Yes, it has English subtitles. Here's a review for it @ DVDFreak.

Really? I think of them as so visually similar as to almost be a diptych, with Valley of the Bees narrowly the better of the two.

Swo: Serpent's Poison is probably the best of the ones you haven't seen, but I also like Smoke from the Potato Fields, Shadows of a Hot Summer, and The Shadow of the Ferns.

The White Dove is magnificent, but the only DVD that I'm aware of (Facets, sadly) is an atrocity. I've heard rumours that it's recently been remastered, so fingers crossed.

Sirius and The Little Shepherd Boy from the Valley are much of a muchness - essentially kids' films, with the odd effective moment. I couldn't get into his last film, Mág, at all - I suspect prior knowledge of its subject (the poet Karel Hynek Macha) would help. I haven't seen his Dvořák biopic, but by all accounts I'm not missing much.

I'm also in the camp that prefers Valley of the Bees (and can't readily think of any other film from the era that's more like Marketa than Valley, and vice versa.)

The films seemed so different to me in terms of what Vlacil seems to see. Marketa Lazarova is a film full of false surfaces and unreliable structures, be they narrative structures or the structure of a character's identity. I guess Valley of the Bees poses similar questions of order and identity, but Marketa Lazarova is alive with a chancy feeling of instability that feels uncanny and electric; Valley of the Bees seems so entrenched in itself. Structure in that film is stultifying, and its insecure characters long for the traps and the trappings that structure brings; the figures in Marketa Lazarova might love an enemy prisoner and kill a dutiful son at any moment--or they might change their minds, halfway through the act, and have just as strong of reservations as they had convictions a minute before. And the world of Marketa Lazarova comes alive with the sweaty reek of that possibility. The space of the film grows as we watch it, whereas the characters in Valley of the Bees move like somnambulists and stand before us like actors in a flatly-choreographed stage performance. The characters in Marketa Lazarova have rich inner lives that get displayed before us. We get to hear their interpretations of events, what they have seen, what they plan, imagine, what they dream. The characters in Valley of the Bees remain opaque.

I guess they do make good companion films, thematically speaking. I'm kind of finding my way to this reasoning as I'm writing. Both movies give us creatures whose wild urges rage against an established order. That order is a distant threat which eventually overtakes the characters in Marketa Lazarova. In Valley of the Bees the figures are inculcated in order, and they begin to diverge away from it. The passage of historical time between the two narratives accounts for the social shift that makes the old-world self-determinists of Marketa extinct and which paves the way for the collection of pseudoreligious, conformist droogs which populate the castle in Valley of the Bees.

I just wish that Valley of the Bees had some of the bracing engagement of the wilderness in Marketa Lazarova, and of the wild figures which reside there. Their passions seem so important in Marketa, whereas the static mis en scene of Valley of the Bees and the resolute refusal on Vlacil's part to divulge the inner worlds of his characters except obliquely makes the protagonists of Valley seem as if they are already bled of so much of the vitality in Marketa. Maybe that's a point Vlacil is making, there: that this younger generation, raised in a prefabricated social order, will never really scar their own history, carving a place for themselves with forceful will--the way the larger-than-life figures in Marketa seem to (ironic also that the characters in Marketa would most likely be erased from history after being vanquished, while the knights of Valley of the Bees retain their titles and their places in history with hardly any of the dominant will the characters in Marketa insist upon as essential to their existing). It just shocked me after Marketa was so tactile and passionately wrought, so filled with depth that waxes greater as it is advanced upon, that Valley of the Bees should be so static, so frozen in dull mortification and so resistant to visual exploration. Valley isn't a world, like Marketa is. It's a story, and it's one that plays very flatly, against all odds (because the actual content of the story is anything but flat and straightforward). Marketa Lazarova, superficially simpler (at least in narrative terms), is cavernous with potential action, energetic symbolism, and dynamic ambiguity. Valley felt inert to me. Not even in L'Eclisse was a flight to freedom more constricting and doomed to failure than in Valley of the Bees.

What are my current options for Czech DVD retailers if dvdbest.sk doesn't have what I want?

You could try http://www.gorila.sk or http://www.filmcity.cz.

@feihong: Sorry for OT, but have you seen my PM? (It's still stuck in my Outbox - is your Inbox perhaps full...?) I'll be in Slovakia mid-March, so I could get those '70s DVDs for you...

I'm currently trying to order a 'Golden Sixties' set from the zlatasedesata.cz website, but I seem to have got stuck!

I've got as far as placing an order, but when it comes to payment, I'd like to pay by Paypal, but on the customer page I've managed to reach, I can't see any links or info for this - only for a banker's draft, which isn't what I want to do (as I believe it's a much more expensive method of payment?).

I've e-mailed the contacts given on the site, including the PR woman, but I've not heard anything back - is the site even still active?

Could anyone who's ordered a set, like McCrutchy (above), let me know where I'm going wrong?

Thanks, in advance! ...

Release date April 10th
Smrt v sedle(1958), Dir. Jindřich Polák

I almost hated this cover for the film, until I saw the sun up there near the top of the image. That makes it way better for me.

I received my order from DVDLipa today. I was scared to order from them at first, since they had seemingly unavailable titles like Elo Havetta's Wild Lilies, but lo and behold, there it was in the package! $100-something netted me 21 films, which was pretty dope. I got Pink Dreams, The Devil's Trap, And I'll Run to the Ends of the Earth, Perinbaba, If I had a Gun, Dragon's Return, Miraculous Virgin and many others. I ended up with two copies of Crucial Years, if anyone wants one.

The only picture I'm looking for which I haven't been able to find yet is Sweet Troubles, which is a damn shame. That one seems to be very unavailable. Anyone know a place that carries it?

I just made an order of 23 films at DVDBest, however one DVD set (SFÚ Boxset 60 rokov - I) said it would take 10 to 30 days to restock. Will they send me the available items first separately or wait until that other DVD set is back in stock and send everything together?

As far as I know they will catch two whales from a kayak and stick them between your buttocks. But I'm not sure. If we were told this as a fact, what would we then think?

You might think that because several people in this thread have ordered a lot from DVDBest that they might know, then maybe you'd think you should post in this thread anyway because you're bound to get some hilarious responses that will brighten everyone's day up.

It sure brightened up my day! But really, I haven't ordered from DVDBest in years, but in their Terms & Conditions they say "...pokiaľ nie je objednaný tovar na sklade, zásielka k vám odchádza až po doplnení zásob od distribútora." = "...if the ordered items are not in stock, the order will be dispatched only after restocking from suppliers." If that doesn't answer your question, I'd suggest you drop them an e-mail... Cheers!

Yeah that sorts it out, thanks a lot for the help.

Newbie poster here so please be gentle. Looking at DVDLIPA website, they seem to have a lot of very cheap stuff. Can anyone recommend some of the Czech/Slovak films from the 40s/50s that they have? Or would I be better concentrating on the later stuff?

I'd definitely get the two '60s sets - those are a must. The rest... I don't know - some of them are nice, but nothing special (with the exception of Jakubisko's Build a House, Plant a Tree from the '70s set - it's generally considered a "lesser" Jakubisko, but I've a soft spot for it due to a certain scene that haunted me since I had seen the film as a child ).

(BTW, perkypat... any relation to Palmer Eldritch? )

I highly recommend Krakatit, which I discuss some here. Make sure you get this edition. A cheaper one from the same label does not have English subs.

I have not seen many of the 50s films, and can't recommend them. But the 60s and 70s films are full of gems, and 80s collection, mostly unavailable now, has some choice pictures in it.

My top recommendations would be the Elo Havetta films, "Celebration in the Botanical Garden" and "Wild Lilies" (Wild Lilies seems to be going out of print, and last I checked dvdLipa still has it), which are somewhat reminiscent of Paradjanov or Fellini. I'd also recommend Juraj Jakubisko's "Birds, Orphans and Fools," and Uher's "The Sun in a Net," which is like a Slovakian version of L'eclisse.

But many of the lesser-mentioned titles are quite vivid and lovely, such as "Pink Dreams," "If I had a Gun" and "And I'll Run to the Ends of the Earth." I like "Build a House, Plant a Tree" a lot, just as petoluk does.

I recommend seeing Až přijde kocour / When the Cat Comes (Vojtěch Jasný, 1963), just crazy. There's a very good DVD available with English subtitles.

Also, discussion about the film here.

Thanks for the tips, have stuck to 60s and 70s stuff, 10 packages, 13 films for around 50 euros. Excellent value. And yes, Petaluk, I am distantly related to Palmer Eldritch(and the Man in the High Castle).