The thing about it too is that Panna a Netvor utilizes the conflict between beauty vs. ugliness in so many more ways than the very obvious one. And then it blurs them so that it’s not so simple anymore to use such merely reactive words as beauty and ugliness to describe what we see. There is a brilliant quality to the decay and rot and dilapitation going on in the castle and beyond, and a sharp edge to the lush, rich beauty of jewels, dresses and snow purely white.
Oh no. One of my favourite Czech directors (although he was born in Slovakia) has passed away. As much as I love his three internationally most famous films The Cremator(1969),Morgiana (1972) and Beauty and the Beast(1978), I must say that pretty much everything he has ever made is worth watching, including seemingly marginal work for television.
Despite being often mistakenly labeled as a “Czech New Wave” director, he actually never filmed anything in this typical “cinema verité” style. Similarly to Václav Vorlíček, Karel Zeman, Jindřich Polák or Oldřich Lipský, he belonged to the parallel line of Czech genre filmmakers, inventing their own imaginary worlds as a way to escape reality.
