In “the wild mountain country where people were born with loneliness in their hearts” (as the opening intertitle rather poetically puts it), orphan girl Nina fantasises about being a princess in a crystal palace while she toils in the tavern run by her miserly guardian, Jakob Rezek. Escaped convict Ivan Holar returns home to the mountain country on Christmas Eve to visit his dying mother. Nina and Ivan cross paths when both seek refuge in the tavern cellar – Ivan from pursuing patrol guards, Nina from the tyrannical Rezek – leading to love, loss, redemption, and ultimately the start of a new life for both.

Reportedly made on a modest budget of only 90,000 koruna, this Christmas (fairy)tale was the second and last production of the short-lived Kalos company (an abbreviation of Karel-Anny-Lamač-Ondra-spol). Like its previous film, Otrávené světlo (The Poisoned Light, 1921), Bílý ráj brought together the “dream team” of actress Anny Ondráková, actor-director Karel Lamač, and cameraman Otto Heller, who – together with screenwriter Václav Wasserman – would come to be known as “the mighty four” of Czech silent cinema. All three would go on to forge successful careers abroad, and continued to work together well into the 1930s, with Ondráková (now going by the name Anny Ondra) at one point forming her own production company with then-boyfriend Lamač in Berlin. Gustav Machatý, future director of such masterpieces as Erotikon (1929) and Extase (1932), meanwhile makes a brief appearance in a supporting role.

Heller’s breathtaking exterior photography is very much the third star of the film after Ondráková and Lamač, and the natural beauty of the snow-covered mountain landscape is accentuated by the vibrant colours of Národní Filmový Archiv’s restored print. Eight years after it first wowed the audience at Il Cinema Ritrovato, the tinted and toned print will be presented this year in the added splendour of the warm glow of the carbon-arc light projector.

Oliver Hanley