Morgiana

When their wealthy father dies, his daughters Viktoria and Klára (Iva Janzurová) inherit his fortune. The evil Viktoria inherits a small castle and all the possession inside including jewelry but the naive Klára inherits most of his assets. Viktoria plots with the gypsy fortuneteller Otylie (Nina Divísková) to poison her sister with an undetectable liquid to inherit her fortune. Klára feels sick and her doctor cannot diagnosis her, while Viktoria uses the poison in the milk of her dog. Meanwhile, Klára falls in love with Lieutenant Marek (Josef Abrhám). When Otylie blackmails Viktoria, she throws Otylie off the cliffs in the sea. Soon Klára receives a letter telling that she was poisoned and asking for money to give the antidote to her. Who wrote the letter?

"Morgiana" is a stylish Czechoslovakian movie from the 70's, with a great story of ambition and evilness. The first point to highlight is certainly the magnificent performance of Iva Janzurová in a double-role that certainly deserved an Oscar. The cinematography, camera work, lightning and costumes are also amazing. The story, the unexpected plot point and the screenplay are also fantastic. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Morgiana"

Juraj Herz's 1971 Morgiana is less Carroll-gone-softcore than Edward Gorey as filmed by Ken Russell-a sardonic chunk of Victorian penny-dreadful melodrama tweaked to new levels of aesthetic and emotional hysteria. Jealous of her vapidly "good" sister's popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara's tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed. The women here are painted as elaborately as psychedelic-drag-queen Cockettes, and the purple extremity of their predicament is drawn in equally bizarre/extravagant terms. It's like a dress-up, younger-generation version of Baby Jane?, set in an ornamental snow globe.

Don't watch this for the story. As other films by this maker, it starts well enough, twin sisters, one of them wicked, the other is pure, have inherited a fortune from their dead father, but the wicked sister is envious of the other and plots her murder. Slow-burn poison. But she's uncertain whether it works or not.

It is tantalizing for a while. You have poison-induced hallucinations in the 'good' sister, mirrored in paranoid tension in the 'bad' sister— testing the poison, she has fed it to her maid's dog, but her own cat may have eaten some, and her maid's child. Eaten inside by doubt (both are), all she can do is wait.

So you are prepared to conflate parallel layers, ready for rich overlap. The two sisters are played by the same actress.

But it doesn't take inside.

It doesn't abstract. It is, to the end, about what's going to happen with the story. Which is too bad, because the camera, the way we see, is already abstract. Having seen now a few films by this guy, Herz, I'm convinced he was visually the most ambitious of the Czech filmmakers— there are hallucinative swirls here, distortion of space, dynamic prowling. The Gothic mood may recall Bava, but the camera is on a whole other level, much more cinematic.

There is some pretty amazing stuff here. Not the overt hallucinations, but some of the peripheral blurring, like the swirling shots as the carriage filled with soldiers eager for sex is dashing through the 'red- light' district. The whole film, rooted in the delirious sisters, is about such bending of vision.

It's as simple as this, however. Truly great films, those with the power to change you, aren't about the story. The story is there, the images with some logic behind them, but that is so we have something 'real' to bend as we reach for the more expansive causality of how images and logic come into being, which is not a logical process but structured chaos. Even Jess Franco can work when logic is sufficiently bent.

If you watch this to the end, the last scene features some truly mind-bending causality, it can be taking place in reality, maybe not, it's puzzling that it happens. Is it feigned insanity? Is it structured chaos as film noir fate? For a moment, you're airborne, hovering as you try to make sense. And in the next scene we have the clean explication, suddenly deflating you back to what its all about. I read that the filmmaker was working under heavy constraints, this may explain the blunder.

So we have whirls and eddies in the camera, but no whirls in logic to get gravity pull.

This is my favorite film. possibly the most melodramatic films i've seen, the costumes and make up are so over the top that you can barely tell that the two main characters are played by the same actor. The film has so much color in it with all the costumes and gardens but this dark fairytale could almost be considered a film noir. The soundtrack might be it;s only downfall, the music itself is so beautiful and powerful but it plays too big a part in creating an atmosphere, some scenes are downgraded by the overwhelming score. My favorite scene is in the brothel, i've never seen such amazing looking prostitutes! they make me want to buy a caravan and take up witchcraft.

as a matter of interest; In the book the two sisters are one character with a multiple personality. Unfortunately Herz was unable to make such a controversial film, so, to stay as close to the original story as possible the two sisters are played by the same woman. This book by Alexander Grin (who starved under Stalin) has not been translated into English as far as i know.

I saw "Morgiana" on February 24, 2024 on YouTube, I didn't have money to see it at the cinema in 1972 in communist Romania, when I was only 13 years old. The director Juraj Herz was also an actor and in a picture from another of his films, looks exactly like Peter Sellers, as if they were twin brothers. Back to "Morgiana" (which is the name of a cat), what I saw on YouTube was mostly a completely black image, from which you could not understand anything, you could only hear the dialogue. Was it like this, a complete black screen, on Juraj Herz's intention? I kind of doubt it. I won't narrate the film, I'll just say this much: a few shots are filmed from the cat's point of view, which I consider original. Then, the double interpretation of the actress Iva Janzurová, is a remarkable performance. A much better film made by Juraj Herz, in fact, his absolute masterpiece, is "The Cremator" Original title: Spalovac mrtvol from 1969. As an actor, Juraj Herz had a small role in a comedy that enchanted my childhood "Lemonade Joe" Original title: Limonádový Joe aneb Konská opera 1964.