Oil Lamps — Oil Lamps( Blu Ray)
Oil Lamps is a slowly turning sour romantic period drama, edged with dark humour, tragedy, and moments of grim disquiet. The early 1970s Czechoslovak film regards Stepha, the happy-go-lucky/ bright ‘n’ buoyant daughter of a wealthy couple, who is desperate to find a husband, but keeps getting turned down. So, she agrees to marry her cousin Pavel, who is back from serving in the army/ and has huge debts. Here from Second Run films is a new Blu-ray release of the film, taking in a new 4k scan, commentary track, and a few other extras.
Oil Lamps (aka Petrolejové Lampy) is from the year 1971. It was directed by Kezmarok, Czechoslovakia born Juraj Herz. He has twenty-six feature-length credits to his name. These went from surreal horror film The Cremator (1969), which followed a demented cremator in WW2, onto gothic melodrama/parody Morgiana (1972), through to dark, decay, and adult take on classic fairy tale Beauty And The Beast (1978), mafioso crime comedy Bulldogs And Cherries (1981), and bloodsucking car horror mystery Ferat Vampire (1982).
After the subtly animated pencil-drawn credits, we meet our female lead, thirty-something Stepha(Iva Janzurová), doing what she enjoys most, acting in amateur dramatic theatre. We find out she lives with her ageing/ rich parents, who are keen for her to get married off- she is also looking for love, but on her own terms/ not in an arranged manner.
She chats/ steps out with a few men, but none of them are keen on either her buoyant/ bright personality, or her work in the theatre. She then re-meets her cousin Pavel( Petr Cepek), whom she hasn’t seen for many years- he’s a neat moustached fellow, who often wears his service uniform. And slowly but surely, she becomes enchanted by him- he pops the question, her parents are non too keen, as he comes from a lower-class farmer family.
But she keeps pushing the point- and in the end, the pair are wed. But unfortunately, he’s far from Stepha's dream of a perfect husband- he’s lazy, drinks, smokes, moans all the time, and has large debts. She tries to push him into farming, but he’s not interested. she buys him a wood to shoot in, but he loses interest quickly. But worst of all, he won’t make love- neither for children, nor just passion. Initially, he says it’s because of his time in the army, but it becomes clear he’s sick with syphilis.
Both of our leads are excellent, having the most rewarding character arcs- Janzurová shifts from being bright & boisterous, to frustrated and sullen, to rather broken. Cepek moves from being cocky, onto obnoxious and decadent, though to a chuckling/ lost mess.
The film manages to convey wonderfully the feeling of slowly sliding away dreams/ hopes, with a surrounding of opulence/ riches turning to decadence/ sourness.
Moving on to this region-free Blu-ray. We get a new 4 K scan of the film- this is full of clarity and depth, looking and sounding great throughout out- with crisp and clear English subtitles.
On the extra side of things, we get an episode of Podcast The Projection Booth- featuring film historians/ Czech film experts Mike White, Kat Ellinger, and Jonathan Owen. This plays over the top of the film and runs for around an hour. It’s definitely worth a play if you enjoyed the film/ Czech cinema in general- they move from talking about when they all first saw Oil Lamps, and their initial thoughts on the film. They talk about how all of director Juraj Herz's work draws more from literature and art, than cinema itself. They discuss where the film to hand sits in his filmography, and touch on a few projects he wanted to get off the ground but never happened. They talk about how the leads wonderfully play their roles, They chat about the weird set-up of Pavel’s family farm and the gothic undertones of the place. Later on, they talk about when the film played at Can- and how the director was only allowed to go with a state official, who largely kept him under lock and key.
Otherwise, we have Conversation on a Train( 13.01) a 1947 Czech public information film on the perils of alcohol and STDs. The release comes with a twenty-page glossy inlay booklet- this features a new ten-and-a-half-page essay on the film, and the director's other work by Peter Hames, who is a Czech film expert/author.
I’ve now seen and enjoyed a few of Herz’s films, and I must say again I was most taken by what Oil Lamps offered, as it cleverly subverts and soils what you expect from a period-based romantic drama. So another great film from the director, and another great release from the folks at Second Run.