The hectic action of Morgiana occurs in an unspecified time though it’s probably late 19th / early 20th century. The plot is simple: two sisters Viktoria and Klara (played by the same actress Iva Janzurova) inherit a fortune after the death of their wealthy father. Viktoria’s left a small castle, jewellery and other possessions.
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Klara inherits all the money and attracts many male admirers – to the annoyance of the jealous Viktoria who decides to slowly poison her sister, claim an admirer for herself and all the assets. Impatient to see if the poisoning is working Viktoria attempts to poison a servant’s pet dog and takes out her frustration by taking a stone and hitting the head of a young maid whilst she’s swimming naked in the sea.
The undetectable poison has been obtained from Otylie (Nina Diviskovna) a gypsy fortune teller. One day Otylie turns up and demands more money for the poison otherwise she will reveal all. Viktoria argues with the blackmailer and throws her off a cliff into the sea. The physically weak Klara falls in love with a lieutenant Marek (Josef Abraham). Frustrated Viktoria feels that Marek’s concern for Klara’s puzzling illness might halt the poison’s process. A further complication arises when Klara receives an anonymous letter telling her that Viktoria has poisoned her. A tense, chaotic battle occurs between the sisters.
This is a highly melodramatic tale yet what prevents it from toppling into lunacy is a beautifully realised Gothic tone married to fairy tale logic (Juraj Herz also directed a remarkable version of Beauty and the Beast, 1978). The playful energy of its visuals (fabulous photography from Jaroslav Kucera); thrilling music (often high pitched flutes over a pounding orchestra) from Lubos Fisher; disconcerting but seamless editing by Jaromir Janacek; committed performances and stylish direction make for a macabre cinematic delight. Morgiana’s 101 minutes are very entertaining.
References have been made to the influence of Edward Gorey, Ken Russell and even Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? combining to produce a Gothic excess. I feel that’s somewhat off the mark. Better to think Fellini (all that heightened make-up and heavy and heavy costumes), Edgar Allan Poe (A spin on his 'The Black Cat' story), Michael Powell (the cliff ‘murder’ and the later presence of a nun had me recalling Black Narcissus) and mod 70’s psychedelic moments (The poison causes Klara to experience throbbing red-tinted hallucinations): all making for controlled Gothic flourishes, a balletic pulse, physical excitement, drive and elegant purpose.
Normally I am suspicious of the use of the fish-eye lens - frequently overused in bad horror films. In Morgiana and the 1968 The Cremator (Juraj Hertz, once again, in a film that’s for me his masterpiece) it’s employed to brilliant effect – especially when we have such flowing intercutting between the cat’s point of view ('Morgiana' is the name of Viktoria’s cat) and the humans’. And like Polanski’s Repulsion (often corresponding in mood to The Cremator) Morgiana is a perfect example of how to intelligently employ such potentially self-conscious, photographic effects with disorientating accuracy and great skill.
"The jealous Viktoria who decides to slowly poison her sister"
Hertz was a director with a sensitive feel for the grotesque. The label horror film, gothic melodrama, black comedy, surreal escapade or fairy tale doesn’t quite fit comfortably with his films All these components have strange relations and intersect in a highly original and very Czech, even animated-film manner – Herz studied, with Jan Svankmajer, in the puppetry department of the Academy of Performing arts in Prague.
The Cremator is a surreal nightmare where, in the Prague of 1938/39 the petty bourgeois manager of a crematorium slowly slips into a Nazi mind-set till he’s completely deranged. He murders his young son and hangs his wife on being persuaded that she may have an ‘unfortunate’ Jewish ancestry. That hanging moment is echoed in Morgiana when Viktoria stages her suicide and like the cremator Kopfrkingl (a marvellous performance by Rudolf Hrusinsky) in The Cremator we’ve two obsessive controllers attempting to reshape the world to comply with their mad, purer concept of human desires, rights and vision.
Kopfrkingl wants people to die so as to escape the sufferings of the body: be efficiently and cleanly re-incarnated, through Tibetan religion, into a heavenly existence. Viktoria’s aim is less ‘grander’. She desires her sister’s money and one of her men, but like Kopfrkingl wants power over the near-dead. Morgiana demands that the planned death be carried out as smoothly as possible. Though Viktoria is continually thwarted and finally destroyed. But Kopfrkingl succeeds, with a slick ease, to survive, finally employed by Germany to administer mass exterminations.
And why did the Czech filmmakers of the 60s and 70s have a thing about cats and psychedelia? Vojtech Jasny’s 1963 film The Cassandra Cat had the ability to reveal the druggy colour of a person’s character and Morgiana’s cat is as controlling as its crazed owner. Meanwhile victim Klara keeps encountering her doppelganger, dressed in fiery red, through intense hallucinations. All to be continued one day in an essay on LSD and cats in post war East European cinema?
- Alan Price
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