Morgiana (1972)

directed by Juraj Herz
Czechia
97 minutes
4 out of 5 stars
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First and foremost, Morgiana is a film devoted to its own aesthetic in a way few films are. It's luridly colored with a degree of care that only makes it look better the older and more outdated it gets. Every wallpaper and every inch of satin or chenille or taffeta or other scraps of gorgeous, expensive-looking clothing that its characters casually wear holds up as well on film today as it did in 1972, if for slightly different reasons. Who knows if there was ever a time when people dressed like this in their day-to-day lives? I'm not even sure what time period this was supposed to be. I just know that it looks prettier than the majority of modern fashion catalogues.

It plays on our natural (sometimes ashamed) interest in backstabbing and disloyalty. It's full of jealousy and "she did what?" moments that anybody who watches reality TV will get. The plot is a vaguely Victorian idealized/romanticized crime affair: One sister decides to slowly poison the other for her crime of being too young and naive, too beautiful and carefree. If this was giallo we'd see some blood and gore, but it's not, so instead the eyeshadow and lipliner is caked on like prosthetics and guts.

The majority of this movie is just wall-to-wall girls with no men playing any roles that were terribly important. That's not to say it's a feminist movie- I could give you a whole bunch of reasons why not, as well as why I question if any media can actually "be" feminist- but it doesn't bend to that concept I've noticed lately where directors and writers seem to think girls only come in two forms, catty and innocent. Since there's so many women here, it's natural that their roles run the gamut, though not quite as thorough a gamut as I would have liked. Still, this would not have been even a shade of what it was if not for the hard work of talented women.

It did get on my nerves that a lot of women are essentially used as set pieces to display their beautiful dresses, but if you want to split hairs, the fact that all those outfits were thanks to a costume designer named Irena Greifová made that a bit more comforting. I liked knowing that it was a woman dressing all the actresses up rather than a man putting them in outfits he deemed attractive enough.

And if you're wondering where the title comes from, considering that the names of the sisters and the title of the original book it's based on aren't even close to "Morgiana"- it's the cat. Morgiana is the name of the more extroverted sister's cat. Who does not play a large role at all, I think she was probably more symbolic than anything. But nonetheless she deserves a spot in the canon of outstanding film cats.