František Vláčil

Biography

In spring 1998 Czech film critics and publicists voted for the best film in the history of their country, and the winner was “Marketa Lazarová”, which Vláčil had made thirty years earlier. By then the director had received a Czech Lion for his contribution to cinema and was head of the national film academy.

He was born on 19 February 1924 in Český Těšín, into an officer’s family. His father was transferred from post to post, and the family moved with him: Místek, then Brno, where František attended secondary school, did unevenly and repeated one year, but drew well. In spring 1944 he finished school, and in 1945–1947 he did his compulsory military service.

After the army he briefly studied at the Higher School of Applied Arts (Vysoká škola uměleckoprůmyslová) in Prague, but returned to Brno and in 1947–1951 studied art history and aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University. He had taken an interest in film while still a student: he worked at a studio for animated and puppet films in Brno, where he learned every job required, and then at a studio for popular science and educational films, where he directed several short films. In 1951 he was called up for military exercises, and he stayed at the army film studio in Prague until 1958. He made training and propaganda films; the first was “Remembrance” (1953), dedicated to the memory of Klement Gottwald. Here he met the cinematographer Jan Čuřík, with whom he worked for many years afterwards. The best of his army works is considered to be “Clouds of Glass”, which has nothing to do with the army or with politics; the film won an award at the festival in Venice. In 1955 Vláčil advised on the battle scenes of the film “Tank Brigade”. At Barrandov Studios he made his debut with the short film “The Chase”, about two border guards pursuing an enemy agent: unusually, it gives a great deal of space to landscape. His first feature film, “The White Dove”, came out in 1960 and won awards, and it was followed by the historical ballad “The Devil’s Trap” (1961).

His main work was “Marketa Lazarová”, on which he laboured from 1961 to 1967. The costumes and sets were made by Theodor Pištěk and Jan Koblasa, and Magda Vášáryová made her debut in the role of Marketa. It turned out to be the most expensive picture in Czech cinema of its time, and to recoup part of the money “The Valley of the Bees” (1968), with Petr Čepek, was shot on the same sets. With Čepek he also made “Adelheid” (1970).

In the years of “Normalization”, that is, after the suppression of the Prague Spring, he was not allowed to make feature films, and he left Barrandov for a studio of short films. There he made “Art Nouveau Prague” (1974). I think it says a good deal about his position in those years that he found it hard to come up with subjects that could pass. In 1976 he was allowed a feature film: the drama “Smoke on the Potato Fields”, with Rudolf Hrušínský. Then came “Shadows of a Hot Summer” (1977), which won a Crystal Globe, and several films from scripts by Zdeněk Mahler, among them “Concert at the End of Summer”, about the composer Antonín Dvořák, “Snake’s Venom”, “Shades of Fern” and “Magician”.

In 1968 Vláčil was given the title of Merited Artist, and in 1988 that of National Artist. In 1989 he left Barrandov and retired. In 1980 a retrospective of his films was held in Buenos Aires, and in 1982 a small selection was shown in Tokyo. After 1989 he received a Czech Lion (1994), in 1995–1999 was president of the Czech Film and Television Academy, and in 1998 won the main prize at the festival in Karlovy Vary for his contribution to world cinema.

Vláčil died on 27 January 1999 in Prague, at the Bulovka hospital. He is buried in the Malvazinky cemetery.