Don Gio

The remastered and slightly altered version screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival recalled Don Gio as a phantasmagorical farce and a work that was ahead of its time, which caused it to be misunderstood. From the festival’s introduction of the film’s creators, during which they explained the interventions undertaken during the remastering (insertion of subtitles, which aid the viewer’s orientation in the plot and among the characters), it is apparent that Don Gio is a work of its time to such an extent that even its creators are no longer able to fully understand it and felt the need to make it available to viewers 25 years later. Today it comes across like an operatically sweeping feria held in the space of a television studio and service corridors in the basement of Czech Television using the techniques of avant-garde theatre, which is a succinct comment on the euphoric and disillusioning chaos of the early 1990s. We find here all of the elements of the period condensed into burlesque scenes, from ideological idealism through criticism of mammonism and the selling out of values in the name of superficial enrichment to the proliferation of nudity and declining morals. Furthermore, Cabanovská's time capsule today brings to mind the forgotten phenomenon of the time consisting in feverish efforts to fatten one’s pockets off the fashionable Mozart fever that broke out in connection with the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death and coincided with the beginnings of predatory capitalism in the Czech Lands. (15/07/2017)