After watching 29 Czech films from the Cold War era in April,I started searching round for a title to finish my viewing season.Since starting things with Otakar Vávra's superb Sci-Fi Film Noir Krakatit,I was delighted to stumble upon another Vávra film,which led to me getting ready to surf the Czech wave for the final time.The plot:Found stealing a wafer from the church,an old women is asked by a priest why she did it,who is told that it is due to other women telling the old women that it would help her cows to get milk again.Reporting the news to Countess de Galle,Galle begins to fear that witchcraft is spreading across the land.Fearful about losing power,Galle sets up an inquisition to be led by a man called Boblig.Finding the accused women not willing to confess about being "witches",Boblig decides that the only option left to get the much needed confessions,is to use torture.View on the film:Casting a spell the year that the occupying Soviet Union destroyed the reforms from the Prague Spring,co-writer/(along with Ester Krumbachová) director Otakar Vávra's adaptation of Václav Kaplický's real life novel nails allegorical Horror,courtroom Drama,and historical Melodrama to the cross.Set in the 1600's,the writers cut to the bone in making a powerful case against the futility of torture, (which the KGB were infamous for using) with every "witness" being brainwashed by torture into confessing to anything,no matter how outrageous the allegation is.Sitting in on every courtroom "hearing", Vávra and cinematographer Josef Illík build an atmosphere of breathless unease,by tightly holding the camera over the accused faces,and capturing the moments of torturous pain shatter across their face.Smartly keeping the stabs at gore limited and occasionally cutting to a Shakespeare- style narrator , Vávra subtly explores the horrors of an unequal society,from the royal households and the courts being blazed with an impeccable set design,that covers every wall with gold and paintings,which are rubbed away by the accused being stuck in dusty,burnt to a crisp households.Going against each other, Vladimír Smeral & Elo Romancik give impeccable performances as Boblig and Lautner. Labelling anyone who questions his methods as "the devil" Vladimír Smeral gives a formidable performance as Boblig,whose existence Smeral wraps in a burning rage to keep a grip on the power he has gathered.Speaking out over what he sees, Elo Romancik gives a fantastic performance as Lautner,thanks to Romancik's burning all sign of Lautner's faith and hope piece by piece,as the witchhammer comes down on Czech cinema.

I've seen many movies about the persecution of witches in medieval times, but this one rightly stands on top of that pile, surpassing even peer masterpieces "Mark of the Devil" and "Witchfinder General". The cinematography is gorgeous, the writing is smart and sophisticated, the performances are excellent, and the story itself is gut-wrenching and brutal. Rarely do horror films haunt my mind like this Czech production did. With its roots based in historical fact, the true evils of mankind certainly are much more diabolical than any conjured up monster or serial killer. It is quite an experience to watch a movie that is simultaneously, strikingly, so beautiful and yet so harrowing.

Possible Spoilers Within. I might be presuming too much about the intentions of the film makers, but given the time period of the films release, following the Prague Spring and the short-lived relaxation of the censors, this film is a clear condemnation of the Stalinist state, or at least of an autocratic regime. There are so many positive qualities to this film it is hard to comment fully on it. However, the film does depict the main inquisitioner as a man driven by avarice, greed and power. Connivingly, he used his power to usurp judicial and law-enforcing power from the town and tortured "witnesses" and "criminals" into submission, thereby being able to take their property from them as "payment" for the trials. Unfortunately, the film maker could have illustrated the pain of torture more, but he possibly might have had problems with the censors, even given the relaxation, or he might not have wanted to offend the viewer. Further, the total inaction by the Austrian government tends to make the viewer of a Kafka- esquire government, in which the people's rights and pleas go unheard. This film, if anything, astutely illustrates the power of the state and its propensity toward abuse, if gone unchecked. Also, I was constantly reminded of the US's current problem with torture in the Middle East. Who is to declare the "Truth" in such murky circumstances. One of the Guards, who supplied a running monologue throughout the film, added another layer of If you don't know Czech, you might lose a little meaning in the subtitles, but the film is still worth watching, regardless.

This film claims historical accuracy, but it seems to be more allegorical than similar films which don't make that claim. I'm still trying to decide how exaggerated some of the "confessions" were, but then again this is a period of history I know little about. The Christ figure was interesting, and the parallel was loose enough to be interesting, but it was made too explicit at times to be considered very clever. Explicitly calling one of his "friends" a Judas is a little too much. Huxley created a more interesting Christ-figure in "Devil's of Loudon," voluptuous, yet gifted and filled with a righteous aim.What was most interesting to me was how the hypocrisy of those on high was related to the camera. Not in an exaggerated way, but in a way where we are given insight into the decisions being made, and witness the final hypocritical decision. The Queen anxiously touches her neck when she hears that one of the "witches" has been strangled, only to gracefully gaze at her complexion in the mirror and fix her makeup. A beautiful symbol of priorities, and how a minor amount of sympathy is trumped by pride. Another scene placed the Inquisitor in a large chair sipping on a snifter of wine, dictating to his secretary a letter describing the trial, asking him to underline how "horrified" they were at what they discovered, when of course, he hardly seems horrified anymore.Throughout the film is the battle between what to implicitly express visually, and what to explicitly allude to, and they don't often work well together. Still, there are enough scenes which focus on the former to overshadow the latter.3 out of 5 - Some strong elements