KRAKATIT - Deluxe Limited Edition

KRAKATIT, 1948, N.F.A., 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 D.O.A. (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 R.U.R.), the film’s unique structure of memories within 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 archiv (NFA) in Prague and co-presented with the Comeback Company.