The Murder of Mr. Devil, 1970

In a letter to Ivan Vyskočil, Ester Krumbachová wrote: “When I die and I request in my last will for you to give a speech over my body, what would you label me? I have a feeling that I should think about a bright future and finally label myself as a representative of some profession. You spoke at the opening of an exhibition of my paintings. Are they paintings? Of course they are. But without a standard for me to call myself a painter. After all I’ve just been doing strange somersaults, all my life. I could, starting tomorrow, start singing chansons. But I’m not a chansonnière. I’m Ester from 3A. Am I an author? Of course not. Those things are primitive to the point of horror, in short they’re something like me. Perhaps – probably – I understand film a little.” Indeed, her one directed film, The Murder of Mr. Devil, is the symbolic capstone of the creativity of the sixties and the culmination of all of her diverse activities. A film in which all of her crafts and hobbies overlap, permeate one another, become encapsulated, and climax animalistically. At the same time, the film is a synthesis of her lifelong themes, such as the relationship between woman and man, magic, cooking, and eroticism. A toxic, explosive, and in many respects truly murderous mixture.