In Vláčil’s engrossing follow-up to Markéta Lazarová, designed to reuse that unprecedentedly expensive film’s props and costumes, two Teutonic Knights of the Cross grapple with internal conflicts and one another, as one is charged with returning the other to the fold. Written with Vladimír Körner (Vláčil’s collaborator on later films including Adelheid), the film’s thematic contestation of dogmatism – notwithstanding that it is set in the 13th century – proved controversial after the quashing of the Prague Spring. More recently, queer readings have proliferated. Liška deploys choirs of stylised human voices to haunting effect throughout.
4K DCP courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.