Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

bayardhiler We've all heard or seen the classic fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast" but it's probably fair to say that you've never seen a version as beautifully done as this 1978's Czech adaptation. Absurd you say? Like most people who grew up in the 90's, I was long under the impression that the only film version of "Beauty and the Beast" that counted was Disney's 1991 animated classic. But then I came across this version. Directed by Juraj Herz, it sets the tale in a gloomy world where we met a well to do merchant who's expecting a large shipment of priceless jewels, diamonds, the whole works. But unfortunately for him, they are stolen in route by the dreadful beast that haunts the black forest. Desperate to provide for his three daughters, he sets out to the beast's decrypted mansion to sell a priceless painting of his late wife. At first, everything goes well until he makes the mistake of plucking a rose from the beast's garden. Through some creative camera work, we don't see the beast right away but from the father's reaction know that he is hideous and angry . The beast tells him that if he wants to live, one of his daughters must come on her own free will to be with him forever. Julie, his kindest and most caring daughter, volunteers to sacrifice herself for her father despite not knowing the grisly details. When she first meets the beast, she only knows his voice since he only talks to her from behind. Yet, Julie can't help but feel something tug at her heart and what follows is one of the most dark and surreal love stories ever put to screen. Let me just state that this is probably not the best version to show little kids due to the fact that it may give them nightmares! The director here was clearly going for a creepy and atmospheric take on the legend with the dark lighting, eerie shooting locations, and winding camera angles from the beast's point of view. In other words, it's what a fairy tale is supposed to be before Hollywood waters it down for kids. Also the music score, with its foreboding organ chimes, goes a long way to establishing suspense and apprehension as well as beauty when that organ switches to piano. As for the beast himself, he manages to be both strange and ugly with his bird/beast hybrid look (Considering the time and country it was made in, the costume and make up is fairly realistic). Since this beast is capable of using magic, he has his own goblin servants, including one who sits in chandelier that moves up and down when it's time to serve drinks. But the movie is more than just a horror picture; it's also a love story, one that is told well by its writing and actors. The filmmakers are able to present the beast as a complicated being who is torn between his new found love for Julie and his inner animal, which is presented in the form of a malicious whisper. Despite being under a lot of make up, Vlastimil Harapes is able to shine through and make you care about his plight. As for Julie, she could not be any more lovelier than in the form of Zdena Studenkova, who cuts a fine figure but more importantly, a beautiful personality for her character. Unlike her materialistic sisters, she has an innocent heart and truly cares for her father's well being, not just his money. But can Julie overcome the beast's hideous face and can the beast repress his animal instinct once and for all so they can live happily ever after? It all leads up to heartfelt conclusion that teaches us it's not what's outside that counts, but what is inside. Sadly (Maybe because it was made behind the iron curtain) the movie does not seem to be all that available. The only place I can recommend would be you tube. As far as finding a DVD, it appears to only be available in Europe. But the you tube version does have English subtitles and is in fair viewing condition. With that said, I urge you to check it out this beautifully dark version of the tale while you still can and remember that a woman makes a man she loves beautiful.

chaos-rampant This is such a strange film. Nominally a Beauty and the Beast rendition (the title translates to Virgin and the Monster), it is introspective wandering through dreams. It is both rich in what we see of dreams and silly. The filmmaker (Juraj Herz, also responsible for Cremator) juggles various moods, sombre elegy to medieval fairytale.As you watch it, it may strike you as both obvious and muddled, obvious because its fantasy is of the schematic sort, with onedimensional characters like the 'kindly father', 'innocent maiden', 'petty step- sisters'. The monster looks silly. So it may seem like it's not worth the effort of bridging the distance to what is going on behind the simplistic surface.However, scrap all that and this may get to you. It got to me, at least for a while. It isn't about just the Gothic mood. Its appeal is a series of interleavened dreams, but you aren't always sure who is dreaming, if sometimes more than one dreamer, and when one bleeds into the next, so you drift with it.Consider this as the story. A rich merchant father has to marry off his daughter in a marriage of convenience, the anxiety this causes to both is at the root of the film. It isn't in the film as such, but you will get something of the sort if you conflate the different threads.From the father's perspective, this means sending off his daughter to live with a 'monster' in his dark lair, from her perspective, it means going to live alone with a stranger, her fate sealed. This translates in several scenes of hallucination, all of it wonderfully visual—the ominous destruction of the merchant wares in the woods, the father's deal with the monster for the girl, the girl's gilded dream of a handsome prince (inside a coffin) and half-frightful, half-anticipatory wandering in the mansion hearing just his voice.The plucking of roses as loss of purity is a central motif.It's silly again as we shift to the monster's soliloquies of what it means to be human, but that is because we don't have a surrogate for him in the level of reality, he solely exists inside the fantasy as the abstract ogre made human by her touch. The Czech often favor a juvenile theatricality.But there's something else that is cool. Now so far all points to constructed realities, dreams as tailored emotional space. The girl wonders if she's not imagining everything, in one scene she visits as ghostly observer her sisters' wedding, no one can see her.Here's how the filmmaker adds layers to the monster. He has conflicting sides to him, two voices that ponder on whether to kill or spare the girl. The 'evil' voice is disembodied, in his mind. This 'evil' narrator is coming from the camera, you'll notice this is linked with subjective shots of the monster as it kills the wench in the woods, roams with a candelabra and early on 'stages' the frightful visit of the father. It's the filmmaker's hand (as internal consciousness shaping the story) pushing for horror, very cool to see.So as with many films of this sort, the film becomes more disposable the more you settle on what the story is supposed to be. It fits somewhere between Lynch, Hourglass Sanatorium for nested doll-worlds, Jean Rollin's wandering and Valerie's Week of Wonders.I listed the films (and makers) in descending order of preference, which for me is the order by which, as you peel away layers, you get less and less of what you thought is there, it opens up, instead of a single solid core. Angels dancing instead of a pin's head.So if you want a cryptic story disguised to mean something, this is cryptic but as with Rollin and Valerie it makes rather simple sense. At the same time, it is dissonant enough once you disengage from story to captivate. I will see if I can track down more from this guy, he may deserve a place in my nightly viewings.

Erik (ErikAngelofMusic) When most people think of the story of Beauty and the Beast (BatB) they usually think of one of two things: either the light-hearted feel-good Disney musical romp or the instructive tale on how to find a good husband by Mme Beaumont. All other versions seem to stay somewhere within these boundaries...except for Panna a Netvor (PaN).PaN follows the original story written in 1740 by Mme Villeneuve which was made into its better known version by Mme Beaumont: The merchant loses his fortune, steals a rose and must send his daughter to the beast to repay him. There, she dreams of a prince, falls in love with the beast, and frees him. It sounds like any other BatB version ever made. However, PaN takes place in a gritty bleak world where the people in it behave like beasts and wealth leads to misery. Even the scene which introduces the merchant opens on town life with animals being slaughtered.Netvor is not a gentle soul hoping to be saved. The first time he is introduced, we see his claw tear at a woman's dress and then later learn that he's killed her. He feasts on the female blood and, when Julie (Beauty) arrives, she is drugged in preparation for him to kill her which he only barely refrains from doing. Instead, he is forced to hunt and we see an unsympathetic scene of him setting upon a doe. Also unlike any other BatB, he has the shape of a bird which presents a grotesque and unpleasant appearance.The casting of Vlastimil Harapes for the part of Netvor was genius. Harapes was one of the leading ballet danseurs of his generation and since went on to be the art director of the National Theatre of the Czech Republic. Watching him in PaN, I could not imagine that anyone else could so perfectly nail the physicality of the character, who could so convince me of the truth of his story. His costume isn't fancy or hi-tech makeup and yet I can do nothing but believe that this character exists and that he is a tormented half-human creature. Despite being brutal and vicious, the audience aches for him: his pains are ours, his sorrows ours, his few joys ours as well.Netvor's costume is simple: a fitted mask, tattered clothes, claw gloves and a feathered cloak, the mask preventing his facial expressions from being seen. Despite the limitations it causes, Harapes delivers a performance so moving and powerful that even when he has no lines his emotions are palpable. When Julie is contemplating running away, he watches her from above, and when she closes the gate and returns, for an instant you see netvor ease back against the rock in relief. It's easy to miss; there are no words, and yet it's a subtle and beautifully executed moment of the film. Even the cloak which has a propensity to be an obstacle and hide the actor's body language is instead used as if it is part of his body as expressive as his own hands.Julie (Zdena Studenkova) provides an unusual alternative to the typical beauty. Although she seems innocent, symbolically wearing white clothing throughout the film and having been given a white rose, she's frightened that her beastly host does not exist, that she's imagining him, and doubts her own beauty, wondering if she's beautiful enough for him. But most unusual, she can be cruel, which gives her a dimension of humanity most versions do not afford.Juraj Herz, the director, manages to bring out the very best in his cast. Many scenes, even those without Vlastimil Harapes, look more like highly choreographed dances than mere blocking, with the best instance being when Julie returns home and her sisters pull her back and forth between them. It looks simple until you realise that this isn't something that just occurred naturally, that it had to be practiced and rehearsed and perfected before they could shoot the scene. The symbolism is ever-present, the palette colours carefully chosen, every detail precisely placed so that they could tell their own story. And while every aspect of the film serves a function, not only is it open for many layers of interpretation, but it was achieved on what Hollywood would consider a shoestring.Additionally, this film was made in 1978 in Czechoslovakia under Communist supervision. As such, the film is completely for the anti-glorification of material wealth which seems hard to achieve with a story about a merchant who tries to regain his money and a cursed prince. The merchant's caravan in the beginning shows that wealth makes beasts of all men. The merchant, after regaining his wealth, returns home only to be miserable and unhappy that Julie is no longer there. His two remaining daughters subsequently strip him bare of every possession he has when they marry two greedy men, indicative of how material things can bring out the worst in people. Even netvor lives in a decaying castle completely devoid of fine things and yet, Julie finds happiness and love in such a setting.It is a rare occasion to come across a dark version of such a typically uplifting and pleasant fairy tale. Even the few that do exist lack capable actors, capable directors, and a sense of artistic vision. Between the chemistry of the performers and the unusual, sometimes disturbing, romance on a backdrop of devastation and decay, there is a harmonious discord which somehow makes perfect sense. This film not only delivers a strange, dark, gritty tale with perfectly cast leads, but provides an intellectual journey both in terms of subtext and symbolism and provides a view of socio-politic effects upon a story which is shared by all cultures.

mar9 SBS-TV used to screen this film on an annual basis, but it has been missing in action for some years, which is cause for regret. The title may seem obscure, but a look at the alternative English translations ("Maiden and the Beast" and "Virgin and the Monster") should make this clearer. This is quite simply a wonderful interpretation of the classic fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast, produced and filmed in the then Czechoslovakia. Cinematic gems can be found in what may be thought to be unlikely places, and this film is an example.Students of cinema may be aware that Cocteau did a version of this story in B&W, and there is of course the more recent and rather tame Disney version. This film is a very different proposition. For a start, it is unsuitable for young children because of some fairly graphic violence, including scenes of animal cruelty. The film-makers seem to strive for realism, particularly the scenes in the village where Beauty (here called Julie) lives, all mud and images of earthy rural life before the Industrial Revolution. But even the magical bits are portrayed realistically. The Beast's castle is maintained by an array of goblin-like servants, who skulk in the shadows of the fireplaces and chandeliers. If I have one complaint about this film, it is that the scenes are sometimes so dark that it is difficult to see what's happening. This does heighten tension, but it can be overdone.The actors are great, especially the two charismatic leads. The Beast (Vlastimil Harapes) is fashioned more as a great bird of prey than Cocteau's leonine creation, and there is great suspense as he struggles with his inner violent nature (a sinister whispering voice) that is urging him to remain in his beastly form and kill the innocent Julie. Julie (Zdena Studenková) in turn is wonderfully portrayed. We can see why she is so obviously her father's favourite.Fairy tales are expositions of the human condition, and the Beauty and the Beast story is no different. "Every woman has the power the make the one she loves beautiful". It's a simple theme, but this film explores it beautifully. See it if you can.