Shot in the wild Carpathian Mountains, Faithless Marijka is the woodsy antithesis to Vladislav Vancura's earlier hyper-urban On the Sunny Side (May 31), but its breathtaking montage packs a similarly jarring punch. Vancura, one of Czechoslovakia's best-known novelists (his Markéta Lazarová was the source of Frantisek Vlácil's film masterpiece), here adapts a treatment by Ivan Olbracht, who specialized in tales of the region. “The Carpathians are medieval!” one character bellows, and this tale of the tree-chopper Petro, his faithless wife Marijka, and various scheming businessmen and foremen does little to disprove the assertion. Interestingly filmed with a nonprofessional cast recruited from the region, Faithless Marijka may have a neorealist conceit, but its direction is utterly futuristic, filled with the lightning-fast montage techniques and low-angle camera of the Soviet avant-garde (along with its invigorating agitprop). The film's manic energy, juxtaposed with its breathless peasant-melodrama flourishes, seems modern today, as if Guy Maddin had gone back in time to remake himself.