France 🇫🇷 La Sorcière - The Blonde Witch 1956
dir. Michel was Adapted from the 🇷🇺 Aleksandr Kuprin novel Olesya. Russian version of it was filmed in 1971.
🎭The Blonde Witch is played by Marina Vlady, actress, singer, activist, writer…Vlady was married to Soviet poet/songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky and she has wrote a book about their relationship.
The movie has a beautiful soundtrack (theme tune for my podcast) and it was composed by French Norbert Glanzberg. He was also notable for some famous songs of Édith Piaf.🎼
🌲The writer Kuprin wrote this book when fell in love of the nature and woods in a hunting trip.
📽️ Brulard, a French civil engineer on assignment in Sweden for a lumber company meets Ina, a local nature-girl type, falls in love, has an affair, tries to convert her to “civilization”, but ends up…no spoilers here.
🔥Movie was filmed in the locations (Dalarna, Mora) where Swedish witch trials were furious in the 17th century. The witch trial in Mora and Älvdalen 1668-1669 is the most famous Swedish witch trial because a famous illustration was made of it in Germany. This kind of prints had huge influence in the Europe and this particular one was even known in Massachusetts Salem at the time.
There were only few cases in 🇸🇪 when the “witch “ was burned alive so this drawing is incorrect. The convicted were beheaded in Sweden like in the Finland trials.
🐴“Funny” detail: Even the famous decoration, Mora’s wooden horse (Dalahästen) was banned, because witches were believed to be using them for the flight to the Satan’s orgies.
👨⚖️🇫🇮The witch “hunter” in Mora was Finnish Lorentz Creutz. As chairman of the Witchcraft Commission, Creutz took it upon himself to save Sweden from the devil’s grip. As head of the Witchcraft Commission, Creutz was ruthless because he was convinced of the correctness of his own actions. He was a man who never doubted.In two weeks the commission heard a total of two hundred defendants and witnesses. It sentenced to death the 16 inhabitants of Mora and the six inhabitants of Älvdalen. In addition, dozens of people were sentenced to various flogging and church punishments. The youngest 22 children had to stand in the church with a whip in their hand for three Sundays in a row and sit in a separate room during the year's services.(Lappalainen 2018)⛪️
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