The Cremator (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #40 extract: The Cremator (1969)



A masterful showcase cinematography, camera movement and montage, The Cremator is a dark allegorical analysis of Nazification and the Final Solution. Often lost in between rooms and locations, very rarely having a full grip of what is going on, this film has a staccato formal approach punctuated by biting montage and dizzying zooms that manifests a legato sense of cinematic space that bears a liquid continuity. The discord between form and content, between the juddering mise en scène and smooth character journey, demonstrates a descent into madness catalysed through an obsession with death and purity and characterised, thanks to the jarring form, by absurdity that is sometimes funny, other times horrifying. 
Difficult to analyse, but almost impossible not to be struck by, The Cremator screams "New Wave" and demands to be seen. Highly recommended.

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