On Blu-ray - David Hare discovers Otakar Vavra and his film KRAKATIT (Czechoslovakia, 1948)

Until now I'd never watched any 40s post-war Czech movies, indeed one was unaware of any such tradition prior to the stirring of Eastern New Waves in then-Czechoslovakia and Poland beginning in the sixties.

Whammy! Here's a 1948 Science Fiction/mnemonic Noir with a nuclear sub-thread and a cast and art direction that looks like Universal post-Weimar high contrast nitrate gimcrackery.

The astonishing screens above are from Krakatit, a movie directed by a total unknown to me, Otakar Vavra. The material is presented with the most sophisticated mise-en-scene you could imagine from, say Hollywood High B pictures in the late 40s, just as Noir was tapering out as as a mode/quasi-genre/ethic and giving way to post-war paranoia.

Vavra's film involves a moderately convoluted narrative of near-death leading to a rediscovery of past buried weapons now hidden around the bombed wastelands of Czechoslovakia. The players are all unknown to me which only speaks to my total ignorance of this corner of cinema but all of them are effective and engaging. Releasing label for this treasure is the estimable Deaf Crocodile who have taken an already expert 2016 restoration (with input from the Norwegian Film Institute) and they've further massaged it into an even more beautiful 2K image that looks as gorgeous as the B&W nitrate stuff coming out on the big labels like Indicator and Criterion. I picked one cigarette burn/reel marker at the 50 minute -or-so mark but it's the only one and not indicative of any sub-generation patch-up material or re-comb. It's pure nitrate.

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