Film
Marketa Lazarova
One of the crowning achievements of Czech cinema is this epic celluloid hallucination of savagery and mysticism in the Middle Ages. Centered around a violent feud between two 13th-century pagan clans, Marketa Lazarova is a riddle that’s not to be cracked (at least not on first viewing). Featuring a hypnotic dreamscape—hooded figures wandering through stark, barren landscapes and black wolves prowling virgin snow—and set to a thunderous, primordial soundtrack of clanging bells and liturgical chanting, the film’s lustrous, monochrome ’Scope cinematography gleams anew in this freshly struck 35mm print. A Janus Films release.