242 - Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970, Czechoslovakia. Dir. Jaromil Jires.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

242 - Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, 1970, Czechoslovakia.  Dir. Jaromil Jires.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a 1970 fantasy drama from the Czechoslovakian New Wave.

Either that, or it is a 1980s music video starring Elvira.

Or a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie of the week.

If you look closely, you may very well see the silhouettes of Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot watching the movie from the lower right-hand corner.  Riffing.

The film features, among other things, vampires.

And the Props department seems to have gotten their plastic fangs from a box of Boo Berry or Count Chocula.

Don't be scurred.

You will not be.  In fact, you might be enchanted.  By this hybrid drive-in, fairy tale, camp horror daydream.

And being a dream, it jumps from plot to plot and place to place without requiring logical coherence.

This is not a movie you think through but rather ride.  Like Ophelia.  Supine in the tributary. Surrounded by crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples.  As the willow grows slant.

Before The Runaways in 2010, before Carrie in 1976, Valerie in 1970 was a film begun with menarche.

So let us begin.

Valerie lies asleep in bed.  Her room looks like a sunroom.  Or a greenhouse.

A man climbs the glass wall and ceiling above her, carrying a torch.

He hangs down through the open hole in the glass ceiling, the flame of his torch burning.

He steals her earrings from off her ears.

Valerie awakens to watch him through the glass, absconding with his booty.

She springs to look for the looter.

But runs into the man with the mask.

The looter will turn out to be Eaglet.  Or Orlik.  At first a thief.  Then her suitor.  Then her lover. Then her brother.  Then one of the actors.  Then her lover again.

The man with the mask turns out to be the Constable.  Then Orlik's uncle.  Then Richard.  Then Valerie's Grandmother's ex-lover.  Then Valerie's father.  Then a monster.

Valerie's earrings have magical powers.  So does a mysterious pearl.

There is also a polecat involved, which is important.

Meanwhile, Valerie's Grandmother is a dour devotee, who wants Valerie to go to church and meet the missionaries.  Then she turns into a woman who wants to be young.  Then Richard's ex-lover Elsa. Who self-flagellates.  For mortification?  For Richard?  Then she becomes a vampire.  Then she bites another woman's neck to suck her blood to become young.  Then she is Valerie's cousin.  Then she herself steals the earrings.  Then incarcerates Valerie.  And tries to bite her for blood.  Conjugates and immolates a man.  Then goes after Orlik.  Who steals back the earrings.

Are you keeping up?

The women of the Chorus wear nightgowns with no underwear.

The men of the chorus wear colored denim pants and boots with no shirts.

It is like Sirens meets Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Like Seven Sirens for Seven Brothers.

Bless your beautiful hide.

(By the way, that musical contains a song called "Lonesome Polecat.")

Here is one pitch for the film:

Valerie goes through the woods to Grandmother's house and encounters the Big Bad Werewolf.

If you watch this film through the eyes of an academic, you may find all manner of symbolism suggesting political subversion of a totalitarian regime.

If you watch it as a film buff, you may consider the surrealist origins of the source novel, and the lyrical, pastoral naturalism of the color palette, lighting, and score.

If you watch it as a moviegoing member of the general public, you may have that great cinematic insight that hits keen moviegoers:

"Was this director on LSD when he made this movie?"