Magdaléna Vášáryová

Vášáryová’s eyes do much of the work in Marketa Lazarová (1967), where František Vláčil gives her little dialogue. As Lazar’s daughter, she gives us someone to follow while the rival families are still difficult to distinguish. We cared about her before we had sorted out the households, because her feelings were clearer to us than the quarrel around her. That early attachment matters in a historical drama which asks so much patience of its audience.

Michal Kožuch’s Lazar and Josef Kemr’s Kozlík make their rivalry bitter enough to matter without becoming agreeable company. Against those two, Vášáryová gives us a reason to remain concerned about what happens to Lazar’s daughter. The cast makes these people believable before Vláčil has made their connections clear, and her contribution is central to that achievement. We rate the film highly, with a reservation about how needlessly difficult it can be to follow. Her performance helps us through that difficulty; it cannot remove it.

The breakthrough came early, after her start in Senzi mama (1964), and it is easy to let it account for too much of the career. Petr Weigl cast her as Mahulena opposite Jan Tříska in Radúz a Mahulena (1970), then in the title role of Rusalka (1977), his film of the Dvořák opera. Those credits might encourage a narrow idea of the parts she could play. Jiří Menzel’s Cutting It Short (1981) offers a useful change of company and pace. Here she is Maryška, the lively wife of a brewery manager.

Maryška gives her room to be energetic and free-spirited. That matters when the breakthrough is so forceful that it can narrow our expectations of the actor, leaving us looking only for innocence under threat. We would still begin with Marketa Lazarová, accepting the confusion for the sake of her performance and the cast around her. Then try Menzel’s comedy before deciding she belongs exclusively in severe historical dramas.