661 Marketa Lazarová

[Brian C]

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.

Hey, take this to the animation thread where it belongs.

[MichaelB]

Mondo Digital:

A basic synopsis can't really do justice at all to the experience of watching this film, which accumulates characters and incidents in a heady rush of vertiginous camerawork and a jolting soundtrack filled with eerie chanting and confrontational narration. The end result is an epic unlike any other, with casual bloodshed and nudity rubbing shoulders with borderline avant garde film techniques; perhaps when you imagine that most people's idea of a modern epic was Doctor Zhivago made only two years earlier, and that could explain why this didn't go over too well with potential American exhibitors. Seen today, it's fun to pinpoint techniques and visual motifs that would turn up in later films like Ken Russell's The Devils and the films of Andrzej Zulawski, especially The Devil and The Third Part of Night, and at times one even has to marvel at how much it anticipates the aesthetic of TV's Game of Thrones with its leaping between contrasting landscapes, recurring wolves, and clashing groups of characters jockeying for power. That said, this film still feels wholly fresh and would have proven to be far more influential had anyone been able to see it more easily.

[admira]

dvdtalk review

[PillowRock]

As I recall, the Second Run DVD version of the film was edited to remove a brief scene of a snake being killed, due to stricter British animal cruelty statutes. Is it reasonable to assume that the Criterion is the unedited version?

[MichaelB]

As I recall, the Second Run DVD version of the film was edited to remove a brief scene of a snake being killed, due to stricter British animal cruelty statutes. Is it reasonable to assume that the Criterion is the unedited version?

I'd lay money on it - if their source was the Czech restoration (which seems to be the case), I can confirm that it's uncut.

[ptatler]

I watched it last night. The snake scene remains.

What a paradigm-shifting film this is. In a parallel universe, it would be a fixture of the Sight and Sound-type polls. I'm hoping the Criterion disc paves the way for it to be officially canonized.

[caminoreal]

The Criterion print is being streamed for free at Hulu, today only.

[admira]

DVD File review

Home Theater Forum review

[manicsounds]

DVDFile is still around?!

Blu-ray.com gives it a perfect 5 star review

[admira]

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/8911/ma ... C2%A1.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.craveonline.com/film/reviews ... a-lazarova" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/marketa-la ... ay-review/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ptatler]

Does anyone know if Criterion (or another company) plans on releasing other works by Frantisek Vlacil?

[neilist]

Does anyone know if Criterion (or another company) plans on releasing other works by Frantisek Vlacil?

Second Run has released 'The Valley of the Bees' and 'Adelheid', available separately or in this boxset. I believe they're Region 0.

[MichaelB]

Facets put out The White Dove (1960) in VHS quality with unremovable vomit-yellow out-of-sync subtitles, but I've heard rumours that it's being remastered so I'd recommend waiting for what will hopefully be its first-ever decent video edition. They also released Valley of the Bees and Adelheid, but their now OOP editions are no competition whatsoever for Second Run's (Facets' Valley is non-anamorphic and interlaced, and both have out-of-sync subtitles, while Second Run's are both fine.)

The Devil's Trap (Ďáblova past, 1961) is available in the Czech Republic with English subtitles, and unsubtitled copies of Smoke on the Potato Fields (Dým bramborové natě, 1976), Shadows of a Hot Summer (Stíny horkého léta, 1977), Shade of a Fern (Stín kapradiny, 1984) and Mág (1987) are also available - I've managed to get hold of fansubs for all four.

Unsurprisingly, all of those are DVD releases: Marketa is the only Blu-ray.

[AK]

What a release! This and Safety Last! arrived in the mail on Thursday and Friday, and I've been going through them these past few days. Two magnificent releases.

I had only seen Marketa once before, and it counts as one of the most shocking film experiences I've had, in terms of how my expectations completely led me to the wrong direction. I was left with a sense of awe and respect, yes, but not the kind of personal connection I was hoping for. Well, the second viewing yesterday was mind-blowing. Of course the narrative is easier to follow after the first viewing, as well, and this helps. But everything in the film works so perfectly I'll resist analyzing it too much (for now). I'll just savor this for the time being.

The supplements are brilliant, as well. The booklet is full of treasures, and I haven't watched all of the interviews on the disk yet. Thank you, Criterion!

[rrenault]

I've tried, but I don't think I'll ever love this film. Even if it's a curious and sometimes fascinating museum piece. I'll never love this the way I love Contempt or Belle de Jour. It's expressive esoterica if one wants to use Andrew Sarris categories. Marketa Lazarova just doesn't feel vital to me the way Pierrot Le Fou, L'Atalante, Late Spring, or L'Avventura does, even if it's still interesting to me. I know it sounds like I'm just sticking up for the already well acknowledged titans of the canon, but cinephiles are often intrigued by the unknown, so I think we sometimes have a tendency to overrate the curiosities from neglected corners of the globe in our quest to discover that unheralded cinematic masterpiece.

Mind you, I'm not suggesting Criterion shouldn't have released it. Providing exposure to the curiosities is just as integral to the development of cinematic appreciation as is preserving the essentials. After all, not everything that gets published in a deluxe trade paperback edition by Penguin is a literary masterpiece worthy of of Dostoevsky, Joyce, or Homer.

[knives]

I love the film, but I am fully confused at your statement of hyper aesthetic experimental in relation to this film. I find that it shines so well in how it stays for long periods of time as ordinary and instead builds from a character perspective towards greatness. Which isn't to say it isn't beautiful, but that that beauty is posed along familiar lines. It's doubtful that it is breaching new lines so much as bringing existing lines together in a way that works perfectly, but wouldn't have been thought of without the film itself.

[ptatler]

It almost feels too "experimental and avant-garde" to be a truly great work of art if that makes sense.

It doesn't. Except as an example of a false dichotomy.

[rrenault]

Okay, maybe I'm just not that crazy about the film then, but I'm sure I'll revisit it at some point.

[YnEoS]

I haven't gotten around to re-watching the new restoration of the film, but I just went through the bonus features, and they're quite substantial and informative. Even though there's no commentary or feature length documentary, the interviews add up to quite a long amount of time and each one is pretty packed with information. A nice mix of critical analysis and useful insight into the filmmaking process. I think the interview with the costume designer Theodor Pištěk is particularly outstanding. I have to say this is a perfect example of what Criterion can do when at it's best. A neglected masterpiece that could really use contextualizing information, well presented and lavished with newly created extras.

[Mr Sausage]

Where did this come from? An overwhelming experience, far more radically composed than I was expecting. I expected something more like Tarkovsky's Rublev, not something so elliptical, often jumping forward in time only to piece together the intervening time with impressionistic snippets that don't even seem like the memories of this or that individual character so much as general, abstractly held memories provoked by the emotional content of a given scene. A moment in the present of the diegesis provokes an image that flashes in front of the camera, which provokes in turn a couple more flashes of images before returning to that initial image (perhaps a couple of times) until the continuity surrounding that first associated image is revealed and the plot is filled in, sort of. Very striking. And what's wonderful about all of this formal experimentation is the intense vitality it lends to the crude, savage narrative. The movie's poetry isn't delicate, but harsh and weird. It really does elevate the blunt physical crudeness of mediaeval life here to something metaphysical and very beautiful without diminishing or overlooking the crudeness. The emotions are lent a real grandeur: the animal struggle for life or death becoming abstracted into something more universal than just brutal clan warfare in a brutal era. It may even lift it into the spiritual, I don't know.

Loved this movie.

[videozor]

the extras seem substantial enough to make a double-dip worth considering

Does it mean that CC's extras are better than ones on the Czech?
For some reason was not able to the posts on this forum that have details on Czech edition.
Thank you!

[MichaelB]

The Criterion package is far superior to the Czech one - it duplicates the two most interesting extras (the restoration demo and the archive documentary on Vláčil) and adds much more.

The only other extras on the Czech BD are short interviews with Czech film critics - the Peter Hames piece on the Criterion disc covers very similar ground in what I thought was a conspicuously more engaging way (although I know Peter personally, so I'm probably biased). The Czech disc also comes with a booklet, but since it's bilingual in English and Czech it's a fair bit briefer than its 20-page length would suggest, consisting of a short essay and biographies of the key participants.

The transfers appear to be more or less identical - hardly surprisingly, since they're from the same 4K restoration. The Criterion subtitles are slightly softer, in line with Criterion's usual treatment, but the translation appears to be both more extensive and more idiomatic.

Basically, if you're Region A or multiregion, it's a no-brainer: Criterion all the way. If you're Region B, then the Czech disc is still pretty good, but it's definitely a second choice.

[videozor]

Thank you very much for a such a detailed answer!

[Ibnezra]

I was expecting something along the lines of Sergei Parajanov's "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors", a film that left me somewhat cold, but the beautiful compositions, strange narration, and dynamic camera work of "Marketa Lazarova" floored me. The pallette is white snow fields and though it may be black & white my eye detects soft blue tones in the characters and scenery that inerviene between the cameras lens and the frigid blanket covering the stark lands. There's a poetic realism in the characters that would give them a mythic stature even without the narrator's insistance in the importance of myth. I don't imagine I will return to this one very often, but a one time viewing was incredibly rewarding. The staring, pursueing wolves haunt me, and I wouldn't be suprised if I dream of them (hope I don't, they're damn creepy).

[movielocke]

Where the fuck did this come from and why have I never heard of it before?

Utterly breathtaking and a staggering masterpiece. It may take me a few days to fully gather my thoughts and impressions, but god damn, this is the best blind buy I've ever made. Wow. I can't believe there's so little post release discussion. This is the film of the year, for me, just incredible.