Official synopsis
Czech director Otakar Vávra’s astonishing 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.
OVID Exclusive
Directed by Otakar Vávra
Deaf Crocodile, Drama, 1948, 110 mins
Czechoslovakia
Review
Krakatit is a seminal science fiction/film noir hybrid that finds a scientist named Prokop (Karel Höger) on a wild odyssey involving the titular dangerous explosive that he invented. He encounters a former classmate, a mysterious veiled lady, an arms dealer, a princess interested in marrying him, and others, many of whom are intent on getting the secret formula for krakatit from the desperate man. There is also a nameless man in a hospital in dire straits, but no spoilers here.
Director Otakar Vávra crafts a genre film carrying a message about the need for world peace, with paranoia and double-dealings galore. The mystery unwraps slowly but surely, and the proceedings are very much in the fever dream vein. Höger is terrific in the lead role, heading up a fine, sizable cast.
The version of Krakatit showing on OVID is Deaf Crocodile’s first-ever 4K UHD version of this Czech cinema classic. Before the film itself opens, viewers are shown the following: “The goal of the digital restoration was to make the film available in a form similar to how it could have been seen and heard by an audience at the time when it was first released in 1948. As a result, various features that originate from the shooting of the film or its laboratory processing have been preserved and are evidence of the technologies and creative approaches of the time.”
The print looks and sounds great, with Cinematographer Václav Hanuš’s gorgeous black-and-white work really popping, and Composer Jiří Srnka’s score beautifully adding to the proceedings.
Devotees of old-school film noir, science fiction, and paranoia thrillers will want to check out Krakatit.
Krakatit is available on OVID from October 14, 2026. For more information and to view the trailer, visit https://www.ovid.tv/krakatit.
