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I cannot comment on this film without discussing its significance to me personally. As a child bad health prevented me from ever going to a cinema. I first encountered movies at the end of WWII through Roger Manvilles splendid Penguin book "Film", which brought me so much pleasure as my health began to improve that I wish I could buy another copy to re-read today. My introduction to many classics films such as The Battleship Potemkin, Drifters (Grierson's magnificent documentary), Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and Ecstasy; came first through this book and later at my University Art-house cinema. Ecstasy had incurred the wrath of the Vatican, for condoning Eva's desertion of Emil, her subsequent divorce, and the brief swim she took in the buff, but Roger Manville ignored these trivial matters and discussed the film as a triumphant, outstandingly beautiful, visual paean to love - a view echoed by many IMDb users. A very lonely young man, when I saw it, I willingly concurred. No further opportunity to see Ecstasy arose until the introduction of home videos - by then it had become a treasured memory not to be disturbed. Quite recently I finally added Ecstasy to my home video collection and found this assessment very superficial. Ecstasy is much more of a parable on the continuity of human existence, against which individual lives are insignificant - perhaps a tribute to what Bernard Shaw in his aggressively agnostic writings used to term 'The Lifeforce'.
Ecstasy portrays a young bride marrying a middle aged man whose sex urge is no longer strong. Disappointed, she returns home and divorces him. Soon after she experiences a strong mutual attraction to a young virile man she meets whilst out horse riding. She makes love for the first time and it is an overwhelming experience. Her former husband cannot face rejection and gives the young man a lift in his car intending that a passing train will kill them both on a level crossing. But the train stops in time and the apparently ill driver is taken to recuperate at a nearby hotel where he later commits suicide by shooting himself. After these exciting climacteric sequences, a bland, predictable and almost inevitable ending emphasises that whilst individual human lives exhibit both joy and tragedy, collectively life continues to carry us all forward in its stream and only through contributing to this stream can we be truly happy. This story is trite, the acting is no more than adequate; and normally such a film would have disappeared into the garbage, as did most of its contemporaries, long ago. What has given Ecstasy its classic status is exceptional cinematography, a continuous lyrical score and very careful loving direction, coupled with something fortuitous but in cinematographic terms very important - it appeared just after the introduction of sound and was probably planned as a silent film. It is sub-titled and its Director has exploited the impact of brief verbal sequences accompanying some sub-titles, and occasionally breaking into the score which so lovingly carries the film forward. This makes it not only almost unique but extremely rewarding to watch. The parable in the tale is stressed continuously but so subtly that only when reflecting after viewing does one become fully aware of it. For example, the names - Eva and Adam; the obsessive behavior of Emil on his wedding night which shows that triviata have become the most important thing in his life and predicate his eventual suicide since he has no adequate purpose to sustain him; the ongoing series of beautiful sequences showing erotic imagery (a bee pollinating a flower, a key entering a lock, a breaking necklace during Eva's virginal lovemaking sequence with Adam, etc.); and the final post-suicide sequences which could have been filmed in many different ways but serve to extol the importance to individuals of performing some type of work that contributes positively to Society, as well as of creating new life to sustain this society after we ourselves pass on.
As a 1933 film I would rate this at 9 - even comparing it with contemporary works I would not reduce this below 8. For me the film will always remain a "must see", (although you may feel that my background remarks above indicate some bias in this judgment). Unfortunately in North America contemporary assessments of this film have been distorted by the extreme 1930's reaction to Hedy Kiesler's very brief and relatively unimportant nude scene which she had difficulty living down in Hollywood (some critics, who have clearly not seen such classic films as Hypocrites, Hula, Back to God's Country, Bird of Paradise or some of the early works of D.W. Griffiths and C.B. deMille, have even erroneously referred to this as the first appearance of a nude actress in a feature film). This scene was probably part of the original novel, and the film would have been very little different if the Director had chosen to rewrite it.
Two further thoughts; firstly this is a Czech film, released there in 1933. Its final message about hard work generating positive benefits for society must have seemed very superficial to its viewers when a few years later their country became the first victim of Nazi oppression and was virtually destroyed for at least two generations (I do not remember these sequences being screened just after the war when I first saw this film - were they removed from the copy I saw then?). Secondly for me its main message today is that things of real beauty are often very transitory even though their memory may stay with one for a lifetime. We should all be thankful that today some of them can be captured on camera and viewed again at our convenience.


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