Director Helena Třeštíková, the author of many excellent documentaries and time-lapse films, was one of the few who managed to film an interview with actress Lída Baarová and used it in the unique feature-length documentary “Destruction by Beauty”. Viewers, who know the famous actress from her most famous films as a beautiful femme fatale, could see in him a devastated, lonely woman addicted to alcohol and cigarettes, slowly saying goodbye to life.
In one of the interviews she conducted as part of the promotional campaign, the director described how difficult it was to work with the moody “prima donna” Baar at her residence in Salzburg, Austria: “The meeting was very dramatic, we had only communicated by phone before.” But due to bad weather, she and the crew arrived an hour late for the first filming. A madly angry Baar threw them out of the apartment, saying that they should come tomorrow.
“I was on the verge of jumping out of the window, in three days all the emotions you can imagine changed for both her and me, because she was really nasty to begin with,” Helena Třeštíková confided in an interview for the Radiožurnál station. In the end, however, everything turned out for the best, she even became friends with Lída Baarová and they often talked on the phone. “I had a feeling that maybe Ms. Lída would adopt me soon,” she boasted.
Me and my beauty…
Nevertheless, it is said that Lída Baarová surprised her many times during the three days they talked. And not always pleasantly. For example, she was surprised that she considered the biggest misfortune of her life to be the fact that she did not sign a contract with Hollywood, while the suicide of her sister Zorka (also an actress) and the death of her mother, who had a heart attack because of her, passed very quickly. “There was still an accent on that me, me, my beauty, my glory,” Třeštíková described the behavior of Lída Baarová. Despite this, she was deeply moved by the fate of a woman who had the world at her feet, including the most powerful men of the time, but in the end was left with only a box of photos for all her fame. She lived the end of her life in complete solitude, with a constantly lit cigarette and a glass of alcohol, waiting for a merciful death.
Bittersweet
It is not without interest that the film “Destruction through beauty” was created more or less by accident. The earlier documentary “The Bittersweetness of Lída Baarová” was already made from the footage that Helena Třeštíková had shot years ago. But the editor Jakub Hejna, with whom Helena Třeštíková has been working for years, discovered the filmed material after a while and found in it potential for more. However, it only forms part of the new documentary, other unique shots were used in it and above all films in which Baarová acted. “Searching foreign archives was hell,” complained Helena Třeštíková. According to her, it was very difficult to find out who the copyright manager is and to arrange a quality copy with him. Not to mention that the money for copyrights, when paid by the second, is really big.
The film “Destruction by Beauty” can now be watched on Czech Television’s iVyslání.
Source: author, Radio Journal, Czech television
