Vláčilova Marketa Lazarová belongs to the most important works of world cinematography in the genre of historical film. She spent the main role in the film Magda Vášáryová (76), who does not remember the filming in the best light. She revealed to the website that her colleagues were close to alcohol, to which she was quite sensitive from an early age.
“I hid a flatbread with rum in the snow for the director Vláčil, and he was angry with me for it. Vladimír Menšík was also often drunk. To make matters worse, he smelled awful because the staff smeared his monk’s room with ram’s sperm, to have a sheep stay with him, she accompanied him as his ‘companion’,” shocked the actress and former diplomat.
“During the breaks, he cracked jokes, especially the dirty ones. I blushed, for a girl brought up in a rather middle-class environment, it was simply not fun. Of course, he didn’t mean it badly, he liked to entertain the people around him,” she added. But that was not the last unpleasant experience she took away from filming.
According to the script, she is raped by a knight and she ends up falling in love with him, which was the biggest stumbling block for her because it should have come down to the first kiss. “But he was also the first in my life. I, like almost every young girl, imagined him romantically – the sea, the sunset. Nothing was further from that. I don’t know if, or how many times, the shot was repeated, but I remember that in the final I ran away from the camera and vomited in a corner in disgust,” she revealed.
Vášáryová emphasized in February 2024 at the Febiofest Bratislava International Film Festival that Marketa Lazarová is not a finished film. “Vláčil no longer received the money to shoot the royal part, although the film lasts almost three hours, but it should have been longer. The royal image was supposed to reveal the atmosphere in which the story from the 13th century took place,” she added to the picture.
At the same time, it was the most expensive film of the 60s. It cost 12 million crowns and the actors, in order to fit into the medieval conditions, had to endure mud, winter and cold on their own skin. For the young Vášáryová, filming was a traumatic experience. “When I finished filming, I swore to myself that I would never shoot again in my life. After that, for almost half a year, everyone persuaded me to film Krotká,” added the actress, who originally wanted to study mathematics.
