Czechoslovakia, 1978
Length / Feature: 91 minutes
Length / Special features: 9 minutes
2.0 Dual Mono LPCM (48k/24-bit)
Colour
Original aspect ratio:
1:37:1
Language: Czech
Subtitles: English
Blu-Ray: BD25 / 1080p
Region ABC (Region Free)
Blu-Ray RRP: £19.99
Release Date: 26 July 2021
Second Run BD042
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From Juraj Herz, director of The Cremator and Morgiana, comes this singular adaption of the classic tale - an altogether darker interpretation than we're used to. Light years from Disney, Herz's Beauty and the Beast (also known more provocatively as The Virgin and the Monster) follows the familiar story - innocent girl presents herself as sacrifice to a cursed man-beast hiding in exile, and learns to live with, and eventually love her captor - but is transformed into something entirely more twisted and terrifying in Herz’s macabre re-imagining.
Aided by wonderful set and costume design, superb cinematography and evocative score, this is a fairy-tale-turned-horror story from Czechoslovak cinema’s most wryly subversive artist.
Presented from a new HD transfer from original materials, our region-free Blu-ray also features a new Projecton Booth commentary, Tomáš Škrdlant's 1964 short film on writer and poet František Hrubín and a booklet with new writing on the film by Jonathan Owen.
• Presented from a new HD transfer from original materials created by the Czech National Film Archive, Prague.
• An all-new Projection Booth commentary with Samm Deighan, Kat Ellinger and Mike White.
• František Hrubín (1964): a short film on the Czech writer and poet, and co-screenwriter of Beauty and the Beast.
• 20-page booklet with new writing on the film by author and film historian Jonathan Owen.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C)
Directed by Juraj Herz
Story and Screenplay - František Hrubín,
Ota Hofman, Juraj Herz
Based on a stage adaptation by František Hrubín
Cinematography - Jiří Macháně
Editor - Jaromír Janáček
Music - Petr Hapka
Sound - František Černý
Set design - Vladimír Labský
Art direction - Josef Vyleťal, Olga Vyleťalová
Costumes - Irena Greifová
Make-up - Jiří Hurych
Main cast
Zdena Studenková - Julia
Vlastimil Harapes - The Beast
Václav Voska - Otec, Julia’s father
Jana Brejchová - Gábinka, Julia’s stepsister
Zuzana Kocúriková - Málinka, Julia’s stepsister
Juraj Herz's renowned films The Cremator and Morgiana,
plus many other gems of Czechoslovak cinema,
are also availble on Second Run
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1978 Sitges Film Festival / Winner: Best Director
1978 Fantasporto Festival / Winner: Jury Prize
“One of Czechoslovakia’s most subversive filmmakers...
[Herz] made startling, exuberantly stylized films that borrow the frameworks and visual grammar of horror, fantasy, suspense, or costume drama.”
Jeremy Lybarger, The New York Review
“Herz’s richly crafted retelling […] is definitely no children’s movie - but it is, with its arresting lyricism and striking style, an eminently worthy rival to the classic 1946 version by Jean Cocteau... Reworking the material for this dark, grimly atmospheric fable, Herz defamiliarizes it... [creating a] hybrid Beast unlike any seen on screen before, and overlaying the proceedings with a heavy air of impending doom, real danger, and the possibility of violence missing from better-known versions.” Nick Pinkerton, Metrograph
“Juraj Herz restored to the Beauty and the Beast myth its quivering Gothic heart... [It] pulses with a menace and cruelty rare in renderings of the tale. To tremble with love we must first pass through fear.” Reverse Shot
“Perhaps the most beauteous film ever that’s drawn from fairy-tale material... this is a very dark film that is also warm, sensuous and mysterious.” Dennis Grunes
“With its brooding atmosphere, morbidly imaginative visuals and audaciously reconceived beast, this is a unique interpretation of the tale.” Jonathan Owen
“A dark and visceral Gothic fantasy-melodrama.”
Taste of Cinema
“The film is so beautifully-crafted, visually arresting and richly atmospheric the Beast could have been wearing a paper bag over his head and I still would have bought it.”
Justin McKinney, The Bloody Pit of Horror
“Herz’s enchantingly dark and violent vision.”
Czech Film Review
