The Cremator

Czechoslovakia 1968 / 97 min. / DCP & Blu-ray

Director: Juraj Herz / Screenplay: Ladislav Fuks, Juraj Herz / Director of Photography: Stanislav Milota / Editor: Jaromír Janáček / Music: Zdeněk Liška / Set Designer: Zbyněk Hloch / Cast: Rudolf Hrušínský, Vlasta Chramostová, Ilja Prachař, Jana Stehnová, Miloš Vognič, Zora Božinová

Juraj Herz based his grotesque psychological horror film on the perspective of its deranged protagonist. Karel Kopfrkingl, brilliantly played by Rudolf Hrušínský, starts out as a model father and dedicated employee of a Prague crematorium, and turns into a man willing to sacrifice everything including his closest family for the sake of a degenerate ideology. The film is distinguished by a unique visual style developed by its cinematographer Stanislav Milota, who succeeds in molding the visual and literary components into a new unity, taking the genre of the film onto a philosophical level.