Frantisek Vlácil-Marketa Lazarová (1967)

Voted the best Czech film ever made, Marketa Lazarová is a powerful and passionate medieval epic set in the mid-13th Century. Based on avant-garde writer Vladislav Vancura’s novel, it follows the rivalry between two warring clans, the Kozlíks and the Lazars, and the doomed love affair of Mikoláš Kozlík and Marketa Lazarová. Second Run




Re-creating an authentic world and as reminiscent of Tarkovsky and Kurosawa as it is of the rich tapestry of Czech fiction, this ambitious and multi-layered film is the crowning achievement of Vlácil’s career and one of the undiscovered cornerstones of world cinema. This is the first-ever DVD release of Marketa Lazarová anywhere in the world. Second Run




In a survey of Czech film critics held in 1998, Marketa Lazarová was voted the best Czech film ever made. In the same year its director, František Vlácil, received a lifetime achievement award at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. It therefore comes as something of a surprise that neither the film nor its director feature prominently in general histories of the cinema. Second Run




František Vlácil (1924-99) was not a member of the famous Czech New Wave of the 1960s, nor a product of the Prague Film School (FAMU). He originally studied art and aesthetics in Brno before working in both puppet and documentary film. This was followed by a stint in the Czech Army Film Unit, where he made over 30 instructional films and documentaries. He first attracted international attention with his poetic documentary, Sklenená oblaka (Glass Skies, 1957), which was awarded a prize at the Venice Film Festival. His fiction debut, Pronásledování (Pursuit aka Persecution), was part of a two episode feature, Vstup zakázán (No Admittance, 1959). It was followed a year later by his feature debut, Holubice (The White Dove, 1960), which won further awards at Venice, for Vlácil and his cinematographer, Jan Curík. Second Run




With Marketa Lazarová, Vlácil approached a novel by Vladislav Vancura, which was first published in 1931. Vancura, one of the leading Czech novelists, was a member of most of the experimental art movements of the period and was the first chair of the avant garde Devetsil group. He was also a prolific author of (unfilmed) screenplays, and had directed or co-directed five feature films in the 1930s. In his film work, he aimed to take cinema in new formal directions, experimenting with both sound and montage in such films as Na slunecní strane (On the Sunnyside, 1933) and Marijka nevernice (Faithless Marijka, 1934), the last of which featured acclaimed composer Bohuslav Martinu’s only film score. Vancura’s novels emphasised the poetic and experimental use of language. As a result, it presented obvious problems for film adaptation, although Jirí Menzel successfully brought two of Vancura’s other novels to the screen as comedies: Rozmarné léto (Capricious Summer, 1967) and Konec starych casu (The End of Old Times, 1989). Second Run




While Marketa Lazarová was inspired by Vancura’s novel, it remains very different. A short text has been converted into a vast epic that bears comparison, in different ways with each, to Kurosawa’s Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai, 1954) and Tarkovsky’s Andrei Roublëv (1966). It was also inspired by motifs from Vancura’s Obrazy z dejin národa ceského (Pictures from the History of the Czech Nation, 1939-40). And if Vancura’s original novel provided no historical clues and was designed to be autonomous, Vlácil’s film was set very specifically in the mid-13th century, a time he attempted to evoke with the utmost accuracy. Second Run




Mikolás (Frantisek Velecky) and his brother Adam (Ivan Palúch) rob travellers for their tyrranical father Kozlík (Josef Kemr). During one of their "jobs" they end up with a young German hostage whose father escapes to return news of the kidnapping and robbery to the King. Kozlik prepares for the wrath of the King, and sends Mikolás to pressure his neighbour Lazar (Michal Kozuch) to join him in war. Persuasion fails, and in vengeance Mikolás abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa (Magda Vásáryová), just as she was about to join a convent. The King, meantime, dispatches an army and the religious Lazar will be called upon to join hands against Kozlik. Stripped-down, surreal, and relentlessly grimy account of the shift from Paganism to Christianity. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0063278/plotsummary)