Fifty years ago last year Juraj Herz’s adaptation of the eponymous psychological novel by Jaroslav Havlíček vied for a Golden Palm at Cannes alongside Tarkovsky’s Solaris, among others. It is the early twentieth century, and thirty-year-old Štěpa Kiliánová stands out as an original free thinker. Desiring to marry and have children, she weds her cousin Pavel, a retired officer. But her path to happiness runs up against an obstacle when she learns that Pavel’s earlier life of debauchery left him with syphilis, which makes his mental and physical decline an inevitability. Herz’s acclaimed and visually stylized psychological study, with unforgettable performances by Iva Janžurová and Petr Čepek, was this year digitally restored in a 4K version.