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Morgiana
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Second Run Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (4th July 2023). |
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The Film
 Upon the death of their father, spinster Viktoria (The Joke's Iva Janzurová) is left with the family's rustic hunting lodge The Green Flute – rumored to be haunted since a young ballerina was poisoned by her possessive lover centuries ago – while lovely Klára (also Janzurová) inherits the main house and the rest of the family fortune. Long jealous of her sister's youth and beauty – and now doubly insulted when her sister feeling pity for her tries to foist family attorney/admirer Glenar (I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen's Petr Cepek) onto her while she dallies with handsome military man Marek (Valerie and Her Week of Wonders' Josef Abrhám) – Viktoria goes to see a palm reader who tells her that the only obstacle between her happiness is the Queen of Hearts (who she interprets as being her sister) and buys a slow-acting, undetectable poison from the wife (Wolf's Hole's Nina Divísková) of an unscrupulous apothecary husband that she puts in Klára's water just before leaving for the countryside. Although Klára takes ill almost immediately, suffering dizziness, hallucinations, and an insatiable thirst for water, Viktoria still wonders whether she might have been swindled and tests the poison on the dog owned by the child of one of her servants. As she waits to see whether the poison works and for news of her sister's death, Viktoria's feelings of guilt become more concrete as Klára's hallucinations become more vivid, with the elder sister facing a blackmail attempt by the wife of the chemist while Glenar tries to convince Marek that his suspicions about Klára's illness have nothing to do with her spurning him. Director Juraj Herz's follow-up to his macabre masterwork The Cremator, Morgiana is a more traditionally "Gothic" work based on the novel "Jesse and Morgiana" by Poe-influenced Russian author Alexander Grin. Apart from the ghost story told about The Green Flute, the film has no ghosts or monsters, focusing instead on sexual repression and paranoia. Hiding behind a wig, pale white makeup, and black veils – almost like a Gothic version of the protagonist of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant – Viktoria personifies rot and decadence (quite literally), so much so that Klára is less developed as a character and more defined by everything Viktoria is not; indeed, while Klára's hallucinations are quite blatantly that – thanks to the color and filter experimentation of Daisies cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera – we are never quite sure if Viktoria herself may or may not be having guilt-induced delusions of her own with the titular feline "Morgiana" likened to Poe's "The Black Cat" (particularly with the sudden reappearance of a character she thought she had murdered). Klára is indeed less interesting as a wilting heroine than her sister – and her admirers have nothing to do until right at the end – so it is appropriate that the film focuses on Viktoria's humanity from the hesitation she experiences when she poisons Klára's drink (telling her to send for a fresh glass when her sister observes the sparkling water has suddenly gone flat) and her understated horror when she learns that the servant's son may have drunk from the same dish as the dog (as well as her cat, her seeming only partner in crime) to her malicious act of throwing a rock at a skinny-dipping servant girl injuring her spine to her attempts to deflect Klára's accusations against her in private when any self-respecting villain would be gloating. After the grim finale of The Cremator, the more fairy tale-like wrapped up ending of Morgiana feels rather disappointing for those expecting something along the lines of Henry James' "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" despite a penultimate scene that cements the association between Morgiana and Poe's feline (in a manner that might have inspired the climax of Dario Argento's adaptation of "The Black Cat" in Two Evil Eyes). One of the few Czech directors working in the horror genre during a time when the country's cinema was more political and social-realist, Herz would also helm a Gothic telling of Beauty and the Beast, the absurdist Ferat Vampire, and the muddled Darkness in between television work and a few more internationally-recognized feature dramas. 
Video
Its screenings largely restricted to film festivals, Morgiana had Czech-only and Japanese-subtitled DVD editions before its first wide English release from Second Run with their 2010 DVD. Second Run's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.37:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray comes from a "new HD transfer from the best existing original materials created by the Czech National Film Archive" – presumably not the same master used for Germany's Ostalgica Blu-ray – as a preservation rather than a restoration, retaining occasional damage and reel change points. The grading varies from the older PAL SD master, removing a sickly yellow tinge in the older master towards a faint greenish one; and yet, the whites often look improved despite this, restoring the intended pale make-up of Viktoria's deliberately skewed pallor and Klára's increasingly sickly look while dresses and décor while reds, blues, and particularly violets – as well as the more psyhedelic colors of Klára's hallucinations – also look more lush than before.  Severin Films has announced their own new restoration for theatrical and future physical media release, but it remains to be seen whether they are using the same scan or the same materials (or if they plan to do a more thorough digital cleanup than the Czech National Archive).
Audio
The sole audio option is the original mono track in LPCM 2.0 (24-bit even though the back cover states 16-bit) and the post-dubbed track sports clear dialogue and a few pronounced sound effects under some surface noise and damage. The score of Luboš Fišer (The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians) score threatens to distort at the high ends, particularly with its shrill flute, and that work is better served on the recent soundtrack CD pairing with Zdenek Liska score for The Cremator. The optional English subtitles are free of any noticeable errors. 
Extras
Advertised as an audio commentary, the film is actually accompanied on a secondary audio track by The Projection Booth podcast with Mike White, Kat Ellinger, and Ben Buckingham recorded in 2020 in which they discuss the Gothic turn in Herz's films following his first few efforts, the major contribution of cinematographer Kucera who had initially snubbed Herz when he asked him to shoot his entry in the anthology film Pearls of the Deep because Herz was not part of the film department at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague but came from the puppetry program (Herz's story was the longest in the anthology and often got cut during screenings but ended up being more widely seen accompanying a popular British import film of the period), the relationship of Herz's puppetry background to his treatment of objects (and people) in his films, and Herz taking visual inspiration from Gustav Klimt.  The disc also ports over the interview with director Juraj Herz (16:07) from the DVD in which he reveals that source novel author Grin was persecuted by the U.S.S.R. but Herz passed him off as a "Soviet author" and that it was not until the film was finished that the producer realized that the two of them had different ideas of what constituted "romance." He recalls getting the producer to import a wide angle lens to use in the film, Kucera's color experimentation, and regarding the film as more of an experiment and being surprised at enthusiastic reactions to it at film festivals.
Packaging
Packaged with the disc is a 20-page booklet featuring writing on the film by Daniel Bird and Dr. Ian Conrich. The DVD booklet was twelve pages, but the booklet has not only been expanded by the need to shrink its physical size to fit in a Blu-ray case but also to feature a new essay by Bird on his on-stage interview with Herz in 2016 at the Offscreen Festival in Brussels before the director's death. The Conrich essay compares the protagonists of The Cremator and Morgiana and their obsessions with control. 
Overall
Although not as well-regarded by its own director as The Cremator, Juraj Herz's Morgiana is a delirious and stimulating work of Gothic horror.
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