Oil Lamps – Second Run

Director: Juraz Herz
Screenplay: Václav Šašek, Lubor Dohnal, Juraj Herz
Based On A Novel By: Jaroslav Havlíček
Starring: Iva Janžurová,Petr Čepek, Marie Rosůlková, Ota Sklenčka
Year: 1971
Duration: 104 min
Country: Czech Republic
BBFC Certification: 15

When Juraj Herz gave us the soot-tinged, black and white bite of The Cremator audiences would likely have been surprised to hear he’d wanted to shoot the film in colour. He’d imagined a world rendered all the more drab and grey by picking out a few highlight colours – notably blood red. Cinematographer, Stanislav Milota felt it wouldn’t work and they stuck with black and white. Oil Lamps vindicates Herz’s earlier idea.

The film is the story of Štěpa Kiliánová (Iva Janžurová), an independent and admirably fierce young woman trapped both by the slow birth of the twentieth century and the parochial town in which she lives. She wants love and marriage but nobody finds her remotely suitable for either. For all the gaudy frills of decadence she surrounds herself with – she’s never happier than when carousing at the theatre – her world is misery and fin de siècle rot. Knowing that she’s on a path to regret, she pins her hopes on marriage to her cousin, ex-soldier, Pavel Malina (Petr Čepek). She’s won over as he teaches her to shoot, lured by the violence and illusion of dignity a soldier’s uniform can possess… as long as it stays on the peg.

Malina’s brother and father are all for the idea, Kiliánová’s dowry will save their beleaguered farm. Kiliánová’s father, meanwhile would “rather stuff every penny into a dead dog’s arse.” Soon she will hoist her bridal veil, offering her lips to a man who cannot bring himself to kiss them. A wedding party will elongate the night like a wake, loaded down with mournful songs, shadows and the threat of worse to come.

Every frame of Herz’s film is interlaced with soil and shit and regret. A tragedy, draped in funereal blacks, inevitable, painful and beautiful.

Second Run’s disc offers Oil Lamps in a beautiful, newly restored print. It’s as lavish as a worm-food apple, as rich and opulent as a body dragged from the canal.

The film is accompanied by a commentary from The Projection Booth podcast featuring Mike White, Jonathan Owen and Kat Ellinger and the short film Conversation on a Train. There is also an excellent booklet with writing by Czech cinema expert Peter Hames.

Special Features

• Oil Lamps (Petrolejové lampy, 1971) presented from a new
4K restoration by the Czech National Archive.
• A Projection Booth commentary with film historians Mike White, Kat Ellinger and Jonathan Owen.
• Conversation on a Train (Rozhovor ve vlaku, 1947):
An early short Czech public information film on the perils of alcohol and STDs.
• Trailer.
• 20-page booklet with new writing on the film by author and Czech cinema expert Peter Hames.
• New English subtitle translation.
• Region Free (A/B/C) Blu-ray.
• World Premiere on Blu-ray.