April 15, 2023

DVD Review – Dragon’s Return(1968)

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 Dragon’s Return is directed by Eduard Grečner who was the assistant direct on perhaps the first Czech New Wave film The Sun in a Net but he was Slovak not Czech crucially. Dragon’s Return is his most well-known film and considered by Slovak film scholars to be his “masterpiece”. Grečner like many of his contemporaries left filmmaking mostly behind after the Praque spring of 1968, he did make some TV films in the ’70s and did two more features in the early ’90s.

It’s not set at any specific time or place, it could be contemporary, medieval or even some kind of post-apocalyptic society. It almost plays like a quasi-western, Dragon returns to this village where he left many years and he loved this woman Eva but the villagers don’t trust him so in return for them trying to trust him again he says he will go rescue the villager’s cows from a forest fire. It’s a minimalistic fable in the true sense, there is very little dialogue in the film and it has a mythical quality. It also touches with the clash of Paganism and Christianity which is evident due to the cross mixture of symbols associated with both beliefs.

The film’s most impressive qualities are its cinematography and the score and it’s very clear Grečner had a really hands on approach to the film’s aesthetic. It has some astonishing swirling camera work of Eva’s husband Simon’s embraces with his wife. The score is made out of non-musical sounds, choral singing and percussive noise mixed together to overwhelming clash of sonic experimentation. Ilja Zeljenka composed the score who also scored The Sun in a Net. 

Overall Dragon’s Return is a curious oddity of Slovak cinema, you could almost see somebody like John Ford doing a similar film in the US and there are some similarities to his film The Searchers for example in a narrative sense. It doesn’t completely add up for me in the end but it’s a daring piece of work that has a unique quality that will stick in the viewers’ mind for a long time after it finishes. The disc includes an interview Second Run’s go to expert on Czech and Slovak cinema Peter Hames who puts the cinema in deep context in its place in history politically, socially and cinematically, the book does the same but in the written word.

★★★1/2
Ian Schultz

Drama | Slovakia, 1968 |15| 24th August 2015(UK)|Dir.Eduard Grecner |Radovan Lukavský, Viliam Polónyi, Emília Vá áryová, Gustáv Valach, Jozef ierny |Buy: [DVD]

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