Regie:
František VláčilScenario:
Jiří KřižanCamera:
Ivan ŠlapetaMuziek:
Zdeněk LiškaActeurs:
Juraj Kukura, Marta Vančurová, Gustáv Valach, Gustav Opočenský, Karel Chromík, Jiří Bartoška, Zdeněk Kutil, Augustín Kubán, Ilja Prachař, Robert Lischke (meer)Samenvattingen(1)
Paying tribute to sober heroism, this drama is formally the most concise of Vláčil’s three films set in the troubled period just after the Second World War. The story unfolds in a remote part of the Beskydy mountains, where a shepherd and his young family are held hostage by five armed Ukrainian nationalist paramilitaries, who force their way into their home, seeking temporary shelter. In the spirit of the classical drama, the director brings into play the unities of action, time and place, creating a masterful sense of increasing tension through his characteristic methods: dynamic lensing, unusual and expressive camerawork, knife-edge scenes half shrouded in darkness, muted delivery from the cast, the use of powerful musical motifs and also prolonged periods of silence. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)
(meer)Recensie (3)
After a forced hiatus of several years, when the consolidating normalisation regime had him in their sight, this is but a mere glimmer of the genius of Vláčil, whose excellent craft and imagery exploded in the 1960s and whose artistic heyday (when he was planning many other ambitious historical projects until the 1970s) was halted by the invasion of Russian troops and the subsequent shameful five-year era of "cinema of oblivion". In other words, the Communists squeezed Vláčil like a lemon, and although his last creative phase is not to be dismissed, the proverbial chains that had bound his hands for the previous ten years are very noticeable. Such a shame.
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Another excellent Vláčil film with a perfectly sultry atmosphere, similar not equal to Adelheid, which is a few years older. The film boasts excellent actors (I never liked Juraj Kukura much, but I forgot about that now, and Gustáv Valach was even better), Liška's never-failing music... A great film, but a bit weaker and more predictable compared to the aforementioned Adelheid, which is a bit of a shame.
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(KVIFF 2024) Shadows of a Hot Summer has a somewhat elliptical opening that throws us without explanation into a plot set in 1947 somewhere in the Beskids region. František Vláčil's film excels visually and offers many an imaginative scene or shot; it also impresses with its emphatic musical score. It was interesting to watch the development of the relationship between Ondráš and his initially contemptuous and uncomprehending son. During the festival's opening speech it was said that this is a western, and it does have elements of it. The sweltering Czech summer seemed to evoke the arid Wild West. Vláčil really knew his craft!
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