6. Czech historic movies between great epics and art or spiritual cinema II: František Vláčil:
Marketa Lazarová (1967).


29 October



Screenplay: František Pavlíček, František Vláčil, based on the novel by Vladislav Vančura. Director
of photography: Bedřich Baťka. Editor: Miroslav Hájek. Music: Zdeněk Liška. Set designer: Oldřich
Okáč. Cast: Magda Vášáryová (Marketa Lazarová), Josef Kemr (Kozlík), František Velecký (Mikoláš),
Ivan Palúch (Adam), Pavla Polášková (Alexandra), Michal Kožuch (Lazar), Vladimír Menšík (Bernard),
Zdeněk Kryzánek (Pivo), Vlastimil Harapes (Kristián), Harry Studt (Kristián‘s father), Zdeněk Řehoř
(Sovička), Naďa Hejná (Kateřina), Jaroslav Moučka (Jan), and others. 160 min.



The film rhapsody Marketa Lazarová is a masterpiece of all Czech cinema; it won the first place on
a top ten list of the best Czech and Slovak features ever made (the public inquiry was organized
among Czech and Slovak critics in occasion to 100^th anniversary of Czech cinema in 1998). The film
is a variation of the leitmotifs of the novels by Vladislav Vančura (1891-1942) Marketa Lazarová
(1931) and Pictures from the History of the Czech Nation (1939, 1940), which take place in the
13^th century. Marketa is a daughter of a highwayman Lazar. She is promised to God, but she is
abducted and raped by Mikoláš, a son of Kozlík, another of the robbing knights. She falls in love
with Mikoláš… The excellent directing, outstanding music and the beauty of image on widescreen in
black and white created some kind of “cult movie” for the Czech art public, but the film is not so
well known abroad. There is only one film to compare with Marketa Lazarová in the world cinema:
Andrei Rublev made by Andrei Tarkovsky, the famous Russian director, at the same time.



Assigned reading:


Hames, Peter. The Czechoslovak New Wave: “František Vláčil”