Czech director Otakar Vávra's astonishing mix of Film Noir, Thriller and Atomic Bomb Sci-Fi

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. 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 Materials

• 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

 

Cast & Crew

Actors:

•       Karel Höger

Director: Otakar Vávra

Additional Details

Label: Deaf Crocodile

Genre: Film Noir

Language: Czech

Run Time: 101 mins

Region: 1

Release Date: 03/24/26

UPC: 850066568590