Dablova Past (The Devil's Trap)

It's 1962 when we again meet Frantisek Vlacil, and he has improved markedly from the rather pretentious 'The White Dove' (though we were worried after seeing the terrible short 'Sklenena Oblaka' ('Clouds of Glass') that he made in 1957).
This is an odd film, with changes of tone and mysteries of the supernatural that made us almost think back to, don't laugh now, the seminal Hollywood B-Movie 'Kiss Me Deadly'.
At the opening we have our usual Vlacil tropes, retained throughout, of the human face superenlarged until it takes up almost the whole screen. This kind of iconicalism and humanism, emphasised further by the camera that looks up and the sharp contrasts with sidelight that brings out pores and hair, is almost Soviet. That is Vlacil's style.
The happy thing here is that he has been reined in by someone else's script, so is forced to tell a story. Through some nice P.O.V., repition, and focus on objects he well conveys and atmosphere of uneven menace. The slightly weird tone, not sure where we are standing, is very affective. He usually keeps it interesting, though you can almost here him tearing at his harnesses in an attempt to ditch the story and become boring.
For the story itself we start off with a familiar rustic tale, yet theological elements unexplained (even at the end, really) are present. As we have some great scenes among the exposition, we start asking ourself who the 'devil' here really is. Vlacil doesn't have a big reveal; what the church insists may, all along, still be right.
The story goes completely nuts towards the end, while at the same time inserting a conventional and fitfully interesting romance. There are some interesting theologies in here too, though articulating them in the clear light of the outside may lead to nonsense.
Still, during the runtime we rather enjoyed the intelligence and atmosphere. Much much better, quite a decent film, all told.