Description
In its native land, František Vlácil’s Marketa Lazarová has been hailed as the greatest Czech film ever made; for many U.S. viewers, it will be a revelation. Based on a novel by Vladislav Vancura, this stirring and poetic depiction of a feud between two rival medieval clans is a fierce, epic, and meticulously designed evocation of the clashes between Christianity and paganism, humankind and nature, love and violence. Vlácil’s approach was to re-create the textures and mentalities of a long-ago way of life, rather than to make a conventional historical drama, and the result is dazzling. With its inventive widescreen cinematography, editing, and sound design, Marketa Lazarová is an experimental action film.
Special FEatures
- New, restored 4K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New interviews with actors Magda Vášáryová, Ivan Palúch, and Vlastimil Harapes and costume designer Theodor Pištek
- New interviews with film historian Peter Hames and journalist and film critic Antonín Liehm
- In the Web of Time, a short documentary from 1989 by cinematographer František Uldrich, in which director František Vlácil discusses his filmmaking process
- Interview with Universal Production Partners technical director Ivo Marák about the film’s restoration
- Gallery of storyboards by Vlácil
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by film scholar Tom Gunning and translator Alex Zucker and a 1969 interview with Vlácil