Spoiler-Free Review: Krakatit
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
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