The Devil’s Trap (1962) Avante Garde sounds and visions in this slyly clever satire (Review)

Another Czech film from the 1960s gets dusted down and given the usual exemplary treatment from the Second Run label this week and anyone in the know or familiar with some of my previous reviews will expect the usual discussion about how the film has a subversive message regarding the Communist regime the country was living under at the time. But, on the surface, 1962’s The Devil’s Trap is a film about the Catholic revival and subsequent practices of the notorious Inquisition in 18th century Bohemia, can that really have something to say about the then-contemporary Soviet oppression? Well, the short answer is, you betcha comrades.

With The Devil’s Trap, the director František Vláčil commences his trilogy of historical dramas that included the 1967 celebrated masterpiece, Marketa Lazarová, and was concluded with The Valley of the Bees the following year. Based on Alfred Technik’s novel, The Mill on the Deep River, The Devil’s Trap tells the story of a conflicted Bohemian village. Having endured a terrible drought the previous year, the Regent Valecský (Čestmír Řanda) has decreed that a new granary must be constructed as a safeguard. However, the site in which the Regent has set his sights upon becomes contentious when the local miller, Spálený (Vítězslav Vejražka), claims that the location will be unsuitable for such purposes. The descendant of an old family who has worked the mill for centuries, Spálený is understandably very knowledgeable about the land around him and its underground caves, caverns and water sources. Hearing of his concerns, the Regent realises that he will be a fly in the ointment and seeks information regarding this seemingly simple miller. When a visiting Bishop informs him of the story of how the miller’s grandfather miraculously survived the burning down of the mill at the hands of the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War, the Regent learns that many believe the miller’s uncanny knowledge and ability with the land is supernatural in origin. Sensing the opportunity to scapegoat the miller and push ahead with his plans for the granary, the Regent requests that the Catholic church send forth a priest, Probus (Miroslav Macháček), to investigate his suspicion that the fortunate miller and his family may be in league with the Devil.

Of course with a film such as The Devil’s Trap, the subtext is everything. It is a film that can absolutely be enjoyed with its surface reading about religious persecution from centuries earlier, as a kind of supernatural folk horror chiller. But dig a little deeper and the persecution the scapegoated miller faces is an unmistakable allegory for the persecution of dissidents that occurred as a matter of course under Stalin. The government censors seemingly viewed Vláčil’s film as one about the dangers of organised religion and the celebration of the valuable insights and know-how that the average worker possesses over the landed gentry and aristocracy. As such, they happily waived it through for the masses to go and see, unaware that many of them will have spotted the parallels in this 18th-century tale with the contemporary witch trials and subsequent executions of democrats Milada Horáková, Jan Buchal, Oldřich Pecl, and Záviš Kalandra in the Stalinist purges of 1950, just twelve years prior to the release of The Devil’s Trap and still so fresh as to be raw in the mind of the average Czech citizen.

These parallels can further be drawn in the characterisation of the key characters that inhabit the film’s narrative. Spálený the miller is our victim of the regime, a natural dissident whose ability to see the flaws in the world around him (as well as the merits of course) condemns him to persecution and political scapegoatery. His son, Jan (Vit Olmer) is the future and is also deemed a threat; his growing love for local girl Martina (Karla Chadimová) also proves a more personal thorn in the side of the Regent’s loyal guard Filip (Vlastimil Hašek) who wants her for himself. Personal rivalry colours the conflict, shifting it from mere ideology to base and selfish reasons – things that were supposed to be an anathema to the Communist faith but were all too apparent in practice. This attitude of course also exists in the Regent himself; someone who is keen to push the supernatural angle upon his God-fearing and superstitious villagers if it means he can get what he desires – the granary in its original spot. In contrast, the priest Probus is a fanatic, assured that his actions are true and just no matter how damaging they may become.

What’s interesting is that the film chooses to make Probus the most complex figure. He initially appears to be intelligent, worldly-wise and far kinder and sympathetic to the concerns of the drought-ridden villagers than the Regent or his staff, as witnessed when he insists the sullenly authoritative Filip allows those toiling in the field a break to drink the water Jan has brought from the mill. He appears to be a man of logic, one who seems to concede to the miller’s hard-earned wisdom in matters relating to the land, but he is nonetheless determined in his search for the work of the Devil. His logic leads him to value the role the villagers themselves can play in ensuring the Regent’s plans go ahead. By stirring the communal pot of superstition, they each turn against the miller and his son. When the miller’s advice ultimately proves accurate and the earth gives way under the newly constructed granary, it is Probus who leads a zealous search party for Spálený into the caves beneath the mill, insistent that the misfortune is a result of a deal he has struck with Satan, whose kingdom resides in the cavernous underground.

The Devil’s Trap is a subtly disquieting film whose atmosphere is achieved by somewhat avant-garde approaches to sound and imagery. In the case of the former, I was struck by Vláčil’s camerawork, particularly the ominous close-up effect he repeatedly gives to the door of the barn on the mill’s site. On three occasions, starting with the film’s flashback to the Thirty Years War; the crucial moment where the miller’s family have been said to have made a deal with Lucifer in order to spare their lives, the camera seemingly floats in the air, remorselessly towards the door. It’s a dizzying moment that concludes each time with a kind of abstract collision that is never truly realised except in the mind of the viewer. With regards to the former, the film’s use of evocative sound as opposed to a traditional score is eerily striking. It is here that Vláčil commences his partnership with composer Zdeněk Liška, who provided the score for the other two chapters in his loose historical trilogy. Liška shuns traditional musical arrangement here, preferring instead to use resonant birdsong or a mournful, unsettling choir whose music seeps into the movie like a sense of dread.

Second Run’s Blu-ray release presents the movie in a new HD transfer from original materials and contains a couple of extras; a documentary portrait of Vláčil entitled In The Web of Time from 1989 (presumably when the USSR’s grip was finally loosening to allow appreciation of filmmakers from the post Normalisation era once more) and a 1962 short The Week Starts on Friday which looks at Czech cinema of the time.

THE DEVIL’S TRAP – MARK’S ARCHIVE