Opiniones de usuarios

This movie is a nice traditional Czech fairytale comedy. Most of the humor used is contextual, so you need to know Christians fairytales to understand the jokes. Maybe even how they are interpreted in Middle Europe.

The cast is pretty famous for older generation in our location. The costumes are simple and historical. The exteriors and interiors are quite ordinary for that period in our history. It is classical Czech(Czechoslovak) fairytale.

Don't get me wrong, I've always appreciated how the Czech people keep their fairytales alive, but it is not something ultra cool with lot of special effects.

I watch this movie every year on Christmas Eve.

In 2006, the film set an absolute record for ratings on Czech television. At that time it was watched by a total of 2 731 000 viewers. The record was only broken by Angel of the Lord 2 in 2016. The fairy tale was watched by more than 3 million viewers (the Czech Republic has 10.5 million inhabitants), thus becoming the most watched and most popular film of 2016. It was also the most watched fairy tale in the last fifteen years.

The film Angel of the Lord was shot in several locations in the Czech Republic. If you follow the fairy tale closely, you will discover that the castle belonging to Count Maximilian is Kasperk. The courtyard was only minimally modified by the filmmakers. It is a medieval mansion located in the Sumava foothills.

The filmmakers chose it because it is one of the highest castles in the Czech Republic. They hoped it would snow. "The snow fell about four hours before the first flap, all the saints held a protective hand over me," the director remarked in an interview.

Dorothy married Maximilian in the Church of St. Moritz, located on Mourenec Hill. The scenes in the chambers were filmed at Cesky Sternberk Castle. It took place in places not normally accessible to the public. Other shots were filmed at Krivoklat and Spicak.

During the filming of The Angel of the Lord in Sumava, director Jiri Strach met Magdalena Stupkova. After about two years of relationship they got married. The big event took place in a church, which was an obvious choice as the director openly professes his Catholic faith. His best man was the devil Uriah, played by Jiri Dvorak in the fairy tale The Angel of the Lord.

The main problem of this film is that it has been initially made for TV only and wasn't intended for the big screen - and this shows terribly. What could have been an average TV movie has now the looks of a sloppy mess : the design, the effects, everything looks way too poor for a story taking place in Heaven and on a castle. The script is way too talkative - everything is said rather than showed (personnaly, I believe very strongly in the emotional and narrative power of images in movie-making, as a good example, I would quote Terrence Malick's last two films). The acting was under the average : the actors didn't seem to understand, and even less to believe in what they were saying. The camera was rather good, but waisted on a way too conventional directing. The only good thing about it is that this is the first Czech film after the fall of communism that deals with a Christian subject in a way that does not look like propaganda (neither for nor against Christianity) - which is rather pleasing but not enough to make it a good film. And then...

... the film has an extraordinary score by composer Milos Bok - which is why I am bothering to leave this comment. The music is just wonderful : strong, beautifully written - it sounds like a modern Wagner, complex and yet directly understandable to all. I have bought the soundtrack (which is for sale on the Internet) which made me realize something else : the music tells the story much better than the film itself, and as such, even the score damages the film, because it gives you a vivid feeling about how the original material could have led to a nice film, were it handled by more gifted people. Which leads me to the conclusion : it does not mater how much money you have, the thing is to believe in what you are doing - and having a little care for professionality (which include thinking about how to do things the best appropriate way).