Archive of films Doomed Beauty / Zkáza krásou

Czech Republic
2016, 90 min

Section: Czech Films 2015–2016
Year: 2016

Lída Baarová dazzled filmgoers with her beauty for a few short years before the clouds began to darken her career as a result of her affair with Goebbels. In her own reminiscences the actress sees herself as a victim, but the film, while listening with reverence, suggests that the tragedy of her fate holds a certain ambiguity.

Synopsis

It’s no surprise that the story of Czech film star Lída Baarová was taken up by editor Jakub Hejna and Helena Třeštíková, a documentary filmmaker who, pursuing one of her thematic lines, examines the ways in which individuals come up against History itself. In the case of the actress whose success led her to the big studios in Berlin, embarking on an affair with Goebbels proved ill-fated: it cast a dark shadow, from which she could not escape, even after death. After being banned from acting, she was taken into custody on suspicion of collaboration and was then forced into exile for the remainder of her life. Doomed Beauty, like the television documentary from the mid-1990s, is based on reminiscences captured on camera when director Třeštíková went to visit her in Salzburg; in this case, however, Baarová’s subjective perspective is juxtaposed with archive newsreels as well as numerous excerpts from the movies in which she appeared. The image of the sufferer is thus partly overlaid with a vision of an egoistical star who is clearly incapable of critical self-reflection, still living out her final years under a veil of false illusions.

Zdena Škapová

About the director

Helena Třeštíková (b. 1949, Prague) has been one of the most prominent and most productive Czech documentarists since the 1980s. While at FAMU, where she graduated in 1975, she began applying the long-term observation technique that has become her trademark. Her impressive oeuvre, containing a series of feature-length docs and TV series (“Marriage Stories,” René, Katka, Forte and Piano, “Man and Time,” “Memory of the 20th Century”), meticulously creates a comprehensive image of the past century and the present day. Jakub Hejna (b. 1976, Prague) studied film editing at FAMU. He debuted as a director with Theatre Svoboda (2011), an award-winning, feature-length documentary about his grandfather, the world-famous stage designer Josef Svoboda. As a film editor he worked on various docs and feature films with the likes of Věra Chytilová, Jitka Rudolfová and particularly Helena Třeštíková.

Contacts

Aerofilms
Milady Horákové 383/79, 170 00, Praha 7
Czech Republic
Tel: +420 224 947 566
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.aerofilms.cz

Produkce Třeštíková s.r.o.
Kostelní 14, 170 00, Praha 7
Czech Republic
Tel: +420 603 581 674
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.produkcetrestikova.cz

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About the film

Color, Black & White, DCP

Section:	Czech Films 2015–2016

Director:	Helena Třeštíková, Jakub Hejna
Screenplay:	Helena Třeštíková
Dir. of Photography:	Jiří Chod, Martin Kubala, Jan Malíř, Jaromír Nekuda
Music:	Tadeáš Věrčák
Editor:	Jakub Hejna
Producer:	Hana Třeštíková
Production:	Produkce Třeštíková
Coproduction:	Česká televize
Contact:	Produkce Třeštíková s.r.o.
Distributor:	Aerofilms

Guests

Hanka Třeštíková

Producer

Tomáš Třeštík

Director of Photography

Helena Třeštíková

Film Director, Producer