Quote:
Cast out by his father, young Ondrej joins the Order of the Teutonic Knights, where he is raised by strict monk Armin. After years of hardship, Ondrej escapes from the Order when he is wrongly punished, and sets out for his former home. Arriving to discover his father to be dead, Ondrej now not only assumes control of his father’s properties, but seeks to marry his former stepmother.

Quote:
It is hard to watch Frantisek Vlácil’s 1968 movie The Valley of the Bees (Údolí včel) without comparing it with the liberation movement of the Prague Spring that lasted until the end of summer of that same year. Although set during the middle ages, the film is essentially a meditation on the question of ideology, whether to repudiate it or not, and if yes, by what means. Portraying the story of a political traitor, the film perpetrates historical meaning, perhaps in spite of itself. It thus reflects the resistance attempts in Czechoslovakia against the repressive political and social conditions of the Soviet regime.

Ondrej is the son of the sovereign of a remote village in 13th century Bohemia. He’s given over to an anonymous Christian Order when he refuses to accept his father’s new wife, who seems to be closer in age to Ondrej than his father, as a mother. At the convent, he is raised by the overly devout Armin von Heide, who spends most of his life fasting, crusading, and searching for salvation. Armin is an obedient minister to the religious policies of his time. But he has one thing in common with his young friend. They are both fascinated by the sight of the endless sea, which soon turns out into a metaphor for a distant promise. But the magic of distance is deceiving. It only allows them to dream about the possibility of escape. To actually renounce the Order that keeps them on land does not seem to be an option. But unlike his older companion, Ondrej soon begins to disagree with the restrictive rites of authority. He finally runs off after spending some time in prison for having been innocently involved in the escape plan of a fellow knight.

The Valley of the Bees is a film about making decisions in a world where there is little or nothing left to decide. Decision-making remains crucial to every liberalization because it involves having to act independently and establish a conscious position against the conscious-thwarting standards that it is trying to overcome. It is worth thinking about, whether Ondrej’s return to the sea at the end of the film is really a relinquishing of the activity he tried to pursue or whether it is a necessary grief over something he has finished with.

Udolí.vcel.1968.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 40 min
Size: 	3.08 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x436 
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.373
Audio
#1:  	Czech 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 192 kb/s (Projection Booth commentary with Mike White and Robert Bellissimo)

https://nitro.download/view/4232E23ADE86B65/Udoli.vcel.1968.576p.BluRay.DD2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Údolí vcel AKA The Valley of the Bees (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The partnership between director František Vláčil and screenwriter Vladimír Körner yielded films including Adelheid (Adelheid, 1969), Pověst o stříbrné jedli (The Legend of the Silver Fir, 1973) and Stín kapradiny (The Shadow of a Ferns, 1984). But it is the historical drama Údolí včel (The Valley of the Bees, 1967) that is widely regarded as the pair’s greatest collaborative achievement. Released in cinemas shortly after Vláčil’s highly acclaimed Marketa Lazarová (Marketa Lazarová, 1967), The Valley of the Bees came about as a result of efforts to reuse the props and costumes from the director’s previous opus – hitherto the most expensive Czechoslovak film of all time. Körner’s compact concept is very different from the ambitious, expansive adaptation of author Vladislav Vančura’s historical novel Marketa Lazarová. While the former film told the story of Christianity’s battle with paganism, The Valley of the Bees is more of a timeless picture representing a battle between asceticism and freedom. Similarly to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Sedmá pečeť, 1957), the film is highly philosophical; a non-romanticised view of the Middle Ages, which, instead of putting forward battle scenes, focuses on the internal conflicts of its characters. The protagonists of the story are two Teutonic Knights of the Cross, Armin von Heide and his Bohemian protégé Ondřej. The young aristocrat, whose father appointed him to the Order in childhood, escapes the castle where he grew up indoctrinated in asceticism and prayer. But the fanatical Armin keeps his companion under surveillance, following him to his hometown of Vlkov, and thwarting Ondřej’s attempts to lead a happy life with the lovely Lenora. The return of the desperate Ondřej to the Order as the only possible home that remains available to him was viewed by “normalisation” era censors as so controversial that for a 1977 TV version, they created a notably different “new” version with a truncated ending. This visually polished piece stars Petr Čepek as Ondřej, and Jan Kačer as Armin. Unlike Marketa Lazarová , the film did not find favour with critics and audiences. But the film has since been reappraised, and is today widely viewed as a Czechoslovak film classic.

Udoli.vcel.1968.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 36 min
Size: 	4.12 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	6 000 kb/s
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Audio
#1:  	Czech 2.0ch AAC LC @ 125 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/3B26F6A320BDF87/Udoli.vcel.1968.1080p.WEB.AAC.x264-PAMETNiK.mkv

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English, Czech

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Udoli vcel AKA Valley of the Bees (1968) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
One of the film’s topics is shown in the credit sequence: from above we watch the tracks made in the snow by people in the street. Eventually we see the beaten tracks that people don’t leave. Then the camera moves down and we watch the people who made the tracks- a policeman prominent among them- as they walk around greeting each other. Until the snow melts only two people- the central character and his girlfriend- consider leaving the tracks.

The actual story involves Klima, an art historian and theorist, scientifically- as he persistently says- oriented. His principles mean that he cannot- or will not- help others. His girlfriend wants to be a model and travel (the film is set in Prague in the early 1960s), but he will not recommend her. Another friend or acquaintance- an artist- needs official confirmation of his quality from a critic. Klima will help neither. Only Zaturecky- an older would-be art critic- gets any help and that is because Klima has lost the thesis Zaturecky sent him to read and will not admit he has not read it and sends him a noncommittal but polite letter. When he does read the thesis he hates it- we never know whether his contempt for this is justified or not. As a result of his attempts to evade the consequences of his action Klima makes a mess of his life- he loses his girl to the artist and learns that his neighbours watch him persistently and many dislike him. One of the most chilling scenes comes after he has been denounced and insulted at a Communist Party-led neighbours’ meeting: the neighbours who denounced and insulted him are friendly now. He is one of them. The big problem with the film is Klima’s character- we know nothing about and so we cannot understand his actions- is he an arrogant opportunist, a man of principle, a coward, a mixture? Perhaps he doesn’t know either, but it means there is something of a void at the film’s centre. It’s worth seeing, though, as there are some fine comic turns, especially when Klima’s girlfriend teases a nosey neighbour- another chilling touch comes at the end: the party official who led Klima’s denunciation is talking to one of the neighbours about the nosey woman who is persistently hanging out her washing at odd times and who mentioned that Klima’s girlfriend had moved in with him without permission- “How do you know it’s her laundry?” he asks, and says they’ll watch her too.

1.47GB | 1h 32m | 757×568 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/72AF29B43C7A32C/Hynek_Bocan_-_(1966)_Nobody_Will_Laugh.mkv

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English,Czech

The post Hynek Bocan – Nikdo se nebude smát AKA Nobody Will Laugh (1966) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A poor but great violinist is invited to stay at an aristocrat’s house. It is based on a short story by Lev Nikolaevic Tolstoj.

1011MB | 1h 09m | 1024×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/558612144F7552D/Albert_(Vlacil,_1985).mkv

Language(s):Czech, Slovak
Subtitles:English

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Albert (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
The invincible agent Cyril Juan Borguette alias W4C (Jan Kacer) has been assigned a mission to go to a hotel in Prague, get hold of a saltcellar with a plan for the military exploitation of Venus hidden in it, and hand it over to the beautiful agent Alice (Kveta Fialová). He will have to compete for the saltcellar with other agents working for the world’s various greater and smaller powers. The head of the Prague counter-intelligence unit gets news of agent W4C’s mission. Deficient in personnel, he nominates accountant Foustka (Jirí Sovák) as agent 13B. Mr Foustka takes his dog Pajda with him and the two head for the airport. Pajda helps him track down agent W4C in a classy hotel that becomes the battleground for the interests and plans of the secret agents from different countries, each trying to get hold of the precious saltcellar.

1.66GB | 1h 29mn | 1019×434 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/DB1D5CB7DF3893A/The_End_of_Agent_W4C_(1967)_–_Vaclav_Vorlicek.mkv

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English (muxed)

The post Václav Vorlícek – Konec agenta W4C prostrednictvím psa pana Foustky AKA The End of Agent W4C (1967) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
“Everyday Courage” or “Courage for Every Day” is a beautifully made fllm of great poetic restraint about a young man living in Prague before the collapse of communism. It is best described as belonging to the school of realism which marked the Czech films of the sixties, and its director, Evald Schorm, was noted for his refusal to compromise the subject matter or style of his films with the regime which controlled the film studios. An admirer of the films of the British director Lindsay Anderson, “Everyday Courage” has similarities with”This Sporting Life”, its hero striving to escape the repressive forces of a society against which he rebels, but which ultimately demoralizes him and undermines his personal relationships. The winner of the International Film Festival in 1965 it has been notably neglected, and was one of the most moving and lyrical films to emerge from the Czech school.

1.61GB | 1h 29mn | 757×568 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/07448107A45AF09/Courage_for_Every_Day_(1964)_–_Evald_Schorm.mkv

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English, Czech (muxed)

The post Evald Schorm – Kazdy den odvahu AKA Courage for Every Day (1964) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Though he was very much a member of the community of filmmakers who graduated from FAMU and went on to shake things up during the sixties, Evald Schorm also stood apart from the rest. Like his fellow directors, he was using the medium to get at the absurdity of life in Communist Czechoslovakia, but Schorm was dedicated to a more direct, realistic type of filmmaking than his friends Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, and Jiří Menzel, who readily turned to whimsy, fantasy, and comedy. Referred to as both the philosopher and the conscience of the New Wave, Schorm, whose relatively sober style has been called documentary-like (his focus at FAMU was nonfiction filmmaking) and received comparisons to that of Antonioni, explored themes of morality and the malaise of the socialist middle class (such income-based social strata did exist in Czechoslovakia), and preferred psychological portraiture.

Such individualist, existential works were anathema to the Communist Party, and Schorm’s first feature following his graduation in 1962, Everyday Courage (1964), about the crumbling life of an overzealously political young factory worker, was blacklisted by President Antonín Novotný. His next feature, after completing his more visually exploratory Pearls of the Deep short, “The House of Joy,” was Return of the Prodigal Son (1967), an exhilarating, angry film about an engineer, Jan (Jan Kacer), trying to find his way back into the world of the living after attempting suicide. Taking place both inside the mental hospital where he’s recuperating and outside in “normal” society, to which he routinely escapes, the film is a devastating articulation of depression brought on by vague, free-floating social anxieties and disappointments. In trying to readjust – to work, to friends, and most importantly to life with his similarly neurotic wife, Jana (Jana Brejchová), and very young daughter – Jan finds that to live happily in this world one has to negotiate daily with one’s morality; late in the film, when he visits his office during an extended leave from the hospital, his boss even lectures him on the importance of compromise.

There’s a humane core to Return of the Prodigal Son that saves it from despair. Rather than making everyone other than Jan a fool, Schorm extends enormous sympathy to a fascinating cast of supporting characters, all of them outcasts in their own way, including Jana, who combats her loneliness in Jan’s absence by taking a lover, Jiří (played by director Jiří Menzel); Olga (Dana Medrická), the sexually frustrated wife of the head doctor, who takes a liking to Jan; and Jan’s hospital roommate, Zdenek (Jiří Kilián), an effeminate ballet dancer with whom Jan feels an artistic and spiritual kinship.

Schorm never compromised his beliefs after the 1968 Soviet invasion; he refused to make films that acceded to the aesthetic and ideological demands of the cultural police who reinstituted the socialist realism of the Stalinist era (one script he rejected, for example, was a simplistic glorification of the life of a Communist activist). Because of this, he was not allowed to work in Czechoslovakian cinema for nearly twenty years, focusing instead on theater. In 1988, he died shortly before the premiere of his comeback film, Killing with Kindness, a story about a mother-daughter relationship that features Return of the Prodigal Son’s Kacer and Brejchová in prominent roles. – Michael Koresky, Criterion.com

1.33GB | 1 h 43 min | 714×535 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/60AE5C4DAE735CE/Evald_Schorm_-_%281967%29_The_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son.mkv

Language:Czech
Subtitles:English

The post Evald Schorm – Návrat ztraceného syna AKA The Return of the Prodigal Son (1967) first appeared on Cinema of the World.