Of this film by Karl Grune, only one print survived, in its Italian version, and lacking one whole reel (the second of five parts). This print was duplicated, by trying to reproduce the original colours, which are quite elaborate for the time, and for an Italian release version; including tinting and toning, elaborate combinations of them, and even hand-painted parts.

“Explosion is a modern film. (Grune does not seem at ease with historical genre.) This film is not modern – in the richest meaning of the term – solely for its setting: the present day, an industrial milieu; but rather because for the first time this setting rises to the status of living nature. Mountains, woods… even in art, landscape does not seem to have always had a living soul, rich in hues corresponding to human feelings. Even, in very recent times, machines seemed ‘dead,’ and therefore useless in art as driving forces. […] In Karl Grune’s film machines and work are not dead things, but fatally linked to men and life; and this is the most important aspect of the film. The elevator hoist has a face, it is disquieting as a dark stormy cloud, whose obscure secret contains benefits as well as death. This is a stern destiny which has taken form and guides men’s lives. The dark exhaust cloud from the smokestack is like a stormy and rough sea for a sailor, and when sirens scream (as we see them screaming) they are more disquieting than a bolt of lightening. In this instance the industrial space has become a landscape in its artistic meaning”.

(Béla Balász, Explosion, Der Tag, 6th April 1923).