'Witchhammer' (1970, Kladivo na čarodějnice)
Jan 27, 2018 1:32:36 GMT
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Post by petrolino on Jan 27, 2018 1:32:36 GMT
The historical drama 'Witchhammer' is an adaptation of a novel written by Vaclav Kaplicky in the 1960s. In the late 17th century, retired inquisitor Boblig (Vladimir Smeral) returns to work to oversee the cleansing of a small Czech village in Moravia that's been deemed susceptible to witchcraft.
'Witchhammer' is a satirical paranoia piece from filmmaker Otakar Vavra that deals with horror, delusion and absurdity brought on by witch trials. It's loosely based upon events surrounding the wicked legacy of notorious witchfinder Jindrich Frantisek Boblig Z Edelstadtu. The film's audacious opening contrasts playful shots of the ladies of this Moravian village seemingly at ease in a local bathhouse with shots of them attending church together in formal dress, a sinful set-up that provides a sign of things to come. Perjury traps are laid by high-ranking church officials and members of the aristocracy seen colluding with corrupt landowners, these disparate male factions bringing the hammer down on females in imperious fashion. Outrageous abuses of power are summarily enabled by deceitful users, co-conspirators and oily manipulators as torture and execution become the order of the day.
'Witchhammer' is one of the best movies I've seen dealing with the mass persecution, torture and execution of free-thinking women that occurred throughout Europe and was carried out in cowardly fashion behind the guise of religious duty. If you enjoy horror movies like Michael Reeves' 'Witchfinder General' (1968), Michael Armstrong's 'Mark Of The Devil' (1970), Piers Haggard's 'The Blood On Satan's Claw' (1971), Ken Russell's 'The Devils' (1971), Jess Franco's 'The Demons' (1973) and Jean Rollin's 'The Demoniacs' (1974), you might also enjoy 'Witchhammer'.
"It's difficult not to read Witchhammer as a reaction to the Prague Spring and the period dubbed 'normalization' that followed. For much of 1968, under Alexander Dubcek, Czechoslovakia was granted a series of reforms that allowed for freedoms unknown for decades, including a relaxation in censorship that led to a boom of taboo-busting New Wave cinema. It also resulted in the country's permanent division into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, though this 'spring' only lasted a few months before the displeased Soviets sent tanks and soldiers to occupy the country despite heroic non-violent protests from the Czechoslovakian people. President Gustav Husak took over and replaced Dubcek (it's amazing the latter wasn't executed) and overturned the reforms during the 'normalization'. Despite this, echoes of Dubcek's reforms sounded through the years, leading ultimately to a more liberal form on Communism and, eventually, the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The Czech New Wave directors dealt with 'normalization' - which essentially lasted from 1970 to 1989 - in various ways: some had the films they made during the Prague Spring siezed and banned, while others left the studio system for a time, and the famous Barrandov Studio was completely overturned, as employees were replaced. Filmic content was effectively neutered and as in the first decades of Stalinism was expected to tow the Party line with milquetoast plots and restrained visual style. Those who tested the waters occasionally had their films banned, such as director Otakar Vavra with Witchhammer."
- Samm Deighan, 'Woman Is Sin : Allegories Of Power In Witchhammer'
'One Hundred Years' - The Cure
- Samm Deighan, 'Woman Is Sin : Allegories Of Power In Witchhammer'
'One Hundred Years' - The Cure
'Witchhammer' is a satirical paranoia piece from filmmaker Otakar Vavra that deals with horror, delusion and absurdity brought on by witch trials. It's loosely based upon events surrounding the wicked legacy of notorious witchfinder Jindrich Frantisek Boblig Z Edelstadtu. The film's audacious opening contrasts playful shots of the ladies of this Moravian village seemingly at ease in a local bathhouse with shots of them attending church together in formal dress, a sinful set-up that provides a sign of things to come. Perjury traps are laid by high-ranking church officials and members of the aristocracy seen colluding with corrupt landowners, these disparate male factions bringing the hammer down on females in imperious fashion. Outrageous abuses of power are summarily enabled by deceitful users, co-conspirators and oily manipulators as torture and execution become the order of the day.
"Otakar Vavra, who died aged 100, isn't considered a "new wave" director. A director since the 1930s, he actually taught many new-wave talents, most notably future Oscar-winner Milos Forman. He worked steadily through the Nazi occupation and the years of subjection to the Warsaw Pact -- a matter of luck or proof of an aptitude for accommodation. The mere existence of his Kladivo na carodejnice, and its appearance in the aftermath of the Soviet crackdown, is amazing. It's not the sort of film you'd expect a hardline Communist regime to allow in theaters, though there may be a difference between the way we see its subject matter and the way a Czech Communist would. The Witches' Hammer (also known as Witchhhammer) takes its title from the Malleus Maleficarum, the infamous guidebook for witch-hunters, and takes its story from true events in the Habsburg Empire nearly contemporaneous with the Salem witch craze. The trouble begins when an old woman is caught stealing a consecrated host during Communion -- she takes it in her mouth without swallowing. Chided by church authorities, she admits that she intended to give it to a neighbor woman to feed to her cow, which had grown dry. The power of the host should restore the flow of milk, after all, and in return the crone would get a quart of peas. In the eyes of the authorities, superstitions like these are sinful, but where there's smoke there may be hellfire."
- Samuel Wilson, Mondo 70
"Coming from a country rich in experimental, absurdist, surrealist-tinged and fantastical cinema, the Czech film Witches’ Hammer is a surprisingly formalist and unambiguous comment on life under a totalitarian regime. Based on actual transcripts of Moravia’s witch-trials during the period 1667-1695, and using the same allegorical language as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, the message is as subtle as a two-foot bodkin to the inner thigh: positioning religion as a state-bound brand of delirium and control. To director Otakar Vávra’s credit, the hysterical and wildly expressionist flourishes Ken Russell brought to his version of The Devils in the following year are toned down to produce a deliberately measured pace and a mounting sense of doom as the veil of fear descends inexorably over a 17th Century town held in the grip of religious paranoia and delusion. Absent too is Russell’s garish palette; Witches’ Hammer’s stunning black-and-white photography compounds its stark opposites with images of an ever-mounting number of smouldering stakes, one for each doomed townsperson suspected of witchcraft, and silhouetted like burnt matches against the grey sky."
- Andrew Leavold, Senses Of Cinema
"In each epoch, Otakar Vávra changed his skin in order to save it. Among his lasting achievements was the film faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, which he helped establish after the second world war and where he taught for five decades. Among his students were Vera Chytilová, Milos Forman, Ivan Passer and Jiri Menzel, all directors of the 60s Czech new wave, and more recently Emir Kusturica, all of whom had high praise for his teaching. Vávra studied architecture at universities in Brno and Prague, but quickly became fascinated by the cinema and wrote film scripts while still a student. In 1931, influenced by avant-garde film-makers of the 20s such as Fernand Léger, Hans Richter and Man Ray, Vávra directed an experimental short documentary called The Light Penetrates the Dark, which shows the beauties and uses of electricity. But it was not until six years later that he was to make his first feature and become one of the leading Czech directors of the 30s and 40s."
- Ronald Bergan, The Guardian
Otakar Vavra's box-office hit 'Romance For Bugle' (1967)
- Samuel Wilson, Mondo 70
"Coming from a country rich in experimental, absurdist, surrealist-tinged and fantastical cinema, the Czech film Witches’ Hammer is a surprisingly formalist and unambiguous comment on life under a totalitarian regime. Based on actual transcripts of Moravia’s witch-trials during the period 1667-1695, and using the same allegorical language as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudon, the message is as subtle as a two-foot bodkin to the inner thigh: positioning religion as a state-bound brand of delirium and control. To director Otakar Vávra’s credit, the hysterical and wildly expressionist flourishes Ken Russell brought to his version of The Devils in the following year are toned down to produce a deliberately measured pace and a mounting sense of doom as the veil of fear descends inexorably over a 17th Century town held in the grip of religious paranoia and delusion. Absent too is Russell’s garish palette; Witches’ Hammer’s stunning black-and-white photography compounds its stark opposites with images of an ever-mounting number of smouldering stakes, one for each doomed townsperson suspected of witchcraft, and silhouetted like burnt matches against the grey sky."
- Andrew Leavold, Senses Of Cinema
"In each epoch, Otakar Vávra changed his skin in order to save it. Among his lasting achievements was the film faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, which he helped establish after the second world war and where he taught for five decades. Among his students were Vera Chytilová, Milos Forman, Ivan Passer and Jiri Menzel, all directors of the 60s Czech new wave, and more recently Emir Kusturica, all of whom had high praise for his teaching. Vávra studied architecture at universities in Brno and Prague, but quickly became fascinated by the cinema and wrote film scripts while still a student. In 1931, influenced by avant-garde film-makers of the 20s such as Fernand Léger, Hans Richter and Man Ray, Vávra directed an experimental short documentary called The Light Penetrates the Dark, which shows the beauties and uses of electricity. But it was not until six years later that he was to make his first feature and become one of the leading Czech directors of the 30s and 40s."
- Ronald Bergan, The Guardian
Otakar Vavra's box-office hit 'Romance For Bugle' (1967)
'Witchhammer' is one of the best movies I've seen dealing with the mass persecution, torture and execution of free-thinking women that occurred throughout Europe and was carried out in cowardly fashion behind the guise of religious duty. If you enjoy horror movies like Michael Reeves' 'Witchfinder General' (1968), Michael Armstrong's 'Mark Of The Devil' (1970), Piers Haggard's 'The Blood On Satan's Claw' (1971), Ken Russell's 'The Devils' (1971), Jess Franco's 'The Demons' (1973) and Jean Rollin's 'The Demoniacs' (1974), you might also enjoy 'Witchhammer'.
"Women were everywhere. They were in the concentration camps, in prisons. Mothers of small children walked out bravely and unfaltering, as they were taken out for execution. They fought as partisans, they fought as members of our army, and their battle reached its climax in the last hours of the war, during our revolutionary struggle as they fought on the barricades."
- Milada Horakova
"Like a pan-sticked Peter Pan, there is something eternally teenage about Robert Smith. He is an excellent interviewee: forthcoming, erudite – even slightly mischievous. Any such levity, however, is leavened by the tacit acknowledgment that existence is futile, and we are all just bags of flesh and bones whiling away the days before death and putrefaction sets in. "Your paper's got the most respect, though, hasn't it?" says the crown prince of 80s gloom. "Particularly with all the recent stuff that's gone on, the phone hacking." Given his moping, introspective image, it is something of a surprise to find Smith is politicised, a proud Guardianista and, he says, "a liberal kind of guy". He no longer lives in London, but followed the recent riots on TV. "I'm old enough to remember the Brixton riots – I remember the police and the miners' strike and how very brutal that was, and it was a very different thing, it felt very political. This sort of is – but it also isn't, because people are breaking into stores just to steal stuff. That's where it all breaks down. It's wanton destruction in many ways. It's really sad. You can sort of understand, because a million people go on a march to try to stop a war and nobody takes any notice. But you don't respond to it by stealing trainers and burning down f*ck*ng doughnut shops." He ponders the negative effects of our 24-hour news culture. "They keep showing the same images over and over, and it gives the impression it's happening everywhere, all the time. Perspective has been lost. Suddenly you've got these polls saying, 'Give the police live ammunition.' And I'm like, 'Hold on! It's not that bad, really'!" It is, he thinks, "a dream come true for Theresa May … it just paves the way for the police to be armed, curfews to be put in. It's like we're all sliding inexorably towards this f*ck*ng police state, populated with roaming gangs, like a 2000AD comic."
- Louis Pattison chats with Robert Smith, The Guardian
- Milada Horakova
"Like a pan-sticked Peter Pan, there is something eternally teenage about Robert Smith. He is an excellent interviewee: forthcoming, erudite – even slightly mischievous. Any such levity, however, is leavened by the tacit acknowledgment that existence is futile, and we are all just bags of flesh and bones whiling away the days before death and putrefaction sets in. "Your paper's got the most respect, though, hasn't it?" says the crown prince of 80s gloom. "Particularly with all the recent stuff that's gone on, the phone hacking." Given his moping, introspective image, it is something of a surprise to find Smith is politicised, a proud Guardianista and, he says, "a liberal kind of guy". He no longer lives in London, but followed the recent riots on TV. "I'm old enough to remember the Brixton riots – I remember the police and the miners' strike and how very brutal that was, and it was a very different thing, it felt very political. This sort of is – but it also isn't, because people are breaking into stores just to steal stuff. That's where it all breaks down. It's wanton destruction in many ways. It's really sad. You can sort of understand, because a million people go on a march to try to stop a war and nobody takes any notice. But you don't respond to it by stealing trainers and burning down f*ck*ng doughnut shops." He ponders the negative effects of our 24-hour news culture. "They keep showing the same images over and over, and it gives the impression it's happening everywhere, all the time. Perspective has been lost. Suddenly you've got these polls saying, 'Give the police live ammunition.' And I'm like, 'Hold on! It's not that bad, really'!" It is, he thinks, "a dream come true for Theresa May … it just paves the way for the police to be armed, curfews to be put in. It's like we're all sliding inexorably towards this f*ck*ng police state, populated with roaming gangs, like a 2000AD comic."
- Louis Pattison chats with Robert Smith, The Guardian
'Oh! You want to know why I hate you today. It will undoubtedly be less easy for you to understand than it will be for me to explain, for you are, I believe, the most beautiful example of feminine impermeability one could ever encounter.'
- Charles Baudelaire, 'The Eyes Of The Poor'
'How Beautiful You Are' - The Cure
- Charles Baudelaire, 'The Eyes Of The Poor'
'How Beautiful You Are' - The Cure