Beauty and the Beast

Director Juraj Herz was born on 4 September 1934 in Kežmarok, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). Interestingly, acclaimed Czech animator Jan Švankmajer was born on that very day. Although Herz attended the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) with directors such as Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, Evald Schorm and Věra Chytilová, he studied in the puppetry department with Švankmajer. The other directors listed above, all of whom have become poster children for the Czechoslovak New Wave, were enrolled in the Filmová a Televizní Fakulta Akademie Múzkých Umění v Praze (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). In his interview with Ivana Košuličová, Herz suggests that he was looked down upon and excluded from the movement because he was considered “a puppet artist, not a film director”.

Today, Herz remains on the margins of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Monumental texts on the movement, such as Peter Hames’ The Czechoslovak New Wave and Antonín J. Liehm’s Closely Watched Films, offer little information on the director or his work. Nonetheless, as Josef Škvorecký asserts, Herz’s involvement in the Czechoslovak New Wave is indisputable. His first film, Sberné surovosti (The Junk Shop), was featured in the original version of Perličky na dně (Pearls of the Deep, 1965), a collection of shorts which is commonly referred to as a manifesto for the diverse New Wave. Impressively, Herz also served as an assistant director on Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’ seminal, Academy Award-winning picture, Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street). Like many Czechoslovakian directors who came into prominence during the 1960s, he was involved with the Semafor Theatre as well. Despite the fact that his connections with the Czechoslovak New Wave are commonly disregarded, Herz’s masterpiece Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator 1968), sometimes referred to as The Cremator of Corpses, is an intelligent work of dramatic horror that far surpasses the genre’s connotations of kitsch, camp and senseless gore. In Czechoslovakia, it was one of the three best-attended art films of 1969, the post-invasion year. While horrific, the film is highly complex and provides a great deal of valuable social commentary. —Senses of Cinema