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Showing posts with label Frantisek Vlácil. Show all posts

Monday, November 29, 2010

Frantisek Vlácil - Stíny horkého léta aka Shadows of a Hot Summer (1978)

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5333/imdbimage.jpg

From IMDB
Once more, Vlacil's films are largely about subjects that are not seen on screen. With some spoilers, here we have a story set in 1947 when Ukrainian right-wing anti-Communist guerillas, looking like and feeling like Nazi's, are trying to fight their way through Czechoslovakia to Austria. They come out of the forest to occupy a family's countryside farm house, kidnapping a doctor to help heal one of their wounded, but this could just as easily be about the post-war occupying forces in Eastern Europe, or the occupying Soviet forces in the 60's, as there is an initial belief that there is nothing anyone can do, or to coin a STAR TREK phrase, `Resistance is futile.' The film has a very languid pace which establishes the mood and pace of this small village, much of it is wordless, with a Sergio Leone acid-western feel, easily the most outstanding feature is the original music by Zdenek Liska, which plays on the inner psychological turmoil, providing an unseen character in the film. The father gives the appearance of passivity, as he is outmanned and outgunned, while his eager young son wants a taste of immediate revenge. But a wiser course of action is called for, waiting, giving the impression he is yielding to their demands, as the father wants to protect the lives of his wife and children, which allows for large doses of screen time where various family members are performing daily farm chores, just trying to survive this ordeal, while interspersed in each frame are men with machine guns who sadistically threaten their every impulse. This farmhouse under occupation represents a country under occupation, all feel like helpless victims where every moment is spent in fear, any minute things could spin helplessly out of control, and this film skillfully gets under everyone's skin.

From link

Although Vláèil was temperamentally drawn to historical reconstruction, his films were always intended, he said, as a dialogue with his own times. His themes can be summarised as reflecting the human distortions caused by cultural and ideological conflict. The historical themes of East vs West, Christianity vs paganism, and Czechs vs Germans could easily find their parallels in more contemporary ideological conflicts. The invading Ukrainian guerrillas in Stíny horkého léta (Shadows of a Hot Summer, 1977), where a Moravian farmer defends his home against occupation, were even interpreted as standing for the Warsaw Pact armies that invaded Czechoslovakia during the suppression of the Prague Spring of 1968.

http://www.filesonic.com/file/36788355/Stiny horkeho leta (1978).avi
http://www.filesonic.com/file/36785881/Stiny horkeho leta (1978).EN.srt
http://www.filesonic.com/file/36785883/Stiny horkeho leta (1978).ES.srt
or

http://www.fileserve.com/file/h44NGgP/Stinyhorkeho.part13.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/at9pFRp/Stinyhorkeho.part14.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/XNW6qMG/Stinyhorkeho.part12.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/2vWBBPv/Stinyhorkeho.part15.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/2Faqpyq/Stinyhorkeho.part11.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/q8fWffg/Stinyhorkeho.part08.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/gd22duN/Stinyhorkeho.part10.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/NEQjNfb/Stinyhorkeho.part07.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/KgvHSDV/Stinyhorkeho.part09.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/qc7CkmJ/Stinyhorkeho.part03.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/uyJx32p/Stinyhorkeho.part06.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/CQaZnge/Stinyhorkeho.part04.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/s9KxpQY/Stinyhorkeho.part02.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/5qeZc7s/Stinyhorkeho.part05.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/FB22pYw/Stinyhorkeho.part01.rar

http://hotfile.com/dl/85803781/fda03a3/Stinyhorkeho.part01.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85804214/c99e61e/Stinyhorkeho.part02.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85804363/37dedda/Stinyhorkeho.part03.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85804408/509b973/Stinyhorkeho.part04.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85804595/e6c2d1a/Stinyhorkeho.part05.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85804659/193772d/Stinyhorkeho.part06.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85805201/2646aa0/Stinyhorkeho.part07.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85805207/9ce04ee/Stinyhorkeho.part08.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85805283/99779cf/Stinyhorkeho.part09.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85805329/bf5124a/Stinyhorkeho.part10.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85805385/6015317/Stinyhorkeho.part11.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85805852/103d2cb/Stinyhorkeho.part12.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85805911/0928ede/Stinyhorkeho.part13.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85806011/0790d4e/Stinyhorkeho.part14.rar.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/85806113/a3fdeae/Stinyhorkeho.part15.rar.html

links are interchangeable
no pass

Friday, October 8, 2010

Frantisek Vlácil - Pasácek z doliny (1983)

http://a.imageshack.us/img831/1199/vlacilpasekzdoliny.jpg

Description: One of the less known films from what I feel to be the greatest of Czech directors.

In 1947 in the Beskydy mountains are still traces of the war. Ten-year-old boy on a regular basis such as cows grazed in the meadow next to the destroyed German tanks. The boy has no father and his mother was serving with the farmer. Therefore, a small majority of the old shepherdess's grandfather. Kid out of school is only used to feed cows and chop wood in winter. One evening in the forest he meets two mysterious figures. He thinks it's the king of goblins with his secretary, because just such a story his grandfather told. In fact, they are not banderovci who, with the local mayor agree on the transition of its section and looting in the village ... Ballad film shot on the novels of Ladislav Fuks Vláčil Francis in 1983. (Translated by Google)

http://www.uloz.to/5415933/pasacek-z-doliny.avi

no subs,Tvrip
Rar Password: none

Frantisek Vlácil - Albert (1985)

http://i962.photobucket.com/albums/ae110/koniecsveta/206164_3a31e2.jpg

Description:
Have their first shots of depopulated, snowy elegant boulevard Saint Petersburg entrained telecine Albert unusual attention to himself. In the center stands talking extremely talented musician Albert, former first violinist St. Petersburg Opera, now an alcoholic and slag, living on the margins of society. There is the aristocratic salons as tolerated guests, although the game can truly fascinate all. Nevertheless, the social situation has not changed. Love set fire to the high-level lady, the wife of a general, he once prepared a place in the theater. Since then, fate put him back. During a retreat with Anna Ivanovna / Zora Kolínska / deliver refined Albert Earl Delesov / Jan Kačer / who decides to change his humiliating life. It invites him to live in his house, placed him into custody in good faith servant Zachar / Peter Debnár /, encourages him to stop drinking and dedicated to music. Attempts to arrange his return to musical sunshine - in the opera orchestra. From that moment on we follow the conflict of two specific characteristics and the two approaches to life. Delesov is a decent man, but unimaginative. He thinks that they can rehabilitate the second, by improving his physical condition. Neurotic Albert, blessed with extraordinary talent and artistic imagination, but a tendency to self-destruction, is subconsciously, and later openly prevents Delesov view. He feels threatened by the internal freedom. Switches comfortable cage for a lonely exile in the middle of icy palaces and squares show the Orthodox churches?

http://rapidshare.com/files/164176961/albert.up.bbb7.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/164178819/albert.up.bbb7.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/164180178/albert.up.bbb7.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/164181761/albert.up.bbb7.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/164183114/albert.up.bbb7.part5.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/164262036/albert.up.bbb7.part6.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/164263179/albert.up.bbb7.part7.rar

no subs Tvrip
Rar Password: none

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Frantisek Vlácil - Údolí vcel AKA Valley of the Bees (1968)

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/7969/udolivcelfrontce7.jpg

review by Michael Atkinson:

A forgotten world-class figure, Frantisek Vlácil was, with just a handful of films to prove it, the Czech New Wave's formalist, post-expressionist wrecking ball, their Welles, their Paradjanov. In the modest window between Moscow's 20th Congress in '56 and the tanks of '68, Forman, Passer, and Menzel made Bohemia safe for the Oscars, Juraj Jakubisko pursued his orgiastic apocalypses, and Jan Nemec crystallized the Kafkaesque suffocation of extra-Soviet life. But briefly, Vlácil was the idiosyncrat, and the image master. Amid a movement renowned for its gritty intimacy and keen social observation, he trumped his compatriots' notions of "nouvelle"-ness with 1967's adaptation of Vladislav Vancura's novel Marketa Lazarová. In the Czech Republic's 1998 centennial celebration, that ambitious historical pageant was voted the greatest Czech film of all time, and it is a crazed musk ox of a movie, a nightmare epic about warring medieval tribes that brands you with images and passages of one-of-a-kind pagan muscularity. That same year, Vlácil revisits the milieu in Valley of the Bees, a moral fable of corruption and fundamentalism chronicling the clashing paths of two knight-monks—one a wayfarer from a hellish family who returns upon maturity to exact his own satisfaction, and the other a true believer who follows, brimming with homicidal righteousness. It's no Lazarová, but Vlácil's spectacular orchestration of landscape, violent chaos, wild animals, and Middle Age iconography is never less than impressive.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Frantisek Vlácil - Stín kapradiny aka Shades of Fern (1984)

http://www.dvdedice.cz/data/20/1216807220_big.jpg

Spoilers Alert! Somewhat reminiscent of Fassbinder, in particular QUERELLE, with characters appearing as the Angels of Death, this film could be titled HANSEL AND HANSEL. The story comes from the novel by Josef Capek, and is one of Vlacil's wordiest, more philosophical films, as two young men are caught in the woods by the gameskeeper killing a deer So they kill him as well, still another senseless act, and spend the rest of the film running away, hiding in the woods, plagued by their crimes. The two talk incessantly, pledge to never leave one another, and enter into a homosexual bond which is never actually realized, as they rarely even touch, but they can't exist without one another. As they get deeper in the woods, memories, fantasies, and hallucinations appear more prevalent. One, the shooter, the more dominant of the two, walks naked to the waist through the funeral procession of the gameskeeper they just shot, while the other looks on horrified. Another beautiful recollection is a sepia-tinged image of the two sitting on a front step, back to back, while one plays the accordian and they sing a wonderful duet, until they stop, and one of them, the shooter, pulverizes the other repeatedly. As they get deeper into the woods, they hear their names called out by the dead, in this case the gameskeeper reappears like the witch in HANSEL AND GRETEL, and laughs at their futility. Or they find a beautiful outdoor beer garden where the townsfolk are drinking and dancing, all whispering about the murderers in their midst, while a local drunk has a fabulous scene commenting on their status as wealthy farmers, as they are buying enough alcohol to feed a regiment. One take on this film is the hatred of the workers, particularly in the Communist State, that they always feel justified to hate the outside world, which they imagine as living in bliss. Always, they seem to wake in a beautiful green meadow where the world appears in perfect harmony, except for these two, perfectly realized in a scene where one observes, `At least the world will have all this beauty,' while the dominant partner tries to rip up the field, tearing it apart, while the sound of bees buzzing seems driving his actions. My favorite scene was when they sit on a hill above a rural landscape that is harvesting their fields, again a scene of community harmony, a world where they are not allowed. But the townsfolk close in on them, real or imagined, it's never really explained, again their names are called out by the dead, like the voice of DON GIOVANNI, calling them into hell. First one, then the other is shot, they lie cuddled next to one another, while the dead gameskeeper gleefully comments: `They can't escape their punishment.' The camera moves to the entrance of a dark cave, which enlarges into total darkness. (cranesareflying - IMDB).