Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

This article is about the 1970 film. For the 1945 novel of the same name, see Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Valerie a týden divů

Original Czech film poster
Directed by Jaromil Jireš
Produced by Jirí Becka
Written by Vitezslav Nezval (novel)
Jaromil Jireš (screenplay)
Ester Krumbachová (screenplay)
Jirí Musil (dialogue)
Starring Jaroslava Schallerová
Helena Anýžová
Karel Engel
Jan Klusák
Petr Kopriva
Music by Lubos Fiser
Distributed by Janus Films (US release)
Release dates
  • 16 October 1970 (1970-10-16)
Running time
 73 minutes
Country Czechoslovakia
Language Czech

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Czech: Valerie a týden divů) is a 1970 Czechoslovakian surrealist horror film[1][2] directed by Jaromil Jireš (1935–2001) and based on the 1945 novel of the same name by Vítězslav Nezval (1900–1958). It is considered part of the Czech New Wave movement.[2]

The 1970 film adaptation of Valerie a týden divů was shot in 1969 starring 13-year-old Jaroslava Schallerová as Valerie, with a supporting cast of Helena Anýžová, Karel Engel, Jan Klusák, Petr Kopriva, among others. It was filmed in the Czech town of Slavonice and surrounding areas. The film portrays the heroine as living in a disorienting dream, cajoled by priests, vampires, men and women alike, and blends elements of fantasy and horror films.[3]

Plot

Valerie (Schallerová), a pretty young girl, is sleeping in a gazebo. A thief steals her earrings; as she tries to investigate, she's startled by the apparition of a horrific man who quickly covers his face with a polecat mask. The next day she is swimming in a pool and the thief's arms suddenly return her earrings to her, much to the annoyance of the young thief's boss, the man in the mask, whom the boy calls the Constable.

Back at her house, Valerie, who's just had her first period, asks her grandmother Elsa about the earrings, which belonged to Valerie's late mother: she left them behind upon entering the convent where she met Valerie's late father, a bishop. Before that, the owner of the earrings was the Constable who was also the previous owner of their house. Valerie also learns that both a group of missionaries and a company of actors are coming to town.

During her neighbor Hedvika's wedding, Valerie sees the monstrous-looking Constable watching her in the crowd and her grandmother seems to also recognize him. While practicing piano, Valerie receives a letter from the thief, whose name is Orlík ("Eaglet"). In the letter, the boy reveals that the Constable is his own uncle and very dangerous; he killed Orlík's parents and now wants Valerie's earrings back. Orlík asks Valerie to meet him at the church during the evening sermon where the head missionary will address the town's virgins. After the service, the two meet and he doesn't hide his attraction to her.

Later, Valerie meets the Constable in the street, disguised as the head missionary; he leads Valerie to a chamber where she is forced to watch her grandmother whip herself to win back the love of a past lover, a priest named Gracián. Orlík saves Valerie and tells her that his uncle is in love with her.

The Constable meets with Elsa, who calls him Richard and was his lover when she was 17. He seems to be ageless and promises to make her young again on one condition: she has to sell him the house that Valerie is destined to inherit. In the meantime, Orlík gives Valerie a pearl and tells her that it will keep her safe, then he hides her from the Constable again.

At a picnic with Gracián, the lustful priest reveals that Valerie's father, the bishop, had another child, namely Orlík. That night, while she's undressing in her bedroom, Gracián comes in and attempts to rape her but she swallows the pearl to protect herself. In the meantime, Richard and Elsa have silently broken into Hedvika's; while the girl and her much older husband consummate their first night, Elsa bites her on the neck, stealing the blood necessary to become young again.

Valerie finds Orlík bound to a waterfall, a punishment the Constable inflicted upon him for his betrayals. Valerie frees Orlík and takes him to her house, while keeping the boy's own ardor at bay by blindfolding him, since she now thinks they're siblings. He notes that the plague that's threatening the village is actually a welcome development, because the Constable needs fresh, clean blood to survive. They discover Gracián dead and hanged from Valerie's window and take the body to a crypt under Valerie's house, where the Constable puts his bloodless victims; Elsa is there, in a coffin, having been turned into a vampire by the Constable's ritual. Under the guise of a young woman, Elsa introduces herself as a distant cousin and tells Valerie that her grandmother has suddenly left. She tries to bite Valerie, then restrains her while she's asleep and steals the earrings. Elsa locks up Valerie in a barn that contains a strange mechanism; here, the young girl spies on Elsa having sex with a man and then killing him, then trying in vain to seduce Orlík, who instead steals the earrings once again.

Orlík frees Valerie and gives her the earrings back. The boy confesses to Valerie his love, and tries to explain that he's not the bishop's son, but the Constable's, but Valerie runs away. She has guessed Elsa is actually her grandmother, but she's started to feel something for Richard, who's dying. Valerie goes to the town market, steals a chicken and takes it to the dying Richard, who's just revealed to a now defiant Elsa that he's actually the bishop, Valerie's father, and that the key to their survival lies within Valerie's blood. Richard is finding his human feeling again now that he's dying, but once Valerie heals him, he goes back to being a monster and attacks her. He plans to put Orlík's heart inside Valerie's chest in order to make her immortal, but Elsa wants it for herself. Valerie, while pretending to be passed out in the crypt, overhears everything. She revives Gracián, who wasn't actually dead, and finds a goodbye letter from Orlík.

She meets Hedvika, who's sick from Elsa's bite and depressed about her marriage. The two girls retreat into Hedvika's bedroom and find themselves in each other's arms. After a night of love with Valerie, Hedvika is healed.

Outside, Gracián is working the crowd, accusing Valerie of being a witch who tempted him into sin. He orders her captured and burned at the stake, but Valerie swallows the magic earrings and emerges unscathed from the flames. Back in the crypt, which has now turned into a brothel, Valerie tricks Richard into drinking one of the earrings, turning him into the polecat that gave him his nickname and mask. In a progressively more and more dream-like sequence, Valerie reunites with Orlík, who's revealed to be one of the actors; then Elsa, who's back in her older form and doesn't seem to recall anything that's happened; then her long-lost parents. The final scene has all the characters dancing and parading around Valerie in the forest, while all the virgins sing for her. She ends up alone, and falls asleep in a bed in the middle of the woods.

Cast

Production

The screenplay was approved in late April 1968, and despite Jireš' 1969 feature The Joke being banned by Czech authorities, production proceeded on Valerie.[1]

Release

Home media

In January 2004 the film became available commercially in the US on the Facets Video label[4] and in June that year the film was released on DVD in the UK by Redemption Films Ltd. In 2006 the film was officially released in the Czech Republic by label CÈV/Bonton. All three releases present the film in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Unlike the Facets and Redemption releases, the CÈV/Bonton DVD is not presented with hardcoded English subtitles, but with optional Czech subtitles. British label Second Run DVD [5] released an all-new remastered edition of the film on PAL Region 0 DVD on 25 August 2008.

Reception

Critical reception

Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 100%, based on 14 reviews, with a rating average of 7.8/10.[6] In the book 101 Horror Films You Must See Before You Die, author and professor at Brunel University Tanya Krzyminska called the film "an exquisitely crafted fairy tale woven around the sexual awakening of a young woman". Krzyminska also noted that, although the film shared many similarities with soft-core pornographic films of the period, "it seeks a broader canvas in a blend of attributes drawn from both high and low culture." Krzyminska also noted the film's elements of gothic horror and fairy tales, as well as its use of symbolic imagery.[7]

Soundtrack

The film soundtrack, featuring music composed by Luboš Fišer, was released for the first time by [8] in December 2006. Available both on CD and LP, the booklet reveals previously unseen images, international poster designs, as well as notes by Andy Votel, Peter Hames and Trish Keenan from the band Broadcast.

Influence

Many writers have cited similarities between the film and the work of English writer Angela Carter (1940–1992), who had seen the film during its release in England.[9] Her screenplay for The Company of Wolves (1984) adapted from Carter's short stories, in collaboration with director Neil Jordan, bears a direct or indirect influence. A May 2005 Jireš retrospective film series at Riverside Studios showed the two films together.

In 2006 members of New Weird America acts Espers, Fern Knight, Fursaxa and other musicians formed The Valerie Project.[10] The group performs original compositions in unison with the film.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Prikryl, Jana. "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders: Grandmother, What Big Fangs You Have!". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 4 September 2016.
  2. 1 2 Khan, Imran. "Sexual Horror in 'Valerie and Her Week of Wonders". Pop Matters.com. Imran Khan. Retrieved 26 November 2016.
  3. ↑ "Czech horror: Jaromil Jireš's Valerie a týden divů (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970)". KinoEye. Retrieved 10 December 2011.
  4. ↑ "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders". Amazon.com. Retrieved 9 December 2011.
  5. ↑ "Valerie and her Week of Wonders". Second Run DVD. Retrieved 2009-04-30.
  6. ↑ "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes.com. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 26 November 2016.
  7. ↑ Steven Jay Schneider (2009). 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die. Octopus Publishing Group. pp. 177–178. ISBN 978-1-84403-673-8.
  8. ↑ "The Valerie Project". Finders Keepers Records.
  9. ↑ Tanya Krzywinska. "Transgression, transformation and titillation". Kinoeye: New Perspectives on European Film. Retrieved September 2003. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  10. ↑ "the Valerie Project".
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