Witchhammer
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Director: Otakar Vávra
1970 / 107min / DCP
The multi-hyphenate talent Ester Krumbachová co-wrote Vávra’s live at the witch trials drama, which exposes scenes of satanic panic in 17th-century Moravian, led by inquisitor Boblig von Edelstadt (Vladimir Šmeral), a real historical figure. Committed to rooting out practitioners of the black arts, he shows no scruples about stooping to torture in order to coerce confessions from helpless women—a depiction of hysteria of denunciation and persecution regarded by some contemporary viewers as being as much a commentary on Czechoslovakia at the beginning of the 1970s as Europe in the 1670s. Shot in stark, stunning black-and-white CinemaScope, Witchhammer is always scrupulous in authentic period detail, but its tale of political/sexual repression and concomitant misogyny, alas, a timeless one.
Introduction with Irena Kovarova, film programmer and Czech film expert, on Saturday, October 19th
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