ONE FOR THE AGES: THE BALLADIC, PAINTERLY CINEMA OF FRANTIŠEK VLÁČIL

Despite rising to prominence in the 1960s, František Vláčil (1924–1999) was not a member of the storied Czechoslovak New Wave that emerged from Prague’s celebrated film school, FAMU. Rather, he had studied art history and aesthetics and came to cinema through performing military service, working for the Czechoslovak Army Film Unit. Vláčil was famous for drafting detailed storyboards and exactingly adhering to their exquisite compositions during filming. Typically concerned with bygone eras, his productions routinely involved going to punishing lengths to obsessively create as authentic and lived-in depictions of the past as possible. With all works sourced from the National Film Archive in Prague, this season includes his most celebrated and widely travelled work, 1967’s monumental, high-contrast black-and-white medieval epic, Marketa Lazarová, the middle masterpiece in a loose trilogy of visionary historical films bookended by The Devil’s Trap (1962, set in the 1700s and included in this season) and The Valley of the Bees (1968). Vláčil’s beautiful first feature, The White Dove (1960), a rare contemporaneous film, is also included, along with two works set in the immediate aftermath of World War II: his first colour film, Adelheid (1970), and perhaps his greatest late work, 1978’s Shadows of a Hot Summer. Two shorts have been added to round out the program: 1958’s poetic Clouds of Glass, produced for the Army Film Unit, and 1972’s symphonic tribute to Prague, The City in White, scored by the great Zdeněk Liška, who also provided the extraordinary soundtracks for all of this season’s features.

Presented in partnership with the Czech and Slovak Film Festival of Australia.

Wednesday 24 September

7:00pm MARKETA LAZAROÁ

František Vláčil (1967) 165 mins – Unclassified 15+

Often proclaimed the greatest Czech film ever made, this dense, hallucinatory medieval epic, pitting clan against clan and Christians against Pagans, is a rush of indelible, high-contrast, black-and-white ’Scope imagery, shot with an ever-prowling camera, edited furiously and restlessly switching between objective and subjective points-of-view. Trying to keep up with the labyrinthine plot is secondary to giving into the film’s experiential potency, as Vláčil’s painstaking insistence on authentic 13th-century period detail and hardscrabble brutality is raised, by stunning atmospherics inclusive of Zdeněk Liška’s majestic choral-electronic score, to the order of the sublime.

4K DCP.

Preceded by The City in White František Vláčil (1972) 15 mins – Unclassified 15+. A short symphony for snowbound Prague made when Vláčil was effectively blacklisted from feature-film production.

Both films courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Marketa Lazarová
by John Edmond

Wednesday 1 October

7:00pm THE DEVIL’S TRAP

František Vláčil (1962) 85 mins – Unclassified 15+

In Vláčil’s remarkable first historical opus, set in early 18th-century Bohemia, the church and aristocracy collude to prosecute claims of witchcraft against an honest miller who possesses inconvenient knowledge of the natural world around him. Rudolf Milič’s vivid, expressionist cinematography and Zdeněk Liška’s score, enfolding period-evocative foley into its orchestration, mesh to conjure up the atmospherics and timeless themes of a long-past era to great transportive effect.

Courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

8:40pm ADELHEID

František Vláčil (1970) 99 mins – Unclassified 15+

Adapted from his own novel by Czech author Vladimír Körner, Vlácil’s provocative first colour film focuses on the frictions between Czechs and Germans in post-war Czechoslovakia. Set during the mass expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II, it focuses on a returning Czech soldier who falls in love with his German housemaid, but who turns out to be the daughter of a notorious Nazi war criminal. Regarded as controversial by the Czech authorities, the film originally received a minimal release but has since gone on to be regarded as one of the director’s greatest works.

4K DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

Wednesday 8 October

7:00pm THE WHITE DOVE

František Vláčil (1960) 73 mins – Unclassified 15+

The titular dove is part of a flock of carrier pigeons released in northern France and bound for Germany. The bird loses its way and ends up in Prague where its fate depends on the film’s protagonist, a wheelchair-bound boy. Charting the relationship between the boy, an artist and the young German girl who owns the bird, this allegorical tale is a poetic vision of peace, freedom and friendship across Europe. Released two years after Vláčil’s Venice Film Festival prizewinning short, Clouds of Glass, this was the director’s first feature-length film.

Preceded by Clouds of Glass František Vláčil (1958) 20 mins – Unclassified 15+. Vláčil’s poetic, nearly dialogue-free short concerns the love of flight shared by a boy and an old man.

Both films courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.

8:45pm SHADOWS OF A HOT SUMMER

František Vláčil (1978) 100 mins – Unclassified 15+

In the aftermath of World War II, a band of Ukrainian anti-Soviet guerillas take a Czech farming family hostage while one of their number awaits medical treatment. Vláčil’s allegory for life under occupation – written by future politician and key figure of the Velvet Revolution Jiří Křižan – focuses on the minutiae of daily existence, allowing an atmosphere of dread to accumulate through the combination of sparse dialogue, elegant pacing and Zdeněk Liška’s striking music. Winner of Best Film at the 1978 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

4K DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.