Adelheid

In his first attempt at a colour film, director Frantisek Vlácil transports us by means of a train journey to Czechoslovakia where we are met with the repercussions of World War Two. A love tale with peril written all over it; Komer exemplifies the misfortunes which war carries to the table and how in its attempt to reconstruct minor faults of the world, war can end up hindering and reproducing them further. But will the two unlikely protagonists beat the odds in an unhopeful world with a happy ever after?

In Adelheid, the well selected cast and Vlácil's fine directing skills have the ability to make the audience experience the same emotions they do - we feel the loneliness, the bouts of happiness and the relevant sensations at the end. A fine piece of cinema, especially for its time, and one which truly represents casualties of war. VMF

ADELHEID is one of the very few films dealing with the largely forgotten brutal expulsion of the ethnic (Sudeten) German from Bohemia and Moravia in the aftermath WWII. It is even more remarkable as it was in Czechoslovakia in 1970, when this was still a dark taboo chapter in the country's history (only in the last two decades a change has occurred). The expulsion ("Odsun") of up to 3 Million people was accompanied by terrible massacres of civilians, whose perpetrators have been covered by the state afterwards through general amnesties.

Generally regarded within Czech society as an eye-for-an-eye consequence and just punishment for Hitler's occupation, ADELHEID was the first (and for decades only) film to question such a view and to criticize post-WWII treatment of the Germans by the Czechs or even present the subject. Directed by the brilliant Frantisek Vlacil (MARKETA LAZAROVA), the film has a meditative, poetic atmosphere and a few non-realistic elements: the expelled Germans dressed in black at the beginning of the film appear like ghosts in the mist, the house of the Nazi party official, where most of the action takes place, is rather presented like some mythical ogre's home from some ancient fairy tale.

This movie very effectively demonstrates the horrors that follow a war. Adelheid is a woman whose world has been turned upside down by the war. A german woman with Nazi connections, she is seen as the enemy of the state in the post WWII Czechoslovakia & is reduced to working as a cleaning maid in her own family mansion. Her mother is dead, her father is awaiting execution & her brother has gone missing from the war front. Then her mansion is put under the supervision of a young but ailing Czech army officer, who is quite enamored of her. Suddenly, Adelheid finds herself in a quandary & finds it hard to choose sides.

Outstanding in every way. Made in 1970, it is so evocative of Czechoslovakia at the end of the war and at the same time of communism in 1970, not unlike the way Wajda's The Promised Land was both Lodz in the 19th century and Lodz in 1974.

I saw this three years ago at a festival and I still recall it vividly. The film really lingers. Yes, it's about trust - and it's also about remembering and forgetting. The film really focusses on the dichotomy between "evidence" and what it represents. Evidence is seen to fall drastically short of the "truth" - which for Vlacil is something intangible but communicable by film.