One of the first Czechoslovak films to be shown abroad--a fantasy horror, filmed on the fully furnished premises of the Berlin film studio Am Zoo. The central role is portrayed by the “arrivee from darkness”, Ješek, who is awakened from a deathly sleep. The film represents unusual sparks of creative efforts and the ambitions of creative community around the director Jan S. Kolár, who was inspired by international trends and techniques.
25 Jun The Arrival from the Darkness (1921)
Parallel Realities
Superficially, this is yet another instance of a woman actress, made a star by her filmmaker lover. The story is a valentine to her charm and beauty, sufficient to bend reality. She indeed became a star until talkies made her accent unsellable. Here, she is in her native Czechoslovakia.
The story has her as the wife of a monied man, Drazický who is obsessed by old books. The family has been rivals with another, the Bors, who at one time it seems seized the property, now returned.
The current Bor is in love with her and brings an old book from the Drazický legacy only to try to seduce her. Her husband stays with the book and falls asleep on it.
Now what turns out to be a dream sequence, or a magical interlude happens, which is the main part of the film. There’s a very complex story — Kabbalistic magic, raising ancestor(s) from suspended animation. The ancient ancestor also falls in love with the contemporary wife. More magic, a chase and death. Drazický wakes from sleeping on the book, and the ending is ambiguous about whether the magical event happened.
The story is a bit droll, and I see none of the allure in this woman, allure that is obvious to me in her contemporary competitors.
But my goodness, such sets! I assume that in almost every case other than the hidden trap door walls that these are genuine buildings and environments that Czechs build because they wanted to. Brutal, dark, huge, rough, grand in an alien way. This is in the period we celebrate for so-called German expressionism but far more expressive because this is what people actually wanted for their lives.
The Czech Republic always had a doomed resignation, as the land conquerers would stomp through on their way to more valuable places. It seemed dour to me. But to see these profoundly unhappy, heavy environments — to know that it was a choice to build them, and another to feature them here — is truly an ‘interesting element’.
Posted in 2025
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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