The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
You Are a Widow, Sir
When
Wed 4 Oct 2023
This bizarre, psychedelic take on the body-swap comedy sees Iva Janžurová (best known for her lead role in Juraj Herz’s Morgiana) play an assassin with the cloned body of a famous actress and the transplanted mind of a male serial killer. Despite a clear anti-monarchist stance in its parody of inter-kingdom diplomatic conflict, Vorlíček’s film’s surreal logic defies easy explanation, with its mise en scène built around the overwhelming pop-art styled sets by production designer Oldřich Bosák (Closely Watched Trains and The Cassandra Cat).
Digital print courtesy of the National Film Archive in Prague.
Also screening on Wed 4 October
Program
“All The World’s Bedlam”: Screwball, Czechoslovak style
Happy End (1967) – Wed 27 Sep, 7pm
An Old Gangster's Molls (1927) – Wed 27 Sep, 8.45pm
Eva Fools Around (1939) – Wed 4 Oct, 7pm
You Are a Widow, Sir (1971) – Wed 4 Oct, 8.45pm
Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea (1977) – Wed 11 Oct, 7pm
Heave Ho! (1934) – Wed 11 Oct, 8.45pm
About the program
This season charts 50 years of a peculiarly antic, extraordinarily inventive strain of popular comedy from Czechoslovakia, spanning the late silent era through to the end of the 1970s. It highlights the extraordinary comedic talents of performers still famed domestically but too little known in the anglophone world...
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
