The Way Through the Bleak Woods

A black & white film shot on Cinemascope format providing a moody and melancholy picture of a small country village just before World War One.A young doctor from Vienna arrives in a village in the Bohemian Forest to start a practice. The villagers are slightly eccentric: the widow Hudlerová, exhausted by hard work, and her restless son Victor, postman Kokesh who lives with her but later marries another woman, the singular and charming Anna who all the men fall for, the priest who sees everything and doesn't get involved. This village microcosm is however a breeding ground for minor cruelty and animosity. Everyone is busy doing his or her own thing, arriving from somewhere or leaving for distant climes. Some meet each other by fate, others walk past each other indifferently.îThe Way Through the Bleak Woods excels in beautiful long crane shots over the snow-covered forests. The slow camera motion contributes to the dreamy character of the film celebrating a certain degree of folly; a folly which comes to a definite end when the village boys are drafted at the end.