No Authority #3: THE CREMATOR
A Series On The Lessons Of Anti-Fascist Cinema
As our culture continues its slow, aching bend toward acquiescence and accommodation of authoritarian power, ideas, principles, and propaganda, I will be writing about the lessons of representation of authoritarianism and resistance in cinema. Thanks for reading and please share if you are so inclined.
Previously:
#1 SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
#2 TONY MANERO
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The corruption of the individual is a necessary condition of fascism; the alignment of the “self” with the fascist project creates a permission structure for the state to commit its crimes1. And so, in order to create a “self” that is aligned with the authoritarian state, the individual must be “reborn” in the conditions created by the state, forging a new identity within the structure of the state’s needs. Fill those needs and be rewarded with privileges and permissions, be they professional advancement, money, or a blind eye toward individual corruption and violence. This “rebirth” grants a hypocritical form of immunity to those who help achieve the state’s goals. Through the advancement of the authoritarian’s desires, the individual is “reincarnated”— aligned with the interests of those who have coerced their way into power, the individual is created anew as a liberated servant, free from constraints, except those imposed by the fascist state itself.
Juraj Herz’s 1969 film THE CREMATOR is explicitly interested in the rebirth, and thus the creation, of the fascist individual. Set in then-Czechoslovakia2 in the late 1930’s, the film depicts the professional rise and personal descent of Karel Kopfrkingl3 (played with a dark, oily, slithering menace4 by Rudolf Hrušínský), a manager at a local mortuary and crematorium5. Kopfrkingl is an apolitical family man without much political engagement beyond the immediacy of his working life, repeating the ideas of others as received wisdom, trying them on for size. As someone who works in the funeral business, he does have a unique obsession— the philosophy of the Dalai Lama, whose belief in the reality of human suffering, the liberation of death, and the redemptive power of reincarnation provides Kopfrkingl with a framework by which to process his own daily encounters with the dead.
But those encounters are not simply the subject of his work at the crematorium— Herz shows us Death as a physical character in the film, a silent, haunting woman with long black hair, hovering at the margins of Kopfrkingl’s life, dispassionately observing him without comment. More than simply “death”, she seems to embody a sort of ur-Czech identity, a primal force that marks Kopfrkingl’s slow descent into betrayal and, ultimately, madness.
Kopfrkingl’s road to reincarnation as a fascist begins simply, with a conversation with his friend Reinke, who introduces him to the Nazi party and its practical social advantages. While the film moves briskly between scenes and actions in a linear way6, the film itself describes a tumultuous, historic year— first, Reinke mentions Hitler’s annexation of Austria (the Anschluss, which took place in March of 1938), and by the time the film ends, we are into 1939 and the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia in March of that year. Instead of showing us the governmental mechanics of the invasion, Herz keeps the march of history at arm’s length, adopting Kopfrkingl’s apolitical perspective as a general disinterest in the macro-historical events of the time, instead focusing on the opportunities and corrupting influence they allow.
Each step of the way, Reinke offers new advantages to his friend Kopfrkingl— access to an exclusive nightclub filled with blonde sex workers, the opportunity to betray his co-workers and boss and take the helm as Director of the crematorium, and the chance to spy on a gathering of the Jewish community, who he misrepresents to Reinke as militants opposed to Hitler’s rule in order to ensure their erasure7. Likewise, Reinke takes each of Kopfrkingl’s betrayals as an opportunity to leverage the power of the state to destroy innocent lives— the more the barriers fall, the more Kopfrkingl justifies and enjoys his newfound advantages.
Slowly, the power of the fascist state comes into full view and Kopfrkingl, reading the writing on the wall, decides to give himself fully to the cause. Informed of the suddenly unacceptable reality of his wife’s Jewish mother, and the impact of that heritage on his children’s identity, Kopfrkingl undertakes a campaign of murder, going to so far as to “embody” Hitler during his eulogy for his wife. But of course, his study of Tibetan Buddhism has shown him a path of reconciliation with his own complicity— instead of being a harbinger of death and destruction, he, in parallel with the fascist state, comes to see himself as a “liberator”, allowing those whose lives were corrupt and unworthy to be freed of their suffering in the name of his own continued dominion as judge and executioner. As the film ends, Kopfrkingl is fully transformed, reborn a Nazi, and even death herself cannot stop his full capitulation.
But of course, Herz understands fascist conversion not as a fully embodied ideological rebirth, but as the natural outcome of a deep, personal hypocrisy that was there all along. A family man by all appearances, Kopfrkingl regularly visits a brothel to sleep with a sex worker who is the mirror-image of his own wife8. An avowed teetotaler, he drinks only “ceremonially” (and frequently). A believer in his own professionalism and expertise, he sexually harasses a co-worker, driving her from employment. And most damningly, as a believer in the liberating power of death and rebirth, he spares himself the pain and indignity. He is transactional, self-delusional, a sociopath masquerading as a citizen, willing to destroy literally anyone in order to elevate his own station.
Herz identifies the crucial dimensions of the individual likely to find “rebirth” in fascism— hypocrisy, lies, and self-delusion. It is the fool who provides the authoritarian state with the best opportunity to build a complicit system of public corruption. There is no radical “reincarnation”, only a forgiving embrace of the true self that has been there all along— as if by magnetic force, the conformist individual, already lying to himself, is pulled toward authoritarianism, willing to align himself with any and all debasements in order to be granted the permission to free himself from his own shame, unshackled from the limitations of justice, from social and institutional order.
And so, here we are.
This permission structure is two way street… see my thoughts on TONY MANERO, #2 in this series.
Pronounced COP-fruh-king-gull
Hrušínský is so good as Kopfrkingl, bringing an entire bag of physical gestures to the role, most of which demonstrate a form of control over others— the way he touches everyone on the back of the neck and forcibly guides them through space while giving them a light massage, his tendency to pull out a comb and run it through other people’s hair before running it through his own, each of these lending an incredibly creepy atmosphere to the character’s seemingly benign façade. Peter Lorre, eat your heart out…
The Holocaust is more than implicit here, as Kopfrkingl’s expertise in cremation becomes an explicit focal point of his value to the Nazis later in the film. I chose not to talk too much about this in this piece, as it is the obvious terminus of his “liberation” theory of murder and cremation, but it remains unfulfilled by the story’s end. Clearly, with madness having totally taken hold, it is the explicit horror just around the next corner…
This includes several brilliant visual transitions between locations that move us through time and space… the close-ups and pull backs are brilliant.
… and hide his own shame at his personal transgressions. It is no surprise that the doctor who Kopfrkingl betrays is the same man who checks his bloodwork for sexually transmitted diseases.
Both played with silent power by Vlasta Chramostová