661 Marketa Lazarová

[repeat]

What Zdeněk Liška does with the music is as astonishing to me watching the film for the umpteenth time as it was first time round

Jesus Christ, that is beautiful - this now goes straight to the top of my shopping list. Thanks for the extra push, I probably wouldn't have got around to this for a while had I not seen/heard that clip!

[MichaelB]

I'm anticipating quite a lot of "where the hell did this come from and why have I never heard of it before?" reactions in June!

[rrenault]

Are you sure about that? Since when are they OOP?

A representative of The Film Office, the Czech sales agency handling the various 1960s New Wave titles, confirmed in these very forums that at present Criterion is the only US label with the distribution rights to these films.

And to support this, the Facets discs are currently going for silly money at Amazon - ludicrous money, in fact, as for the $199 that one deluded optimist is asking for Adelheid you could probably import the Second Run DVD (complete with superior transfer and properly synchronised subtitles) and pay for a multi-region machine to play it on!

Oh wait, nevermind. I was confusing Facets with Second Run.

[MichaelB]

Yes, Second Run's Vláčil titles are still very much in print (I think they're all region-free PAL), and comfortably the best English-friendly editions of Valley of the Bees and Adelheid that you can currently get.

The Facets discs were pretty lousy by comparison (fixed, piss-yellow and poorly-synchronised subtitles on top of less than wonderful PAL-to-NTSC conversions) and the Czech DVDs only have Czech HOH subtitles. Sadly, there has yet to be a decent DVD edition of The White Dove - Facets' was VHS quality with the usual subtitle issues, and I'd gladly buy even an unsubtitled Czech DVD (there's little dialogue to begin with, and little of that is significant), but they have to make one available first.

[Black Hat]

the Czechs have made innumerable medieval/period costume dramas

Any idea why that's the case? Simply a case of they make money or something deeper culturally?

edit: Soviet occupation?

[Mr Sausage]

I'm playing the Czech BD right now, and to be honest if someone had told me that I was watching a sneak preview of the Criterion I'd have no problem believing them - it's comfortably up to the standard set by, say, the Criterion transfer of Letter Never Sent. And assuming that Criterion will be working from the same 4K master, there would seem to be little for them to do at their end.

And one of the most exciting things about this release is that it will finally give a reasonably high Stateside profile to one of the greatest director-composer partnerships in all cinema history - right up there with Eisenstein-Prokofiev, Hitchcock-Herrmann, Fellini-Rota and Leone-Morricone. What Zdeněk Liška does with the music is as astonishing to me watching the film for the umpteenth time as it was first time round - his blend of a cappella choral singing, toneless chanting, weird Harry Partch-style home-made percussion and discreet electronics is like nothing else ever attempted in a film score, and in many ways the film's lack of influence has helped ensure that it remains a dazzling one-off.

(There's a great example here, despite the tinny audio compression.)

Wow. I was already excited for this, but now I'm wondering how I'm going to get through the next three months. I'd previously known this only as a title, never knew much about the film itself, but it looks absolutely essential. Judging from the clip you posted, it's exactly the kind of film that appeals to me the most.

[repeat]

Judging from the clip you posted, it's exactly the kind of film that appeals to me the most.

This reminds me that several years ago, I was going to ask people here to recommend some films that might resemble this vague idea I had of the kind of film I wanted to see (and knew had to exist). I never posted that question as I couldn't formulate it in a satisfying way, but I now realize that the last 90 seconds of that clip might just be the answer.

[swo17]

For those too lazy to hit a fast forward button, here is just the last 90ish seconds of that clip, though both of these clips miss out on the striking way that the score bleeds into the next title card.

Also, for those too impatient to wait three months, someone has put the entire film up on YouTube (for now). Though if you've waited this long, you might as well let your first time through be with the Blu-ray.

[MichaelB]

the Czechs have made innumerable medieval/period costume dramas

Any idea why that's the case? Simply a case of they make money or something deeper culturally?

edit: Soviet occupation?

Sorry, I've only just spotted this.

Central Europe generally has a very strong tradition of rural folklore and fairytale, and Czech, Slovak and Czechoslovak cinema has always reflected this. They have their very own Robin Hood figure in Juraj Jánošík, who has been the subject of at least half a dozen films from 1921 to 2009, and they also have an unusually strong commitment to presenting traditional children's fairytales on film. And in Slovakia in particular, historical dramas with rural settings are common enough to be considered a major genre there.

The difference here is that Marketa Lazarová is a full-blown art movie, and medieval art movies are much thinner on the ground - although Second Run is bringing out Eduard Grečner's almost exactly contemporary Dragon's Return at some point soon.

[zedz]

And Dragon's Return has a score (by Ilja Zeljenka) that's up with the best of Liska's. Which translates as "one of the greatest film scores ever written."

With the Criterion release of Marketa Lazarova, we may be witnessing a definitive turning point in the reputation of a great film, but it's important to remember that there are countless other overlooked masterpieces out there waiting to be rediscovered (or discovered at all). And if you wait for Criterion to stumble over them, you might be waiting forever.

[bainbridgezu]

Added supplements:

In the Web of Time, a short documentary from 1989 by cinematographer František Uldrich, in which director František Vláčil discusses his filmmaking process

Interview with Universal Production Partners technical director Ivo Marák about the film’s restoration

Gallery of storyboards by Vláčil

Trailer

[bdlover]

I did the same when the list came out and was surprised how low it was.

Not really very low at all when you consider the quality of the other films sharing that position in the poll - and the total number of films made over the last 120 or so years!

[dad1153]

Caught a 35mm screening of "Marketa Lazarová" at Anthology Film Archives Sunday afternoon/evening. Great print BTW, with hardly any blemishes and just the right amount of grain to stand out as film stock without becoming intolerable. I'm sorry to say though that I didn't like the movie at all except for, as mentioned here, Zdeněk Liška's amazing music score (which is the only thing that kept me from giving in to the temptation to just say 'fuck this' and go to sleep). Even with the on-screen text telling you exactly what is about to happen in the tableau you're about to see I was confused as heck for a long stretch of the film as to who was who and what was happening (long stretches of incidental dialogue went unsubtitled, and I think something there that was important was left to the wind). And, unlike "Andrei Rublev's" amazing set-pieces during the 2nd half and the great ending "Marketa Lazarová" just meanders about with its quasi-philosophical, poetic and simplistic-but-confusing story 'till the very end. I'm glad those that like this movie will get to sample it with some Criterion bonus features. I'm also happy I caught "Marketa Lazarová" on the big screen because, had I blind bought it, it would have been my worst purchase in the collection since the "I Am Curious" Box Set.

[MichaelB]

(long stretches of incidental dialogue went unsubtitled

That's certainly not true of either the Second Run DVD or Czech National Film Archive BD releases, and I can't believe it'll be true of the Criterion BD either.

[Lowry_Sam]

(long stretches of incidental dialogue went unsubtitled

That's certainly not true of either the Second Run DVD or Czech National Film Archive BD releases, and I can't believe it'll be true of the Criterion BD either.

If I remember correctly the print I saw (the Pacific Film Archive has their own print) had portions that were not translated, but I believe most of these were languages other than Czech (particularly German)....or I may be confusing it with my other favorite under-rated Eastern European sprawling historical b&w epic, Wajda's Popioly (which I would also love to see Criterion release) that also had dialog (in Spanish, German, Russian, French...) that was not given subtitles. I assumed dialog was not translated so that we would infer that the central characters could not understand what was being spoken themselves, or perhaps the distributor could only afford to hire one translated and so only translated the main language.

[perkizitore]

Beaver

[dad1153]

If I remember correctly the print I saw (the Pacific Film Archive has their own print) had portions that were not translated...

That's the exact same print AFA used over the weekend; the online & printed guides for AFA credits Pacific Film Archive for loaning them the print.

[Tommaso]

And here I was hoping I could avoid double-dipping... but those CC caps simply look absolutely amazing, even though I always thought that the Second Run was a pretty nice disc.

[MichaelB]

Unsurprisingly, the caps look very similar to the Czech BD - I daresay they share a common source in the form of the Czech National Film Archive's 4K restoration. On the other hand, the extras seem substantial enough to make a double-dip worth considering.

But when it comes to a DVD-to-BD upgrade, this is a bit of a no-brainer!

[TMDaines]

Glad I decided not to watch my Second Run DVD from the director's boxset. Looking forward to this one.

[admira]

itunes

[Anthony]

When you buy a movie like this from iTunes, does the download include all the supplements?

[Matt]

No, it's just the movie.

[zedz]

When you buy a movie like this from iTunes. . .

Thank god I have a fainting couch in my office.

[swo17]

This movie is so great, though I should probably qualify that my only viewing of it was from printing and cutting out screengrabs from DVD Beaver and then making a flipbook out of them.