Overview: 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.

4K Blu-ray Verdict: This is quite an extraordinarily visual and neurological mesmerizing film, trust me on that. It has overtones of Rudolph Maté’s classic Noir D.O.A. (seriously-ill man racing against the clock), 1940’s Orson Welles films like The Stranger and The Lady From Shanghai (stunning deep-focus B&W photography, atmosphere of surreal paranoia), and Hitchcock’s infamous 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.

The brilliant chemist Prokop, played beautifully by Höger, becomes a target of multiple people who are eager to get their hands on his powerful invention in order to become the masters of the world. It is a premise you have likely seen a hundred times already, but this movie plays out a bit differently than expected.

It gives plenty of room to speculate on the subject of war, deaths and destruction but the narrative doesn’t give much information on what is actually going on while we’re at it. It could all be just some feverish man’s dream, there could be some truth to his story, a lot of truth or even an actual account of events that really happened. The director toys with you every single second and by doing so makes you doubt everything.

For a movie titled Krakatit it repeats this word just enough times to install fear in it and by the end of it you feel scared to your wits. It even begins to sound scary to you when you repeat it and it’s no wonder - it was named after Krakatoa volcano which eruption in 1883 destroyed over 70% of land surrounding it and took thousands of lives with it.

Weird camera angles, symbolism, psychoanalysis and post traumatic side of it are surely inspired by the aforementioned Hitchcock and also Trumbo’s novel Johnny Got His Gun (some parts of it most probably inspired his own later movie version of the novel in return) which just goes to show how truly ageless this movie is.

Perfect cinematography with not a single frame wasted on hollow expositions, fantastic music score that cools your blood down, outstanding production that doesn’t defer much from that of Hollywood from that era and great performances - it all takes you on one of the most nightmarish journeys in your movie lifetimes, gives you some headscratchers along the way and makes you think hard.

Long wandering, indeed. Beautifully restored in 4K by the Národní filmový archiv (NFA) in Prague in collaboration with the National Film Institute (NFI) in Hungary. Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to present the first-ever 4K UHD + Blu-ray release for this overlooked classic of Czech cinema and World Noir, co-presented with the Comeback Company. In Czech with English subtitles.

Bonus Features:
1st ever World 4K UHD + Blu-ray release
New restoration from original 35mm nitrate negative in 4K
New essay by Czech film scholar Jonathan Owen
New essay by film critic Walter Chaw
New visual essay by film scholar Clayton Dillard
Video interview on the film’s restoration w/ Tereza Frodlová, Restoration and Curatorship, Národní filmový archiv, Prague
New artwork by Beth Morris
Blu-ray authoring by David Mackenzie with FIdelity in Motion

Official Trailer

Official Purchase Link