Out of the Past 2019 / Spalovač mrtvol / Czechoslovakia 1968
Rudolf Hrušínský excels in the role of Mr Kopfrkingl, who “loves all things beautiful” and kills in the conviction that he is doing good. His superb performance is enhanced by the director’s repeated use of a compelling stylistic device whereby he changes scenes and locations through medium shots and close-ups of the protagonist’s face. The resulting unnerving impression is that this character is as pervasive as the underlying evil he embodies.
World premiere of the digitally restored version.
For the screen adaptation of his macabre tale of the same name, novelist Ladislav Fuks could hardly have found a more inventive director than Juraj Herz. In order to create a vivid portrait of an extremely dangerous individual, Herz blended elements of horror, thriller, psychological study, drama, and dark comedy with the same degree of sophistication as did the author himself. The hero, ostensibly the ideal representative of all civic virtues, is nothing more than an empty vessel that could be filled with absolutely anything. For this loyal crematorium employee and spurious champion of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the atmosphere of the late 1930s, with its increasingly menacing anti-Semitic charge, becomes a powerful impulse towards the realisation of his perverse visions.
Zdena Škapová
96 min / Black & white, DCP
Director Juraj Herz
/ Screenplay Ladislav Fuchs, Juraj Herz
/ Dir. of Photography Stanislav Milota
/ Music Zdeněk Liška
/ Editor Jaromír Janáček
/ Art Director Zbyněk Hloch
/ Producer Ladislav Hanuš
/ Production Filmové studio Barrandov
/ Cast Rudolf Hrušínský, Vlasta Chramostová, Jana Stehnová, Miloš Vognič, Ilja Prachař, Zora Božinová, Eduard Kohout, Míla Myslíková, Vladimír Menšík, Jiří Menzel
/ Sales Národní filmový archiv
Juraj Herz (b. 1934, Kežmarok, Czechoslovakia – 2018, Prague). Selected filmography: The Junk Shop (1965, short), The Sign of Cancer (1966), The Cremator (1968), Oil Lamps (1971), Morgiana (1972), Girls from the Porcelain Factory (1974), The Ninth Heart (1978), Ferat Vampire (1981), A Magpie in the Hand (1983), Passage (1996), Darkness (2009), Habermann (2010)
Národní filmový archiv
Závišova 5, 140 00, Praha 4
Czech Republic
E-mail: [email protected]
Tomáš Žůrek
Distributor, Sales Agent
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