This April, another restored jewel, film Adelaide, will be released on DVD.
Frantisek Vlacil is known as one of the best among Czech directors, which was already proved in his great works like Marketa Lazarova, Devil's Trap, or Dove. Adelaide has an amazing and suggestive mood, Vlacil’s typical manuscript, the arrangement of scenes is perfect and actors Petr Cepek and Emma Cerna are really pleasing. When calculating the pros, I have to mention the excellent music by Zdenek Liska, one of the best Czech (Czechoslovak) composers of film music.
Adelheid belongs without doubt between the Czech classics recognized worldwide.
Adelheid takes place after the end of the Second World War in the border region in North Moravia. In that time, there was still German population, and among them are people tired and degraded from war, as well as those trying to seek revenge and kill. New people begin to come there. Those, who once had to flee from there, and with them come new settlers - both honest and robbers. This dramatic form of space and time evokes Körner and Vlacil’s movie in the dynamic input scene of arrival of the former Western army officer Viktor Chotovicky, who has to take the assets of the largest Nazi in the Heidemann region.
