Shot under highly straitened circumstances, and featuring astonishing cinematography from Igor Luther and a score by the great Zdeněk Liška, Jakubisko’s third feature, written with Karel Sidon (latterly the Chief Rabbi of the Czech Republic), is a mosaic-like parable set in an undefined space and time.

Nonetheless, its crazy world without ideals, and filled with violence, cynicism and hopelessness, surely references Czechoslovakia after August 1968. A work of great, fluid, unfettered exuberance at odds with the concurrent despondent mood of the Czechoslovak nation, it remains the quintessential Jakubisko film.

Restored digital print courtesy of the Slovak Film Institute.