Witch Hunt

Medieval witch trials provided the story for a 1963 book by Václav Kaplický that Otakar Vávra and Ester Krumbachová used as the basis for the screenplay of the outstanding historical drama Kladivo na čarodějnice (The Witch Hunt) (1969). The renowned director and multi-talented costume designer also took inspiration from the court records of witch trials held between 1678 and 1695. Both book and film borrowed the title from Malleus maleficium (1486), a medieval manual for fighting witchcraft. While the plot centres on the fate of actual people convicted in witch trials it also consciously reflects the 1950s show trials of Milada Horáková and Rudolf Slánský, details of which started to emerge in the 1960s. The narrative’s dark protagonist is Jindřich František Boblig of Edelstadt (1612–1698), an imperial lay inquisitor who helmed witch trials in Šumperk and was responsible for the burning to death of over 100 people, including the Šumperk dean Kryštof Lautner and the young servant Zuzana (Soňa Valentová). The inquisitor was not inspired by religion: he divvied up most of the property of his victims with the local nobility… Vávra’s Boblig, played by Vladimír Šmeral, is a sadistic fanatic who used torture and intimidation to force confessions out of dozens of innocent people. The inquisitor’s antithesis is the humanist Launter (Elo Romančík), a prototype of the modern intellectual who despite his moral convictions inevitably falls victim to absurd violence and hatred… In reaction to the political liberalisation of the period, Vávra, who was 58, created an enduring, expressive picture that ranks among his best. The Witch Hunt, which naturally was none too popular with normalisation period censors, brought an end to the interesting, unrestrained 1960s period in the director’s filmography.