St. Wenceslas

St. Wenceslas (1930)

Svatý Václav

Czechoslovak historical film about Saint Wenceslas. It was the most expensive Czech film to date, with the largest set constructed in Europe to accommodate an all-star cast of over a hundred, together with 1,000 extras for the lavish battle scenes.

Date of release
1930-04-04
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (4)
Runtime
1h 44m
Genres
Drama, History
Director
Jan S. Kolár

Casting

Interesting facts

St. Wenceslas is a 1930 Czechoslovak historical film about Saint Wenceslas by Jan S. Kolár It was the most expensive Czech film to date, with the largest set constructed in Europe to accommodate an all-star cast of over a hundred, together with 5,000 extras for the lavish battle scenes.

Production

The film initially received a loan of 1 million crowns by the government of Czechoslovakia — half of the film's original budget. However the budget has been increased to 4 million crowns due to filming in winter. When the film was on a verge of being terminated the government lent the production another 1 million crowns.

The shooting started in September 1929. Exteriors were shot in Prokopské údolí, Šumava primeval forest, Křivoklát, Brdy and Unhošť. Sets of Wenceslaus' and Boleslaus' castles were built at the Strahov Stadium based on designs by Ludvík Hradský, who studied historical sources to be historically accurate. Large reflectors needed to be built for shooting the night scenes. The generators and planes were provided by the Ministry of Defence.

Orchestral music was composed by Oskar Nedbal and Jaroslav Křička. It was originally thought that the music will be synchronized with the movie, but the lack of funds proved this impossible. 40-piece orchestra accompanied the movie at its premiere. Some of the later screenings were with non-original music.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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