Director: Frantisek Vlacil
Country: Czechoslovakia
Award: none
Movement: Czehoslovak New Wave
The Devil’s Trap is a 1962 Czechoslovak historical adventure film directed by František Vláčil. It is inspired by Alfréd Technik’s novel Mlýn na ponorné řece. It is considered the first part of loose trilogy of historical films by František Vláčil. The trilogy aso includes Marketa Lazarová and The Valley of the Bees. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building’s stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil.
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