Steering his first film away from Poland (and away from the upheavals of Polish history that lend his work shape),
Andrej Wajda shot this adaptation of Nikolai Leskov's 19th-century short story in Yugoslavia. Olivera Markovic
is the eponymous gal, less nefarious than despondent despite the Shakespearean overtones of the title -- holed
up in a small Russian burg with her merchant husband away and a boorish father-in-law (Bojan Stupica) constantly
bitching about her barren womb, she takes up with serf Ljuba Tadic. When their affair is exposed, she quickly
servers the old man a rat-poison champignon special before appointing her lover new master of the manor. Their
idyll is only slightly interrupted by the arrival of hubby Miodrag Lazarevic, providing the couple with the first (but not last) of their murders. The characters should crack open the gender/class tensions of an oppressive hierarchy,
though Wajda seldom showed interest in delving into the female psyche. (When he did, he'd end up with Hunting
Flies.) Fellow misogynist Akira Kurosawa had even less sympathy for his Lady Macbeth in Throne of Blood, though
he fashioned a much more successful acculturation of the play via cunning stylistics. By contrast, Wajda's attention
lies on studied widescreen compositions and rickety deep-focus interiors, fattening the flow of tragedy with ominous
rumbling from the Shostakovich opera and Orthodox paraphernalia (Christ mosaics, Easter masses, onion church
domes peeking from behind wooden walls). Cinematography by Aleksandar Sekulovic. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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