O Cremador

This film is everything else but the comedy! It shouldn't be funny in any case! It builds up an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear in an excellent way. The Rudolf Hrusinsky's lead character is superb. He is a kind of psychopathic personality blindly struggling for the maintaining order and meeting of commands regardless any consequences. In the context of Nazism it leads to destruction of his own family - his wife is a Jew. Not surprising that Kopfrkingl is on stage during every second of the film. The film is about his thoughts, reveals his mind processes, observes his perverted logic. A knowledge of the II World War history as well as Ladislav Fuks's (writer) genial artwork is helpful to understand this masterpiece.

Many reviews seem to miss the complicated layers of Czech culture, and hence view The Cremator only through western lens.

The politics and historical background of this film play heavily into the story. The director Juraj Herz had been a prisoner in a concentration camp and thankfully survived the Holocaust and went on to make movies. So the film was about the Nazi occupation made by a Jewish director who survived the Holocaust and later filmed during Czechoslovakia's oppressive communist regime (following the Prague Spring). Quite a complicated layer for Americans to swallow. The Czech people are a cynical bunch and understandably trust no type of government. Their culture and worldview (much like that of eastern Europe) remain a mystery to most Americans.

With that, he film was neither horrific nor depressing. It was a wicked comedy-Czech style, if you will. The cinematography was heavily stylized, almost Kafkaesque, and revealed a theatrical satire with odd moments of humor. The idea that this ordinary man with a mundane job could morph into a führer-like character illustrates perfectly the Czech skepticism toward humanity. The movie exposes the stupidity of people and politics, and its fatalistic outlook results in a clever tragicomedy.

Juraj Herz's The Cremator, lost to Western audiences for many years before being recently rediscovered by the Brothers Quay, is an extraordinary surreal meditation on the political horror of 1930s Europe. Hrusínský's remarkable title performance literally and figuratively fills the screen, an alarming depiction of a deceptive and compulsive character slowly inhabited by Nazi political dogma. In some respects The Cremator recalls Polanski's claustrophobic nightmare Repulsion, though this is arguably even further out than Polanski could manage. Utterly devastating but incredibly watchable (the 90 minute running time passes in a heartbeat), this is a real find. I posted this comment because I was aware that the only other comment on the film was negative, and I really do believe it is worth your time checking this out.

I saw rather a lot of East European 60s cinema back in the day but had never heard of this one. Seems it only came to light recently so that explains that because otherwise I was bound to have stumbled upon it as it is such an amazing film. From the stunning opening credits, beyond the startlingly close-up shots of a family visit to the zoo, and on as the cremator of the title goes from seeming curious, to creepy and downright cuckoo, and worse. Spellbinding imagery plus the doings of this extremely worrying man hold ones attention throughout as this caring family man leads us and everybody else to the abyss. There are so many ways in which the director ensures that we follow his narrative flow despite ourselves. This is a very uncomfortable film to watch. The way the cremator has to touch everybody, dead and alive, the way he must comb his hair after that of a corpse and then his own family but there is so much worse to come.

This film is hypnotic. The soothing voice of the lead character, coming out of his cherubic always sweetly smiling face, almost lulls the viewer into a serene calm--if not for the fact that we know in our guts that this is the calm a cobra induces in its prey before the kill. This is, after all, Czechoslovakia on the eve of being taken over by Hitler, and the main character runs a crematorium. We know what is coming next. And yet, we cannot take our eyes from the screen; we are filled with foreboding.

Like the best of Fellini, the director, Juraj Herz, frames virtually every scene perfectly; a collection of stills taken from this black-and-white masterpiece could fill a photographic art gallery with a distinguished collection indeed.

How could the holocaust ever have happened in the middle of the most "civilized" culture in the world, the cradle of elegant music? How could rational "civilized" human beings have abetted this monstrosity? This film provides a fable that can help us answer these most important questions. But do not think this movie is some boring treatise on the banal roots of evil. It is a very entertaining horror film that will keep you spellbound.