From director Juraj Herz comes this horror classic of Czech New Wave cinema about a Cremator who begins to lose his mind and turns his business into a chamber of torture of murder! Based on the novel of the same name by Ladislav Fuks the film centres around a truly chilling lead performance by Rudolf Hrusinsky as the demonic death obsessed Karl Kopfrkingl. He is the owner of a crematorium in the early stages of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia who finds in the situation an opp
One of, if not the best film to come out of the short lived period of artistic freedom that accompanied the Prague Spring is Juraj Herz's The Cremator. Unfairly sidelined when discussing the work of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Herz's dizzying film is a truly impressive work that combines the black comedy and psychological horror genres to dazzling effect. The film follows the titular cremator, Karl Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrusínský) who is fanatical with regards to his work and descends into madness as he is courted by the invading Nazi party. The allegorical nature of the film's totalitarian force was not lost to the Soviet authorities who banned it shortly after its release.
The film's memorable visuals succeed in disorientating the viewer into an almost hypnotised state. The amount of varying styles that Herz and cinematographer Stanislav Milota manage to blend together into a single package without the style becoming distracting is a feat unto itself. The Cremator features surrealistic elements that likely originate from Herz's puppetry background and that of his friend Jan Svankmajer (Alice); expressionistic mise-en-scène that harks back to another film that features a madman - Robert Wiene's silent masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; extreme close-ups in the vein of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc; deep focus shots that resemble Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and even some Hitchcockian scene transitions. However, perhaps most frighteningly of all, is the film's terrifying use of the first-person perspective to not just disorientate you by putting you in close proximity with a deranged madman but implanting you into his mind itself.
The film's horrifying nature is further amplified by the haunting, chilling soundtrack that accompanies it, courtesy of composer Zdenek Liska but even more important is the man who plays the madman - Rudolf Hrusínský who plays Karl in the manner of a creepier, slimier and all together scarier Peter Lorre (M). Quoting from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he is obsessed by his duties to the point where he believes he is liberating souls by setting them free to pursue reincarnation. With Karl, Herz perhaps goes deeper than anyone else in cinema in exploring the human origins of the Holocaust, the necessary living mechanisms that would assist the Final Solution in being realised - the atrocities that Herz, himself a Holocaust survivor, experienced first hand.
The parallels with reality - historical or present - that The Cremator features make it one of the most terrifying in the entire horror genre. The plot its a journey that travels from dark humour characteristic of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb to surrealistic psychological horror that featured a few years earlier in Roman Polanski's Repulsion and could later be found in the work of David Lynch. Ultimately, Herz's masterpiece is an altogether more frightening document on the loss of humanity that accompanies times of war and tumult.
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Foreign drama based on the novel by Ladislav Fuks. The film centres around the demonic, death obsessed Karl Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrusinsky). He is the owner of a crematorium in the early stages of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia who finds in the situation an opportunity to fulfil his business ambitions, justify his anti-Semitism and exert his obsession for control. His discovery that his wife has 'impure' blood sends him a psychopathic spiral that leads to the murder of her and their son.
A man in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia works as a cremator of dead bodies. He believes he is doing the souls of the dead a favour because of his beliefs in Tibetan religion. A Nazi convinces the man he has German blood in him and that his wife and children are Jewish. By now the man has been completely duped in the racist Nazi dogma. He goes insane and kills his wife and son, but his daughter manages to escape. The man believes he can save the souls of the world by turning it into one big crematorium in this disturbing story of further Nazi atrocities.
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