Little Herdsman from the Valley

During his career as a director, František Vláčil didn’t pay much attention to children’s heroes: apart from the highly praised Holubice (The White Dove, 1960), Pověst o stříbrné jedli (The Legend of the Silver Fir, 1973) and Sirius (1974), he also directed Pasáček z doliny (The Little Herdsman from the Valley, 1983), inspired by the renowned author Ladislav Fuks’ novel. Although Jiří Fried and the experienced screenwriter Jiří Křižan worked on the script – telling the story of a simple village boy who finds an escape in the fairytales told by his grandfather – interest in this Vláčil film remained marginal. The ballad-like tales are set during the summer of 1947 in Wallachia, but they nonetheless resonate with the other works in the director’s dynamic opus set in the post-war years – Adelheid (1969) – and Stíny horkého léta (Shadows of a Hot Summer, 1977). The young Vlastimil Drbal also appeared in Vláčil’s Stín kapradiny (The Shadow of a Fern, 1984). The role of the grandfather went to Josef Kemr, whom Vláčil first met during the shooting of Marketa Lazarová (1967) and for the final time in the Karel Hynek Mácha drama Mág. (The Magician, 1987).