Original title: Krakatit
Year: 1948
Country: Czechoslovakia
Region code: 4K UHD: A/B/C; Blu-Ray: A
Content: 4K UHD + Blu-Ray
EAN: 850066568590
Image: 1.37:1 (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision / HDR10
Audio: Czech - DTS-HD Mono
Subtitles: English
Age rating: Not Rated
Genre: Thriller / Classic
Distribution: Karel Höger
Director: Otakar Vávra
Synopsis:
KRAKATIT , 1948, NFA, 101 min. “Long wandering,” a voice whispers in the brain of a man staggering along a misty riverbank, the night as fog-shrouded as his shattered mind. Czech director Otakar Vávra's astonishing KRAKATIT is a literal fever dream of a movie that mixes 1940s Film Noir, paranoid thriller and speculative atomic-bomb Sci-Fi in the story of a chemist named Prokop who hallucinates fragments of how he's invented a proto-nuclear weapon -- and the mystery of what's happened to the formula for it. The film has overtones of Rudolph Maté's classic Noir DOA (seriously-ill man racing against the clock), 1940s Orson Welles films like THE STRANGER and THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (stunning deep-focus B&W photography, atmosphere of surreal paranoia), and Hitchcock's SPELLBOUND (distorted dream sequences). Karel Höger delivers an unforgettable performance in the lead, grasping at his own memories like a walking ghost. Based on a 1924 novel by famed sci-fi author Karel Čapek (who invented the word “robot” in his play RUR), the film's unique structure of memories within flashbacks are like Russian nesting dolls -- all shot by DOP Václav Hanuš in some of the most remarkable B&W images since NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. Long wandering, indeed. Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to present the first-ever 4K UHD + Blu-ray release for this overlooked classic of Czech cinema and World Noir, beautifully restored in 4K by the Národní filmový archive (NFA) in Prague and co-presented with the Comeback Company.
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