The Invention of Perdition (film)

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Movie
German title The invention of perdition
Original title Vynález zkázy
Country of production Czechoslovakia
original language Czech
Publishing year 1958
length 83 minutes
Rod
Director Karel Zeman
script Karel Zeman
František Hrubín
production Zdeněk Novák , Československý Státní Film
music Zdeněk Liška
camera Jiří Tarantík
cut Zdeněk Stehlík
occupation

The Invention of Perdition is a 1958 Czechoslovak science fiction film based on the novel by Jules Verne . The German version was dubbed by DEFA . The film opened on January 2, 1959 in East German cinemas and on April 4, 1968 in West German cinemas.

action

The French professor Roch has developed an explosive with which the earth can be destroyed. Roch and his assistant, the engineer Simon Hart, are kidnapped by a gang of pirates to an island that has only one submarine access. The pirates use a submarine for this .

Since the pirates convince the naive scientist Roch that his kidnapping only serves to further develop his invention, Roch continues to work on perfecting his weapon. In fact, the pirates want to get the perfect weapon in order to carry out their raids with impunity. But Simon Hart recognizes the true motives of the pirates. He succeeds in informing the international public. The island is then circled by warships . Roch realizes he was deceived and blows up the island with the gun. Hart and Jana, who was also kidnapped by the pirates, escape in a balloon .

Trick technique

Zdeněk Rozkopal, Jiří Tarantik, Bohuslav Píkhart, Antonín Horák, Arnošt Kupčík, Jindřich Liška, František Krčmář, Zdeněk Ostrčil and Josef Zeman were responsible for the special effects .

Zeman and his colleagues used the illustrations from the original Jules Verne novels as templates for a surrealistic backdrop, which thus came very close to the atmosphere of the literature:

He (Zeman) covered the pictures with a fine network of parallel lines and thereby achieved amazing spatial effects. Every realistic illusion is canceled ... But it is precisely because of this distance that even that which is technically and scientifically outdated or refuted is suddenly experienced again as utopia.

Reviews

The film won the Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958 .

The film observer commented on the film : “One can justifiably call this… work the best Jules Verne film that has ever been made.” The Variety wrote: “Certainly the most unusual and, in particular, the most artistically accurate transmission of a Jules Verne film History in the medium of film. "

Lore

After the film had not been shown on German television since the late 1980s, a DVD edition by Ostalgica has been available since 2008. In 2014 an edition was released as a Blu-ray Disc , which contains the well-known German version as well as a partially restored Czech version.

The Italian version La diabolica invenzione and the US version The Fabulous World of Jules Verne are completely uploaded to YouTube .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hahn / Jansen: Lexikon des Science Fiction Films , p. 127.
  2. ↑ Film observer , quoted from Hahn / Jansen, p. 128.
  3. ↑ Variety , quoted from Hahn / Jansen, p. 128.

Web links