A surreal examination of one man’s descent into depravity: “The Cremator” at the 2024 Samizdat Film Festival4 min read
Often considered one of the best films produced in Czechoslovakia, The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol, 1969) is an impeccable example of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Darkly surreal, it portrays how easily a man can become caught up in his own delusions in conjunction with a radicalising society.
Karel Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrušínský) is a mild-mannered man who loves his family, his job, and his Czech homeland. He lives a quiet life, simply aiming to increase his business at a crematorium in Prague. To do so, he engages a new business partner, the Jewish Mr Strauss, and organises a tea party, serving coffin meringues to interested parties. It is at this party that Kopfrkingl’s last love comes into play — an obsession with Tibet and the Dalai Lama.
Throughout the film, Kopfrkingl references Tibetan beliefs in relation to his work: “The sooner a person is turned to dust, the sooner that person will be liberated, transformed, enlightened, reincarnated.”
He is shown to have a clear belief in the superiority of cremation over all, as a method to liberate the soul. In Catholic Czechoslovakia, he argues that even though God was buried, he would have wanted humanity to be cremated, for after all, doing so only hastens one’s transformation into “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Perhaps in another time period, his rather curious beliefs would not lead to much; in 1930s Prague, however, against the backdrop of Hitler’s rise to power, Kopfrkingl’s beliefs are twisted by the ascendant Nazi ideology. In the end, his delusions grow ever grander, leading him to kill his only family under the belief he is “liberating” them, and finally, in an effort to save the world, leaving to build the gas chambers of the Holocaust.
The Cremator is based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Ladislav Fuks, who also co-wrote the screenplay. When it was first released, it was met with acclaim, becoming the Czechoslovakian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 42nd Academy Award. Soon after, however, the film was withdrawn from circulation, and it was not available to viewers until after the collapse of the communist system in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Since then, it has acquired the status of a cult classic.
What director Juraj Herz clearly grasped from the source literature is that this story is less a thriller about a psychopathic murder, but more a quest to understand psychologically how a man might change in such a drastic manner.
When Kopfrkingl’s old friend from the Great War comes, he seeks to remind Kopfrkingl of his German blood: “Our nation suffered a great injustice after the war, and it’s the duty of everyone with German blood to set it right,” he says. Yet Kopfrkingl argues that everyone’s blood is the same, and claims a nascent form of Czech nationalism instead. However, after repeated entreaties, Kopfrkingl starts to slowly change his mind. He urges his son to learn German, and then begins viewing in distaste his son’s supposed effeminate features. He starts going to private meetings with his friend, who urges him to join the party in order to become an exclusive member of a local club turned brothel (blonde women only). When he learns that he will not be able to become director of the crematorium while married to his half-Jewish wife, he decides only the most drastic measure can be taken — murder. Yet this crime does not occur until the last 20 minutes of the film, highlighting the slow process to true mania that Kopfrkingl undergoes.
A sly sense of humour pervades the film, highlighting the absurdity of the events in question. Recurring throughout the film are an arguing couple, the husband constantly haranguing his apologetic wife. They come in and out of each important scene, disrupting the events in a flurry of movement. Put all their appearances together, and they act as a sort of Greek chorus.
The film is not only surrealist but also full of symbolism. There is the opening montage of close-up shots of animals, their scales, their eyes, spliced with those of human features. At the end of the film, Kopfrkingl agrees to build giant gas furnaces for Germany while standing in front of Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” and as his passion for the task grows, close-ups of the painting circulate Kopfrkingl. And throughout the film, a dark-haired woman in black who holds a bouquet of flowers appears to Kopfrkingl, representing death, his conscience, or a mix of both.
With its grim storyline and surrealist visuals, there is a reason The Cremator has become a cult classic after decades of being lost.
The Cremator was screened in Scotland on 5 October as part of the 2024 Samizdat Film Festival.
