Tag: temptation

The Czech Year
(Špalíček)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date August 14 2026
No Comments on The Czech Year
(Špalíček)

Director – Jiří Trnka – 1947 – Czechoslovakia – Cert. PG – 80m

*****

A celebration of Czech peasant life, with a striking Christian element – on the Blu-ray Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, released in the UK on Monday, August 10th

Originally made as a series of short films which were subsequently edited into a feature, a similar strategy later adopted by fellow countryman Jan Švankmajer making Alice (1988), this opens (after a static title sequence) with a song about musicians wondering how they can afford a dulcimer. There’s a feeling of community among a villagers’ marching band comprising double bass, clarinet, serpent and horn, who are joined for processions and dances by assorted villagers. As the song ends, they are scattered but not dispersed by a death-like scarecrow figure on a cart.

A bear who has joined in their revelry is revealed as an actor whose bear mask has come off and been lost when he has fallen in a freezing stream (it has ice on top), and the season of winter is introduced by a pan along a model backdrop which appears to be painted on layers of glass. There are precedents for this technique, whether you look at Disney’s 2D animation experiments with the many glass levels of the multiplane camera used to achieve the illusion of depth on, for example, Fantasia (1940) or those of special effects animator Willis O’Brien who for such works as The Lost World (Harry O.… Read the rest

Tags acrobats, Adam, angels, battlefield, Bethlehem, bird singing, black serpent, blocking, bow and arrow, bride and groom, brushstrokes, carving, cave, choirboys, Christian, Christian church procession, clarinet, clown, cobra, community, community meal, craftspeople, Czech, Czech animation, Czech culture, Czech folk tales, Czech peasant life, Czechoslovakia, dance, death figure, deer, double bass, duck, ducklings, dulcimer, ethereal woman, facial design, flute, foliage, fortune tellers, Garden Of Eden, glass painting, Heavens, horn, huntsman, illustration, Jesus in the wilderness, Jiří Trnka, Jiří Trnka: Puppet Master, landscape, lighting, liturgical language, marching band, marionette show, message of Salvation, monkey, monument on a hill, musician, Old Czech Legends, painted faces, painter, procession, prophecy, puppet animation, puppets, ritualised church worship, rock formations, rural, serpent, sets, skeletons, skittles, snake, song, staging, stop-frame, stop-frame animation, stop-frame puppet, stop-motion, stop-motion animation, stop-motion puppet, storm, temptation, tempted by the Devil, The Czech Year, The Hand, till the soil, torrential rain, travelling show, villagers, war, war dead, Winter, wood

Features Live Action Movies

The Small Back Room

Directors – Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger – 1949 – UK – Cert. PG – 106m

*****

In London during World War Two, a back room boffin and bomb disposal man struggles with alcoholism – 4K restoration played at BFI Southbank on Tuesday, May 28th prior to release on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on Monday, June 3rd

This black and white, post-war era drama isn’t the first film that comes to mind when people think about Powell and Pressburger – it was made immediately after what today are regarded as three of their best colour features – A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and their arguable masterpiece The Red Shoes (1948). And that was preceded by one of their finest black and white works, “i know where i’m going!” (1945).

In many ways, The Small Back Room couldn’t be more different. There’s a marvellous sense of whimsy about those films, even if the later ones are intense and savage in places. Like Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes – and, for that matter, Powell’s late solo masterpiece Peeping Tom (1960), an intensity lies at the heart of The Small Back Room.

Gone are the light, airy spaces of the earlier films, their sense of the outdoors expanse (and, in The Red Shoes, the expanded landscapes of the eponymous ballet sequence within the film).… Read the rest

Tags across the hallway, advertising, alcohol, alcoholism, Allies, ATS, barman, black and white, bomb, bomb disposal, booze, boss, carriages, Chesil Beach, Christopher Challis, Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger, cinematographer, civil servant, claustrophobia, clock, colleagues, conference rooms, corporal, Cyril Cusack, dance, dancehall, dancehalls, David Farrar technical, department, drama, Emeric Pressburger, explosion, faces, false leg, field radio independent producers, flat, flats, German, German expressionism, girlfriend, government, hands, head of department, indulge, interiors, Jack Hawkins, jazz band, Kathleen Byron, lab, leisure time, local, London, London Underground, low, Michael Gough, Michael Powell, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Milton Rosmer, minister, Nigel Balchin, novel, office politics, offices, pain, partner, pebble, post-war, Powell and Pressburger, pub, pubs, relationship, Renée Ascherson, research, research lab, restaurant, Salisbury Plain, scientist, Second World War, secretary, self-worth, Sid James, stoic, Ted Heath’s Kenny Baker Swing Group, temptation, test, thermos flask, ticking, tools, tube, UK, wartime, welfare, whisky, Whitehall, window, working life, workmen drilling, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, wrenches, WW2

Features Live Action Movies

Padre Pio

Director – Abel Ferrara – 2022 – Germany, Italy – Cert. 15 – 104m

***1/2

Post-WW1, In San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, a Catholic mystic undergoes temptation while down in the village, armed landowners and military officers attempt to halt the rising tide of socialism – out on Blu-ray, DVD & DL from Monday, March 11th

Ferrara has long been something of an outsider, working with small budgets. This current offering is highly uneven, very strong and moving in places, betrayed by a lack of planning and resources in others. Perhaps its besetting sin (to use Christian religious parlance) is that it doesn’t deliver exactly what it sets out to: this is not exactly a portrait of early 20th Century, Catholic mystic Pio (Shia LaBeouf). The friar really only forms half of the film – arguably its weaker half – dealing only intermittently with his life from arrival in the impoverished Italian village of San Giovanni Rotondo in 1916 through to his visitation by Jesus and first manifestation of stigmata some years later.

The other half of the film, running in parallel to this, deals with the aftermath of World War One in that same village, as men return from the Front to be reunited with wives and mothers.… Read the rest

Tags 20th century, Abel Ferrara, armed, bless guns, Brando Pacito, Catholic, Catholic thought, Catholicism, Christ is Lord, Christian, congregants, contemplation, death notice, declaring elections unlawful, devout, election, Ermanno de Biagi, First World War, friar, Germany, insurrection, Italian nationalism, Italy, Jesus, killed in action, landowner, landowners, Liberation Theology, massacre, military officers, more equitable society, mystic, nudity, parlance, pay, Pio, post-WW1, poverty, prayer, provocation, religion, religion and politics, repression, returning soldiers, rich and poor, sacraments, San Giovanni Rotondo, Satan, Shia LaBeouf, single parent mother, single parent mum, socialism, spiritual, spiritual and political, stealing, stigmata, temptation, temptress, torment, village, Vincenzo Crea, visitation, work, worked to death, World War 1, World War I, World War One, WW1