’s lightweight fantastical fun which left a smile on my face.

MIFF 68½ – Servants [Služobníci] (2020)

Set in a Catholic seminary in 1980s Brastislava, Servants is strongly reminiscent in both style and subject matter of the Czech New Wave cinema of the 1960s. The stark black & white cinematography and oppressive atmosphere convey the feel of a Cold War espionage thriller in this story of state suppression.

Beginning as a body is removed from the boot of a car and dumped under a bridge, we skip back in time 143 days and hear the welcoming speech for the new intake of young men at the seminary, noting that there had been some troublemakers in last year’s intake and expressing the ominous hope that this will not be repeated. Although nominally run according to the guidelines of the Catholic hierarchy, the head of the seminary is resigned to being under the thumb of the “church department” of State Security. A secret underground movement of priests and seminarians hold meetings, disseminate pamphlets and leak information to Radio Free Europe in a covert rebellion against state subjugation of religion. The confessor who welcomes the two focal characters to the seminary is compromised due to a hit & run accident in his past, turning the confessional into an intelligence source for rooting out disloyalty. Dissidents are turned into informers, drafted into the military, or otherwise disposed of.

The distinction between state bureaucracy and religious institution is blurred in other ways. The Association of Catholic Clergy Pacem in Terris, officially sponsored by the regime, holds its meetings in a cleanly regimented conference hall. Business suits are more prevalent than clerical robes and there is a none-too-subtle shot of all of the clergy present holding forth their right arms in worship, an image doubtlessly intended to evoke the memory of the fascist salute. The final scene of the film shows the head of State Security’s “church department” kneeling naked in front of his terminal, bathing in the glow of the screen with a reverence suggesting a religious dedication to his service to the State.

The cinematography is beautifully composed, with careful framing, skillful lighting and striking imagery throughout. An air of brooding menace dominates the soundtrack, with occasional irruptions of Ligeti-like choral bursts of spirituality (albeit lacking the sense of peace traditionally present in a religious setting). There are a couple of moments which might normally be considered joyful or even hilarious in this setting – a priest jumping on a trampoline, three seminarians throwing snowballs at each other – which, by their placement in relation to other scenes and their unconventional staging, are instead full of the threat of suppressed violence, whether from within or without.

Although there are minor signs of hope towards the end of the film, as the suicide of a seminarian affects the actions of the compromised confessor and his roommate, the movie (quite rightly) does not hint forwards to the change in government to come at the end of the decade. Instead it remains firmly anchored within the era depicted and leaves the viewer (along with the characters) uncertain of the future.