Summary
The poet František Hrubín took the Oldřich and Božena love story from Czech mythology and adapted it into a theatre play. Towards the end of the 1960s, he developed his material further into a screenplay, which director Otakar Vávra went on to turn into a film in 1984. The motion picture completed Vávra’s Hrubín series of films from the 1960s – the others are Zlatá reneta (Golden Queen, 1965) and Romance pro křídlovku (Romance for the Bugle, 1966). The historical film, set in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, is a story of great love that will bring about the rebirth of the Bohemian Přemyslid royal dynasty. The German emperor plots to have the child of Oldřich and Božena murdered – the idea of their conceiving an heir with Bohemian blood isn’t to his liking. But he fails… This breath-taking, “patriotic” and historical costume drama stars Jiří Bartoška as Oldřich, Ilona Svobodová as Božena and Jiří Adamíra as the emperor’s villainous envoy, Gunter.
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