Il Boemo, from writer/director Petr Václav, is a lush costume drama that looks at the life and career of Josef Myslivecek, who left Prague for Italy to become a musician, and he did. Becoming a composer whose work was well-regarded in Italy for a period, he was even a friend of a young Mozart. But like many artists of his era, he died impoverished.
We meet Josef (played by Vojtech Dyk) as he’s selling off things, trading on his name to receive a slightly better offer. He’s on hard times, but he’s still remembered for being a maestro. He returns to his home, which is as rundown as he is, but even in its disrepair, you can see that it was once a grand room. The walls still bear the fading frescos. Then his mind takes him away from his drab, colorless room to the colorful world of the opera house. Full of life and sound. Not fantasy, but a memory. There, a soprano sings in his mind, to his audience of one, but she invites us to follow on a journey and see how he arrived here.
And then the film begins in earnest. Starting with the before, the before it got glamourous before he was the maestro, but just a struggling musician, teaching cello lessons to wealthy women in Venice to try and pay his rent and learn from masters and get a chance to live his dream. We also quickly get that he’s very much a man not afraid to use his appeal with women to his advantage to get a leg up.
The way Il Boemo weaves in music is very strong and lively. For example, the scene where Josef meets Caterina Gabrielli (played by Barbara Ronchi), and he convinces her to try his arrangement of an aria. It’s a fabulous piece of character and production. There are so many moving parts used to make it work. Animal wranglers, actors coming in on cue, segueing between vocal performance (even if lip-syncing) to spoken dialogue with a side character, framing, and camera work so it could be match cut to rehearsal scene. It was one of many examples that seamlessly worked music in with story and character.
There was some nice commentary made about the pay disparity between what he gets as a composer versus what the performers get that lines up with most of their stories ending with them dying in poverty.
This film was going to get compared to Amadeus, whether it focused on the relationship of Josef and Mozart (or not) because both are about composers and take place during a similar time period. But it was still a smart decision to only include Young Mozart (played by Philip Amadeus Hahn) briefly. That said, the film took place over a long swath of time and often felt too beholden to being historically accurate rather than following the character’s journey. There is a tighter movie to be made here, but this one still has a lot to enjoy, including a fun scene with the King of Italy about defecation.
Il Boemo was a Special Screening at the 44th Cairo International Film Festival after having its world premiere at the 70th San Sebastián International Film Festival. It is the Czech entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards.
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