In its native land, František Vláčil’s Marketa Lazarová has been hailed as the greatest Czech film ever made; for many U.S. viewers, it will be a revelation. Based on a novel by Vladislav Vančura, this stirring and poetic depiction of a feud between two rival medieval clans is a fierce, epic, and meticulously designed evocation of the clashes between Christianity and paganism, humankind and nature, love and violence. Vláčil’s approach was to re-create the textures and mentalities of a long-ago way of life, rather than to make a conventional historical drama, and the result is dazzling. With its inventive widescreen cinematography, editing, and sound design, Marketa Lazarová is an experimental action film.

New, restored 4K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
New interviews with actors Magda Vášáryová, Ivan Palúch, and Vlastimil Harapes and costume designer Theodor Pištěk
New interviews with film historian Peter Hames and journalist and film critic Antonín Liehm
In the Web of Time, a short documentary from 1989 by cinematographer František Uldrich, in which director František Vláčil discusses his filmmaking process
Interview with Universal Production Partners technical director Ivo Marák about the film’s restoration
Gallery of storyboards by Vláčil
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: Essays by film scholar Tom Gunning and translator Alex Zucker and a 1969 interview with Vláčil

New cover by Neil Kellerhouse