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Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your houst. Mike White, join me once again. It's mister Jonathan Allen.
Hello, happy Yeptember.
Also back in the booth is miss Maurice Howard.
Hi Mike, thanks for having me back, and Hi Jonastan, very happy to be here. It's also Sparks Timber, the Sparks fans out there like myself. September is a significant mountain.
Oh nice, I had no idea. I hope we don't conflict with those Sparks fans. Does overlap.
I think it'll be fine.
We conclude Checktember twenty twenty four with the film from Fred to czeck Lassal Adelhyde released in nineteen seventy. The film stars Peter Chipback as Victor, a former Czech soldier turned caretaker of a confiscated German estate where he encounters the titular adel Hyde played by Emma Cherna, who is being held as a prisoner. Their evolving relationship forms the core of the film, set against the backdrop of a
post war displacement and political tension. We will be splitting this film as we go along, so if you don't want anything ruin, turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen the beautiful new restoration of the film that is now available on Blu Ray. So, Jonathan, when was the first time we saw adel Hyde and what did you think?
I probably saw it about maybe twenty years ago, so I think it came quite early in my discovery of the Czechoslovak New Wave, and I probably didn't see it in a really great copy to start with. And I must admit that I think when I first saw it,
it passed me by a little bit. And I think I was aware of flat Seel and I was aware of Marketa Lazarova I don't know if I had seen Marketa Lasarova by back by that point, but I feel that sadly, at the time this film was a little bit under the shadow of Marketa Lazarova, or under the shadow of my expectation of that film, because I just really wanted to see that, and I think because this is rather more restrained and low key film, it probably didn't make as big an impact as it should have done.
But I think with having seen it again, rewatched it and understood more of the content act of the history that it's dealing with, I think I've come to appreciate it much more and in its own way. I think if as bold of a film in terms of what it's kind of themes it's addressing as market Lazarova. So yeah, it's one that's really grown on me. I think the more I've watched.
It in therees.
How about yourself, I think I would have first seen it much more recently than that, only sometimes just pre COVID, I think in a cinema though I was in Prague and it was playing at Kinoskaizort in the center, and it was one of his that I hadn't seen. I was familiar with his earlier films, so I was very curious, and I have to admit too that I didn't quite latch onto it on first site the way I had with marke Let and Lanza or Value of the Bees
and the White Dove as gorgeous earlier films. I'm obsessed with market Lanzrova. That's one of the most sublime in cinem experience as I've ever had. And so I did go to the cinema, to Kinoskitters all that day with great expectations, and I did come back a little not confounded, but just somehow a little underwhelm. But just reviewing it again, just very recently, let's say, in the last twenty four hours,
it was a different film. And I've seen the main actor, Pettitchepink in quite a number of films over the years, and I'm used to putting on quite different sorts of style of performance. So I came to this not expecting quite what I got out of it just now actually, because he's so restrained in it to everything about this is quite quite austere. Some little moments aside, but yeah, it's striking. It's a striking film. So I'm a convert.
As check timber has been progressing throughout the years. I've been going through Vassel's filmography, so starting with market E Lazarova, we did the commentary track for Valley the Bees and now Adele Hide, and it's just every single time it's gorgeous. It's very different. I think you can see Devil's Trap and Marketta and Valley the Bees. Some people consider that
a trilogy. I can definitely appreciate that Marketta is so epic, and then you come to Adelhyde and it's just such a small story set against a big backdrop, but a small story, but yeah, very restrained and of course beautifully told. Because Fletchel's camera work and what he does, how he tells stories, I just absolutely love it.
Well, there's a real lived in quality to the world he puts on film, and I well, I've been in the Czech Republic quite a number of times. I've spent very little time in Moravia where this film is set. In the story and it's looking at that mana Helse. We spend so much time, and it's the architecture is so different to how it is much of Bohemia. There's sort of a focus quality to that quite gorgeous manner house that Chippick's character is there to administer. There's a
different feel. It feels, not like in as medieval films, or perhaps they're even said in an earlier period than just the medieval. You get a sense of a Czech land, a Czech culture that's not at all familiar. And here as well, there's Maravi isn't very known to me, and there's something just about that environment, that the architecture, that that that waste we spend so much time and it's it's quite unfamiliar, but I still felt very immersed in it, very transported to it.
I really love that description of it has lived in and as immersive, because yeah, I feel exactly the same thing. Really. I don't think anybody would describe it as like a reassuring film or as a cozy film, but there is somehow feeling of being, yeah, just like immersed in an environment and have just there's a sort of sensoryquality to that. I think in the way that he establishes the time period and the place and the sense of the seasons
as well. And yes, I think that is a connection with his medieval films, where you do feel just you are totally absorbed into this time and place really, so yes, I think it. Yeah, lived in is a really beautiful way to describe it.
I think.
I guess one of the things that's a big change from his previous feature films is that he's working in color, really, and I don't think he'd use color for any of his feature films. I think it was only I think the one of the short films that he made back in the fifties that was like the last time that
he'd used color. And one of the interesting things about this is the way it begins, because I guess you start off black and white and then you shift to color, and I don't know, I mean, how connected that is to the fact that this was his first feature film in color really, And yeah, I think a significant change after that beautiful sort of high contrast black and white, as you say, of the medieval films. But I think the way that the color is used is really careful
and really significant. And from what I've read, apparently he was very fastidious about the colors, and I believe that this has been reported that apparently he was very insistent to the cinematographer that they not used the color red, So I think he was very careful about crafting the
precise kind of color palette that he wanted. Having said that, though, I just recall that the title itself is in red at the beginning, so that's an interesting choice given that he apparently didn't want to use much red in the film. But yeah, I think the way that the color is handled is very careful. But of course it's also very restrained color too, isn't it really?
So it does.
I guess that's another reason why it doesn't really leap out at you the way that the black and white say does in the earlier films.
Yeah, it feels very drained sometimes, and especially once you get to the manor house and just everything feels old and decrepit and dirty and just yeah, the drain of color helps make it feel that way. But then you do have occasional black and white shots in the film. When our main character is having a ulcer attack, there's that beautiful shot of the water coming out of the spigot, but then there's color that's been added to it, almost
like a psychedelic effect, which is nice. And I swear there's at least one moment where he looks down at the courtyard and it feels like that's in black and white. I don't know if it is or just everything is so colorless, but I was like, is that a black and white shot? Because I thought it was nice that he's throwing in these little black and white moments even in this muted color film.
It definitely were a couple of moments like that, and there was one that was very high contrast, really high coming back to most met last or in particular, where that's really so ramped up that this weird, odd little moment where it feels like just a moment of just pure expressionism. I don't think it's as I don't think it's a moment with any narrative of significance per se, just this a little I felt like the man Victor there's just a bit outside of himself, disassociating or something
perhaps happening there. Just yeah, a really weird little moment that's so different to the rest of the film, so as if he's looking out of the place, but the image seems to have him in it, but his face is very obfuscated through the true this contrast, something's abstracted the image somewhat anyway, it's a little bit hallucinatry.
You really get the feel in this one that it is based on a book, which it is, as is a lot of his other works. So I feel while I'm watching this, I'm like, Okay, I feel like there's more to this story that maybe I should have read the book, but I could not find an English translate
it topy of it. But it also feels play like at times, because really there's like your three main characters that you have throughout this, and the way that the one character, the corrupt official, will drop in and out, and then for the most part it is our main character and ar titular characters between Victor and at Adelhyde, and they're growing changing relationship throughout so much of this, and that it's I would say, what ninety percent of
this movie takes place in one location, takes place at the manor House. The rest of it we start off on the train, we go to the official's office, and then after that it's pretty much just at the manor House.
Yes, it would have been very easy to I don't know if it ever was adapted into a theatrical version, but yes, it would be very easy to do that. Yeah, I'm a little bit confused about the genesis of it.
There was a book by Vladimir Kerner, who also wrote Valley of the Bees with Latchil, and from what I've read, I believe there was an initial version of the script, which I think was submitted a little bit earlier, kind of I think about nineteen sixty six, and I'm not quite sure about whether Kerner had written the novel before that. I think maybe he had, but I think the novel
was published a little bit later. I think the novel was published in sixty seven, so that was after the initial attempt to get the script produced, and that had failed because nineteen sixty six was still the Novotny era and there was still difficulty in making this kind of film on this kind of theme, dealing as it does
with the post war treatment of Germans in Czechoslovakia. And apparently the earlier version of the script at least was on a kind of bigger scale, and I think there were more like subplots, and there were more characters and more of a sense of the kind of community around
the main characters. And apparently, at some point from the first version to the to the novel, because the novel itself, at least the version that was published is also very similar to the existing film, And I think there had already been a kind of stripping down of the story at that point. And then yeah, so I think I guess Kerner had decided to do that at some point, perhaps because maybe it was going to be less controversial if you didn't have that kind of wider context in there.
But originally it was meant to be I think a little bit more not as much of a chamber work in the original idea.
Yeah, I can absolutely imagine this on stage too. It would be very straightforward production to mount. It is very much a chamber drama. I mean, you could say that there's an extent to which that Manner houses at of psychological space as much as a narratively meaningful physical space. And I lived in space, as we were talking about. But it's Yeah, there's a degree of decrepitude and yet
a degree of a faded glamour to this place. It is a bit grand, and some rooms notably grander than others, and a bit more decoration, and some of that decorations quite beautiful.
But yeah, for me, it's still.
A curious a curious house It's don't know how common that architecture is throughout Moravia, but I'm still going to say it has a grandeur that wouldn't be just super commonplace back then, circle close of World War two or to the current day. Have you been to Moravia, either of you much? Have you know the neighborhood?
No, I can't say idea.
Only wants to burn Oe. Yeah, not to the countryside unfortunately. But in chat reviews that I've read of the film, it does tend to describe it as a bizarre house, so I think probably even by like Moravian standards, I guess it's pretty striking. Yeah, I agree with that idea that I think it is a kind of psychological space. I don't know whether i'd go so far as to describe it as Gothic, but there is a kind of
fairy tale quality. And interestingly, at that point, before Victor actually enters the house, I think it's during his journey, you hear a voiceover I believe I'm not quite sure whether it's the voiceover over of Adelhyde herself, but there's a somebody like reciting a kind of fairy tale story. And I guess when you first see the house. When you see the exterior, it does have that kind of
fairy tale qualities. Yeah, I think there is some kind of maybe Gothic a psychological dimension to it, and it's a Yeah, it's a very strange space as well, I think in terms of the way it's presented, because I don't think you ever fully get a handle on what it really looks like inside of how the spaces relate to each other. And there's a sense of rooms like
adjoining one another in a way that's unpredictable. For instance, there's that point where he's like rummaging around in I guess the room that used to be adel Hide's bedroom, and then he discovers there's a door, and then she's there, and she seems to be doing something in the room next to it, And there is this sense that you can't quite grasp like where each room is in relation to the other. And as you say, there is a kind of range of different kind of like moods and
qualities to the rooms. And the first room, it's interesting that he decides to sleep in the room that looks like the most comfortless and it's like like an attic looking little room, isn't it really and then I guess as the narrative progresses and as their relationship develops to some extent, he's changing room. And then I think in the one of the latest things, he's actually in her room, isn't he sleeping there? At which point the color schemes
start to change as well. And so yeah, there is this use of the spaces, I think, to reflect the psycho and the relationship.
Yeah, and then there's definitely a labyrinth scene quality to that, and that lay the layout that house. And I think that's amplified too by the the way the film is carts. But from one scene to the next, sometimes suddenly there's someone in the house who really it wouldn't have a sense of a passage of time. It's a new day and now the inspectors dropped around against just in the next scene bad of an eel, he's in a room.
It has this peculiar, a rhythmic quality to the editing that just makes that that house seems a little more peculiar as well, in that sense, a bit more of a psychological space, because there's just something that doesn't give it.
I never feel that a scene has resolved. There's a pause, a little hiatus, we catch our breath and then it's a new day, and it doesn't get those sort of beats, And I feel that makes that house a peculiar place to spend time in because just how time seems to work, and it seems a little abstracted as well.
Yeah, it's funny we're doing an episode in October on Melpertweet the Harry Kummel film, and that it's all about a labyrinthine house. But I was also reminded a lot of the house from Black Noon and right, yeah, the Louis Maul film, and just again it yeah, like that fairy tale quality, especially going to somebody's house and you don't know who they are, what they are. And that's part of this too, is the revelation that adel Hyde is actually the daughter of the man who owns the house.
It's not she is not a servant. She should have been the fairy tale princess here, but unfortunately the mean old dad is a Nazi officer, one of the worst. So he's being held in a Russian prison, I believe at this time due to be hanged, and he is eventually hanged, though off screen in this and then yeah, you find out, oh, she's his daughter. And by the way, there's this beautiful cage outside where he used to keep Polish prisoners just for fun.
Yeah, he does seemn feel the unsaved re character, doesn't He not one of those fun, jolly Nazis.
But yeah, they call him the greatest of the biggest fascist in the area. So yeah, even by naturally standard, he's pretty bad.
So then you're like, what is she like? Then? If this is who her father is she like this then sets up that mystery too, and this whole she's the daughter of a Nazi? Is she just as bad as he is or is she a different person? And what type of person is she? And I think she does a great job of not letting us in and not showing us who she is. She's very enigmatic throughout this whole film, even as he starts to I think, fall in love with her. Some of that is reciprocated, some of it isn't.
Well, it remains very clear, I'm clear as you're out how much or how little she understands his Oh.
Yeah there is that too.
Yeah, that's never clarified, whether she's understanding what's being said and not letting on or not understanding and that ambiguity is in no way resolved by the end of the film, not that it seems to have hindered them having some sort of thing for one another, with perhaps some genuine emotional racist, some sort of connection, though the film's austerity makes it hard to get a full read on that as well, because isn't a film of grand gestures and
big emotions. It's all so bottled up, and these are some traumatized people. Really hard to know how much she might be naive, or how much she might be calculating, or how much she might be just pragmatic, how much she might think about her own goose is cooked, and it's just a matter of time as well.
How much can she play this guy in order to get away clean if she can possibly.
It must have been a very difficult part to play, and from what I remember from the book it really doesn't give anything. I think, it doesn't really get into the sort of psychology and in terms of how to play that, how to physically manifest the part. I think really that's all done through the direction and through the performance of Emma Churner. Really, and as you say, it's very inscrutable, isn't it. And the fact that she's lumped in with all the other Nazis and with the father
by the officials. I guess it's meant to show that it's I think there's partly there's meant to be a there's meant to be a critical tone towards them, that they're just associating any German with Nazism. So I think they're clearly is a stent in which she is being wronged a little bit by the way she is just considered as a Nazi too. But then, as you say,
there are there's ambiguities, aren't there? And I'm thinking of specifically the scene with the record and you hear that sort of military style march come on, and then she's had up and she's looking very proud, and then they get genuinely unnerved. Don't they buy the expression that she has? And at that point you're thinking, yeah, maybe there is some kind of pride or some kind of commitment to this idea. But yes, it's never really resolved either way.
I think it was no longer just this nice, these nice, sugary strauss waltz is that they were all enjoying. But it sounds like something militantly nazy the awkward moment for all of them.
There's the whole thing too about the keys in the house and making the house and mystery itself as far as oh, yeah, no, there's just the two keys. Here you go, here's both of these keys were good, only to find out that there is a third key that's going on and there's somebody else hiding in the house, which we don't find out until really the third X reveal.
It's almost like a Chekhovian moment, that, isn't it. There are only two keys, so when somebody says there are only two keys, you're meant to question and yeah.
Gives it a bit of that sort of gothic fairy tale flavor as well into that there too.
Yeah, it's like the first time I watched Rebecca where I was just like, is the old Missus de Winter really dead or is she hiding in the house. Yeah, that was my initial impression when I saw that. I was like, Oh, no, she's way too strong of a personality. She has to be here in the house someplace, Missus
Danvers has to be hiding her out. I did want to call out young Votresil and apologies for all of these names, but he is the one that plays the other official, the corrupt official, and known for me as just being this kind of lovable bureaucrat guy. He shows up, he's the dead and loves of a blonde. He's the band mit leader and if a thousand clarinets, it's a fuddled in the fireman's ball. And in this he is
so good as a villain. I couldn't get over how good he was because and I don't know if some of that is because he has always given this older bear type performance, but here, oh my gosh, you just dread every single time he's on screen.
It's funny because he's always described as a non actor. Yeah, he's one of Millers Foreman's discoveries, one of just a casting choice. I think an audition in the first instance, where he was yeah, and he was I thinking of exactly pursued acting, but it seemed to find him. And yet did this day. Anytime you ever find any reference to him, it's alway those non actor jan Vostachill just perverse,
because he's definitely putting on a not putting over. The prof he's delivering is in a very different tonal register to the buffoonery, the gentle buffoonery of Fireman's Ball or the again, is he a bit of buffoonery and loves of the blonde but paternal flavor of like crownishness.
It's terrific.
But yeah, I don't buyd on actor anymore. I don't want a part of that. Actually, this is a performance. I feel it's in my bones.
Yeah, I agree. I think at the time that I think in reviews from the Czechoslovak press, I think that was recognized that yeah, this is actually a real performance, this is real acting. And yeah, as you say that, I think he just tend to be tagged as a non professional. I think he got that role in audition because he was a real musician, and yeah, it was just a case of like taiepage or just using somebody from that environment. But yeah, he's really delivering the real
quote and quote performance. And it reminds me a little bit of the way that I've actually uses Vladimir Menschicic in ma ket Lazarova, because I guess in a way it's doing something very different with the usual kind of character they play, but in a way also using that baggage somehow, because I feel that yeah, he he has played these figures Ostra Chill has played these figures who represent this kind of incompetent authority, and here I guess
it's it's also it's another kind of incompetent authority, is there are another kind of chaotic authority, but in a rather more sinister way. I think he's playing one of these officials who I think were called revolutionary guards, who were the people that were appointed supposedly to keep order after the war, who had come out of the parties, and but were people who were often involved in killing and in looting and things like that. So yeah, he's
playing really quite a sinister character. We don't really know exactly what he's done or what he's been involved in. Certainly he is involved in like pilfering and in petty crime and possibly worse things, and has possibly sanctioned a lot of worse things as well. And yeah, so it's like a creepy twist, isn't it, on that kind of figure that he's played.
But yeah, he nails it.
Really, he's really brilliant.
When we first meet him in this film, he breats a Chepek's character Victor with great skepticism, that apparently all sorts of people are just rolling up and claiming to be all sorts of other people, suggestive of a bit of chaos in the aftermath of World War Two. Generally we shouldn't come as a surprise, but there are quite a lot of layers to that performance. We really don't know what that he stands for and who he's standing against. The whole start of the film, we are seeing people
generally be mean to our protagonist. He gets russed up on the tray and throat offered and then beaten up properly.
And then the next thing we see him is with this inspector character who's extremely dubious about his claims to be a lieutenant and to have served in I guess it's our foreign legion type arrangement wound up in Scotland, of all places, working in a store, and it gives that would possibly introduced another level of disdain that perhaps this was a serviceman who actually hadn't gone around shooting
people or doing other somehow admirable acts during wartime. Yeah, so there are there's quite a lot of enigmatic qualities to all of these three key characters in the film. Really, I think that's perhaps why it has rewarded repeat viewings. Why I just got a lot more coming to it again, just in the last day, having another watch and just going there's actually a lot in this, and I can't come away from it with anything approaching a definitive read. Actually, I'm quite happy about.
There's an ambiguous moment where I think he heard when he's looking at Victor's details and then he notes that he was in the RAF and he gives a look, and yeah, it's not quite clear what that look is meant to represent, probably some kind of disdain or distrust, and I guess possibly relating to that whole antagonism about Czech and Slovak soldiers who had served in the RAF in Britain who should have been celebrated as heroes, but
we're not. We're actually persecuted by the communists, And so whether there is some kind of that, I don't get that it's like an ideological disdain, but yeah, there's some kind of hostility that comes in there, isn't there. I think that idea And I think it's also that idea that he's been away from the real action, isn't it that he's oh, yeah, you've just been in Britain and you've not seen the real horrible stuff that we've seen here.
And yeah, but as you say, yeah, it's hard to get a read on what he stands for, isn't it really other than just looking out for himself and getting as much booze and as many spoils as he can really And.
Because yeah, he does then have the temerity to scold Victor for skeelling mostly selling adul hide for two bottles of something. Yeah, a transaction he was trying to issue himself. So it's a lot of the hypocrisy of these people that these officials.
I think he's very jealous that our main character, that Victor has found all that cognac hidden in the chateau. He was looking behind the books, which is funny. Reminds me of that Chris Rock routine about hide your money in books, but here he's hiding all the cognac behind the classics, which was pretty nice. And yeah, that also leads us to know that Victor can speak multiple languages, and he's trying his best to speak German but not
doing that great of a job of it. But he is learning throughout this whole thing of how to say go to my bed, which I thought was pretty nice.
Yes, I remember in the novel it goes into that in detail. Yeah, he's learning one word at a time, basically just very laboriously memorizing it over I think probably over a few days as well. Yes, it's really he's really just determined to get it right.
And then yeah, the whole time, you're like, she probably understands if he had said that in check. But yeah, she's not going to ever give up that what she knows and what she doesn't know that. Yeah, as you said, the inscrutable I think is a great word for her.
There's that moment when he's looking at her things, and then he finds the book, doesn't he And it has like a check poem, I believe, And I don't think we find out who has written, whether she's written it or whether it's somebody I think possibly a school friend has written it. And then I think he asks her, doesn't he do you speak check? But it still doesn't get answered. And there are moments, aren't there, where she he'll say something and she will look, or there'll be
some kind of indication or suggest that she's understood. But yes, it never really resolves it. And then I like the fact that at the end, when there's the kind of the sort of trial or the hearing at the end, and then they're finally speaking through an interpreter, And I think that's a nice way to conclude the relationship because I guess that it's that very so a sad reassertion
of the boundary between them, isn't it. I think through the motif of language that finally they actually just have an interpreter, so that that kind of any kind of communication now is completely distanced. And yeah, that was a nice idea.
I think it was the same thing that I had with Marquetta Lazarova, where I am not smart enough to hear the difference between the Czech and the German a lot of times, so I won't realize that they're speaking different languages. But this one was a little bit easier for me than Marketta, just because it was so forefronted, as opposed to when people would like ride up on their horses and be like, I'm speaking German or I'm speaking Czech. I don't know. As a viewer, I'm like,
I'm not sure what's going on exactly. But a few times watching the movie I understood a lot better. That was the thing. I listened to the episode we did on Marquetta just recently, and I was like, oh yeah, I talk a lot in here about how many times it takes to view Marquetta to really get a grasp on it, and even then I still don't feel like I fully have it. Like series, I can see why you're obsessed with the movie like that, because it just gives you so much more every single time you watch it.
I'm not going to pretend to be all over that film either, And each time that I've seen it in a cinema, I've seen it a couple of times in cinema, I've just wound up giving up trying to piece it all together and just actually let the entire thing wash over me, because it's just such a sublime, sort of
ecstatic experience of a film. So a very different film to Adult Hyde doesn't go for those ecstasies, so that the Staniaka score still has moments, so that the corral it's not to that same overwhelming effect as in Markisa. And he's also using a lot more of the catalog of strals and bark are one of the barks in this in adult Hyde, but you're obsessed with Staniek Blishka as well as I think one of the great composers who's never got his dune not fully really should be
a household name. But I think there's a lot of his recorded work that's never been never hinted and distribution in any way outside of the films themselves, which is a sad thing.
I think.
I think it's just truly one of the most extraordinary and versatile composers will ever have worked in film. Do you feel the same way, not just me, I'm sure definitely.
Yeah.
Yeah, he was a genius and in some ways I think something like market Lazarovar, it's almost it's almost like an opera somehow, isn't it. I think in the way that the image and the narrative and the music and sound work together really And yeah, I think he was a great genius. And I think a lot of my enthusiasm I think for check Us like check Us the back film and specific films like market Letherova or The Cremator,
I think they owe a lot to his involvement in memorily. So, yeah, he's an incredible figure.
I think and all of the Jung Shrunk Myers earlier short films too. How he managed to score those things incredible. Now, Genius, I'm always excited to discover that there's still more of his work. I've not caught yet, because he worked so prolifically on films grand and lesser, and there are a lot of those lesser, and no doubt still some grand ones. I haven't caught up with that either, And some TV
did propy of TV work as well. But that versatility to go from kerl coral singing to electronica and now really early electronica and some sort of guitar, some band music in other soundtracks, absolutly extraordinary composer musician. Yeah, genius, don't want to bandy that Orderland just too willy nilly, but I think it's warranted.
With Lishke, it's always one of those when his name comes up on screen, I'm like, Okay, I'm in for something good here.
There are some filmmakers who used and when you see some of their later work, especially in the period of normalization where generally everything got a bit dowdy it anyway, but so many of those the new wave films and films from that era not necessarily made by the new wave filmmakers, and we can't really properly include Blachal amongst the new wave. He was around earlier and didn't go
through farm with the film school. When you see some of their films from the peak era where people like Lishka are on the soundtrack, orlu Bosh Fisher or Ilazeliank some other greats, and then you see some of those seventies or eighties films and you just don't They don't
got it. And part of it's just not being able to have happened to that extraordinary pool of talents that full state subsidization allowed for you quite the little credit you see so matter of factly in films of this era of adul Heights period, that music by the National Film what was it, film Symphony Orchestra. Anyone needed and you needed a symphony orchestra for your film, we's got one. And that didn't continue.
Yeah, that's one of the great advantages I think of that communist era film industry that they were able to just pull resources like that. So it's if you need
the army, you've got the army. Or if you need yeah, like you said, like the state orchestra just get them, and you did have to go through the kind of normal procedures that you might have to where all the institutions are run by or owned by separate, separate people, and yeah, you could just I've heard that this was the case with Parijana, for example, when he was making Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors, and they just needed these kind of precious relics that the state could just request
anything that was needed. And yeah, this was the other side of the There was obviously disadvantages to this kind of film industry, but I think there were big benefits too. And yeah, I think just this ability to just, yeah, as you say, just pull on any resources that you needed, including great composers or great symphony orchestras and things like.
That, great cinematographers, just great talent all round. And it's just, yeah, so many contradictions are bounded then that you removed the marketplace from filmmaking, and you can get extraordinary things done, but then you can't always be guaranteed you do a film will be seen for the next twenty years.
It's yeah, because I.
Do find that one of the strange things about the normalization period really that. I guess in a way there is a there's a sort of a benevolence, but also, yeah, there is also there must have been a huge frustration to the fact that, yeah, you had filmmakers who I guess would be on the payroll, they would be actually employed at Barondoff, but just would not be able to get a film made. So they would be earning a salary or be it like a small salary, but yeah,
it just could not get anything made. And yeah, I think there's something so contradictory about that that on the one hand, you're stopping people making films, but you're also paying them. You're also giving them some kind of a living. And it was a very strange system, I think, And I guess that was a big benefit for things like
documentary or short films or animation. And as you said, Blatchil, he came through that kind of apprenticeship, didn't he really, Rather than going to film school, he was in he was making short films, he was making documentaries, and he was even in the thing that I think is one of the strangest phenomena I think of of Czechoslovak cinema,
that he was in that army studio. So they had this studio film studio run by the military, which actually incubated a number of quite kind of strange talents like him, and I believe Carol Varkek the documentaries, you know, the Yan Schmidt who would work with Pavel R. R. Check Yeah, they had come through this through this experience in the Checkers Army film studio making documentaries which often had like
an experimental slant to them. Yeah, that was the background that Flatchil came from, which does seem strange in view of the work that he would make in the sixties, But I guess he was able to use those resources and use that context already to experiment, because yeah, I believe his I've seen a couple of his army films. I think the one that he made in color called Glass Cloud, that's a really beautiful poetic film. Really, no one would imagine that it had come out of that context.
Really, And I believe he contributed to some animated films early on as well, though the credits seem to be quite hard to find, but I think he had something to do with some papata animation. His whole story is quite peculiar. I think he actually sounds like it's quite an eccentric character. There was a documentarye some years back for film Spire about the Caliary Vary International Film Festival. You've ever come across this glorious documentary, it's great, it's great.
One of the anecdotes that comes up in there is that Blatshaw that they actually make it sound like this happened more than once, that he was given to say hotel rooms on fire. According to this documentary, it was just doesn't seem to quite fit with my impression of him. Is the somehow as serious film.
One would imagine a quite austerea very dignified type of filmmaker, wouldn't they, I think from the films?
But yeah, I've heard that to the Yeah, he had a lot of.
Personal demons, I think, And yeah, in fact, I believe that the reason, or at least part of the reason why he was not able to make films at Barrendov after normalization kicked in. I think partly was political. I think there was definitely a political dimension to it. But I think a lot of it was personal as well, I think, And yeah, I think he had he had certain issues, I think, and yeah, he was quite a tortured bigger.
I think I've read a few times that he had problems with alcohol and really fell into that after this. I am curious. I've also read that this film got him into a little bit of trouble as far as this was coming out in sixty nine, so post Prague Spring, and apparently some of the Soviet authorities were like, oh, this is more of a metaphor for us invading you guys. So yeah, we're not too pleased about this. But I don't think this was banned. I'm not sure, though there's
also just not supporting it as well. I guess some people call that shadow banning.
It was on a subject that was clearly a bit of a taboo at the time, and to this day it's still something that I think is a bit of a sensitive issue. It's not been a tremendous number of films that I'm aware of, that have addressed the treatment of the sedate in Germans post World War Two. The one that springs to mind is a graphic novel adaptation Alois Nebel.
I've seen the film, I've not read the graphic novel, but yeah, and the film's gorgeous, beautifully rotoscope.
To look exactly the way the graphic novel did, and it's set very much in that it's surrounding those same issues of displacement, force, displacement and anxiety. Surrounding that it seems like it's still a scab that's not being picked out enough for the Czech culture. And I'm where I
try to get to come back to culivy Vari. I I love that pestible and it's in part of what was termed the Sedate and Land, which wasn't one big contiguous strip of land around the border, but pockets spanning from the west and Bohemia where culivary Vari is very near the German border to what we're talking about an adult high that's in Moravia, way over to the east. But when I'm in culari Varium aware it has that history, and that there's a beautiful biller on the hill that
used to be the Gestapo headquarters. Now there are all those layers of history in a place like that that's been occupied by Germans and Russians. And then I think the actual status of culov Ivari, who owns most of it right now nouns a bit nurky. It's a sort of stunning place, but's on a great vistable, But I know it's not something that is spoken of much, whether they're or just in the culture one broadly.
During the Communist period a bit it was like officially very taboo, and I think to a large extent because the Communists had been complicit or more than complicit, even though Czechoslovakia, I guess forty five to forty eight it wasn't like fully communists, but yeah, the Communists and the Soviet Union played a big role in that treatment of the Sedate and Germans. But yeah, I think since then, as you say, I think it is still a very
sensitive topic for many reasons. And I admire this film, I think for quite subtly, but nonetheless definitely it's doing it's making some of those analogies clear, isn't it. Where I guess you have obviously the horrors of the Second World War of the Nazis, and then it's saying, but look at how we're behaving now doing maybe some of the same things or some of the same attitudes are just being or some of the same actions are just
being repeated. And like with the I think the book burning, for example, is quite a telling moment isn't it where Victor says, I refuse to burn books, and yeah, I think very subtly making certain criticisms. I think of that period and I think that, yeah, there's not many other films really, even in the late sixties, even at the time where taboos were being challenged, where that's really dealt with.
I mean, I guess maybe a comparable film is Coach to Vienna, because that although it's not dealing exactly with the same subject, but I guess it's somehow it's trying to tackle that stereotype, isn't it, where you have good resistance fighters, evil German or NATURALI soldiers, and it's showing a much more kind of human and a much more
nuanced representation of this. You have this relationship between this young in fact, he's Austrian, isn't he in Coach de Vienna, so still slightly distanced a little bit, but nonetheless I think it's showing you a much more complex picture. And then you have the treatment of him by the partisans at the end, who basically just abused him, and then they rate the female character, and so I think that
was doing a similar thing. I guess the advantage that had was that the writer of that film also knew the president of Czechoslovakia and had a kind of personal contact that kind of protected that film. Yeah, I guess that was quite a special case really, But yeah, there's not many other films that I can think of that are doing this, that are like exploring this very uncomfortable area.
Really, the cremator goes there as well, and it's a little way too, so you know that the checks could be corrupted by Nazi ideology. What an extraordinary film, the Netsa. You must have had the cremator on this sphen of how Mike, can I imagine?
Oh, such a favorite film. I love that so much.
Have you ever heard there was an assessment that was made of that within the film industry after normalization started that was just insane. There was a I can't remember who he was, but there was some functionary who basically condemned the creator. He said because, in his words, it basically blamed the Holocaust on a check collaborator. It was such a overly literal reading of it. That was the takeaway from that them that one guy ruining it for
everyone else. I was just thinking, in regard to the ending, you were mentioning the idea that I think the Soviets possibly saw it as some kind of allegory. And there is a nice piece by Martin Schreier about the reception of the film, and I think he says that although it didn't get a big audience at the time, it was not really it was not really seen, I think
very much. But it did get good reviews, and Traja says that it did strike a chord with at least with critics or with people at the time who did see it, because I guess it fed into that pessimistic mood of nineteen sixty nine nineteen seventy when people knew what was going to come. And I think, I guess in this film, it's in nineteen I guess nineteen forty five, isn't it maybe late nineteen forty five, so you're still
not under communism yet, but it's coming. And I think the way that the film leaves us, he's just wandering across that kind of snowy landscape with landmines, and it leaves us in quite a despairing and bleak place, doesn't it.
Really?
So I guess I think that if we're to take something from that in regard to its residences, with the time it was made. I think it does leave us with kind of an appropriate sense of pessimism and despair, doesn't it.
Really.
I think it's not auguring something optimistic. Something bad is going to happen.
I guess it doesn't end on a Chipma note. I just I don't know how it could actually, especially just there's even a bit of ambiguity just what happens with idol Hide. At the very end, we're certainly told no one certain terms that she's suicided, But I mean, did you I don't know when there's a commotion, when this is there's all these people around, I don't know, I did she What do you think? Do you think she definitely did?
I'd not thought about it. But it doesn't really show very clearly, does it what's happened. It's hard when you look at the image of her dead, it's hard to figure out. I think she's meant to have strangled herself, isn't she? But it's not very clear it does. And I was thinking too with the brother. The way the
brother dies, it's also not particularly clear. I think in the book it's a little bit different because I think he has fled, and then in the book they go I think Victor and one of the one of the soldiers goes into the woods, and I think they just
find him dead and like frozen to death. But in the film he's grappling with Victor, and then adel Hyde she's like hitting I mean, meant to be hitting at Victor, but I think hits the brother as well, And the last we see of him is he's just keeled over or lying on the floor, but it doesn't really tell us explicitly how he's died. Then the official the soldier comes the guy on crutches, but then it just cuts away to the hearings. Yeah, I think that too, is
left a little bit unclear. I think for me anyway, it's fast to agree with the statement, which instantly seems sinister because you think of anything to do with that, not just the end of World War two times, but certainly the time which the film was made. People being asked you just agree to here's the statement we prepared earlier.
You will now agree with this. Kindly agree with this now. Don't make us have to make sure agree with this. That's that sort of energy, that's the vibe I got from ending made it very unclear to me as to how les it's this idea of suicide was. I felt very unclear.
I forgot that we end this movie in black and white, that we are back to It's taken us full circle. We started the film in that very stark black and white, and now it's not so stark at the end, but we are definitely devoid of all color. And you get that, like you're saying, the snowy landscape and that returned to the cross where we saw him at earlier. Yeah, with that big old field of land, minds that he's just marching across, so you don't know what's going to happen after that.
I think in the book they say that, I think he at the end of the book, he meets the girl again that he met at the beginning when he was going to the house, and the girl tells him that the landmines have all been cleared now. But interestingly, the film leaves that out, so I guess the film, Yeah, the film wants us just to maybe speculate, Yeah, maybe they're still there, maybe he will die or yeah.
Did you read the book Jonathan in translation or check?
I struggled with it in check. Yeah, trying to look for a translation, but sadly I couldn't. I couldn't find when I wish somebody, Hopefully somebody will do them. There's a university press in the Czech Republic that is starting to issue some really nice translations of Czech and Slovak literature. I think they were the one who put out The Cremator, so hopefully there will be.
A Twisted Spoon briss the beautiful editions, Yeah, really gorgeous editions.
They did Valerie in a Week of Wonders as well, and Vladimir Kerner also wrote, Yeah, there is also in the collection that I got, there was also Valley of the Bees as well. So hopefully it would be nice to see a two novel volume because I guess together they would be yeah, not maybe three hundred pages or something with the two of them. So yeah, hopefully in
the future there will be a translation. But it's pretty close otherwise to the film, though, I think there's not a lot of not a lot of like big differences. Let's just added a little bit more detail, but yeah, it's essentially I think the same, really, and no suggestion.
The book was ever banned at any point or became particularly controversial.
I don't believe so. Yeah, often writers got a worse treatment than filmmakers, but I don't believe there was a band.
I'd have to have to check.
I know that.
Yeah, going back to Praka Jan Prakaska, he was treated horribly and I think basically he was essentially killed by the regime really, but I'm not sure in regard to Kerner it didn't really. I have to look into his subsequent career through the seventies and eighties. I guess he was one of those figures who I mean continued to make pretty good films. He was not a but there were no more like Maket Lazarova type films. But he
was able to come back a little bit. I think some of the films that he made in the late seventies and eight is a worthwhile. I don't think he ever scaled the heights again of his sixties work, but I really like it as a film that he made with Rudolph Rashinski called Smoke on the Potato Field. That's again quite a sort of restrained chamber drama about a doctor,
which is pretty good. And yeah, there's a few interesting films that he made, but I think his Yeah, it was really just a case of making do with the projects that he could make.
Really, and I know Shadows of a Hot Summer was just restored and just screened last year. Curt of me very yeah, I hadn't caught up with those works.
Curious too. He's fascinating. I love watching his films. Each one is. Of course, there are similarities between the middle eval films that he's doing, but then you get to the way Dove's just freaking gorgeous and so ambitious. Everything that I see by this guy, I'm just like, yeah, give me more, please.
Was it Jay Hoberman who said he is like the I think he compared him, but he said he is both the Orson Wells and the I can't remember who was the other filmmaker. Was it Parajanov?
Yeah?
I think is fair.
Really.
Yeah.
I much as I love Check cinema Check and Slovak cinema, I think that in a way is quite a It's quite a kind of consciously modest cinema in many ways, isn't it. It's a cinema of it's a small scale cinema. It's a cinema that often deals with and it's often comic, it's often dealing with intimate, small scale situations, and I think flat Cheel is someone who brought this kind of
visual ambition and this kind of epic sense. I guess, not so much in a film like adel Hyde, but in his other work, which is unique.
Really.
I think what he's doing in something like Makota Lazo, there are not many other check or Slovak films of that kind of vision.
I think, Yeah, any other director from that part of the world who made the cast and crew lizbet two years in miserable conditions trying to steep themselves in what it was actually like to be in the thirteenth century, as best anyone can tell. Yeah, that was not a common practice. I don't believe for most filmmakers there possibly shouldn't be.
I don't think they would have gotten a whole lot of films made had they all done that.
I didn't he have a breakdown, I think as well during the making of it, And yeah, I think he took a toll on everybody, including him. I think, Yeah, I guess you'd have to go to Zuwavski or Hoderovsky or somebody like that, would you to find kind of something similarly extreme.
That's almost like cult leader status to be able to make a crew do that.
Was the Russian director in recent time who built that whole environment over the course of several years and inflicted a sort of a Stanford University Experiment type vibe across an entire Oh wow, small town Ilia gotts. It wound up incredibly controversial because of suggestions more than the suggestions of a lot of abusive practices in this town he built for these opteen films that I think I've seen two to have emerged from the projects so far. One
of them was extremely harrowing. Do you know the ones at all?
Is ringing a bell? No, I'm so curious now, yeah me.
He had one feature film called four, the number four, and then nothing was heard of him for many years, And it turned out he'd been building this little miniature Soviet town with Yeah, the stories a bit bizarre, but the films are distressing.
A young Russian film director has holed up on the outskirts of Kharkov, a town one point four million in the country seat making something a movie, sure, but not that. If the gosp is to be believed, This was the most expensive complicated all concer assuming film project ever attempted. This might be it Ilyya Kersh khan Kanovski, a madman who forced the crew to dress in Stalin era clothes, fed them Soviet food out of cans and tens, and paid them in Soviet money, only made some of.
Them high powered functionaries and others surfs effectively, and had them inhabit these roles with the psychological dimensions at all entailed, and lived that for extended periods of time, and then every now and again film it in a sort of semi improvised sort of way, including actual sort of Nazi thugs on there, but also guest appearances by people like Slavojkora, other personalities who would pop in to deliver a lecture or just completely bizarre and bonk is on a scale
that possibly unprecedented and probably should never be repeated and possibly should never have happened in the person place.
I was thinking of hard to be a god at first, But yeah, that's even that's not as extreme as because that does feel like that, doesn't it. That feels that one of those films in which the people in it had to live through that and probably suffered very uncomfortable and unpleasant situation to make.
That, And in that case, the director didn't survive it himself, did he? I think was the film completed posthumously, wasn't it?
Yeah? That's right by his son, I think, yeah, all right, We're going to take a break and play a preview of next week's show right after these brief messages.
He gambled everything, his home, his wife, his mistress, and five pounds of fighting. Warren Oates is the cockfighter from Governor's mentions to cheap hotels. It's the big money sport that's derneyed, violent and outside the law. Cockfighter a man bow here.
He can be anything you've got shown me.
Warren Oates a man whose game is winning with a woman whose game is meant catfighter regular.
That's right. We're going to be back next week with a look at Monty Hellman's Cockfighter in episode six years in the making. Until then, I want to thank my co host Jonathan and Serice. What is the latest with you?
I have to put to bed very imminently. The program to the next moden Que sim Pistable, which runs November fourteen to twenty four. That's the most pressing of why things that am juggling and I've the commission to delivering at this moment.
Are you an over committed too?
Every now and again I kid myself that I've weaned myself off it's somehow, but.
I have not.
And Janatha, what's the latest with you, sir?
So I've cometributed to the recent death crocodile release of Adela hasn't had supper yet, which for which I've written one of the essays that's out now. It's a beautiful release with lots of wonderful features and a beautiful packaging as well. And I've also got a couple of things in the pipeline for second run, some things that will be I think of interest to fans of the projection
Booth and of Checktimber, and those should be released. I think end of one of them should be at the end of this year, and then another one next year, I believe.
Thank you so much, folks for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They're all available at runningwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth dike over the world.
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