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
BPP: 	0.116
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.

Synopsis:
In this 1976 character study by Czech director Frantisek Vlacil, a stout middle-aged physician whose marriage has come apart (Rudolf Hrusinsky) establishes a practice in a small town. Gradually he’s drawn into the lives of his patients—a childless couple, a pregnant girl with a stern mother, the son of a duck farmer—and each relationship reveals a bit more about him and the idyllic but insular community. Vlacil is hardly known for his light touch, but the film’s austere look and elegiac chamber music, at times Bressonian in their severity, convey the doctor’s quest for fulfillment and peace of mind. Hrusinsky, who was blacklisted in Czechoslovakia for his anticommunist stance, ennobles his role by underplaying it.

Review:

A measured, evenly paced, extremely controlled, psychologically mesmerizing film about a doctor’s split with his wife, and his subsequent return to his Communist homeland, brilliantly underplayed by Rudolf Hrusinsky, a man in real life who was blacklisted in Czechoslovakia for his anti-Communist leanings, and only the slightest movement in his face could ever be detected. But he was superb in this role, his dignity challenged at every turn, but always remaining intact. He is introduced to a countryside clinic by the local Communist lackey, his quarters are spare and without possessions. Immediately, as the outsider, he is the object of the entire town’s suspicion, represented in a single scene where he is smoking potatoes, something he must have learned as a child, in a small attempt to gather some semblance of himself. Yet across the landscape a cry is heard for him to put out the fire; that’s not allowed; what is he, crazy? Every attempt to help someone is met with whispers behind his back and with the town’s scorn. The psychological pressure to allow so little to be shown, always holding everything inside, as who knows, someone near could, and would use any piece of information against you. This film reminded me of some of the early Kieslowski films, such as the rarely seen CURRICULUM VITAE, where in that film the Communist Party pressure is relentless to obtain confessions from your neighbors for the most ordinary actions of men. To live under the pressure of such a constant cloud of suspicion, where the Party representative is rarely even seen or heard, is wonderfully transparent in this film.
— cranesareflying from USA.
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Extras included:

1. Interview – Alois Svehlik
2. Interview — Josef Somr
3. Interview — Vitezslav Jandak

All the extras are in Czech language with only Czech Subtitles.

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/C9A56994E24E040/Smoke_on_the_Potato_Fields_%281976%29_–_Frantisek_Vlacil.mkv
http://www.nitroflare.com/view/514626257E641F4/Smoke_on_the_Potato_Fields_%281976%29_–_Frantisek_Vlacil.srt
https://nitro.download/view/1F243A95FF1132F/Extras.rar

Language(s):Czech
Subtitles:English (srt)

The post Frantisek Vlácil – Dým bramborové nate AKA Smoke on the Potato Fields [+extras] (1977) first appeared on Cinema of the World.