Last Friday evening I went to the Curzon Mayfair cinema in central London for an ultra-rare screening of Miklós Jancsó’s masterpiece The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965) in the company of its director – who, it turned out, was watching the film for the first time in nearly thirty years.
As promised, it was indeed in 35mm, albeit in an old distribution print dating back to the film’s original UK release. That said, it really wasn’t too bad – predictable damage around reel changes, and plenty of surface blemishes, but the subtitles were very readable and the whole experience of seeing it on the big screen comprehensively trumped all of this. Annoyingly, the extreme right of the frame was slightly out of focus (exacerbated for me because that’s where I was sitting), but I suspect that was a projection problem as it continued throughout the film – in other words, it shouldn’t be replicated in Cambridge or Edinburgh next week.
The print’s main peculiarity was that it ditched the original illustrated prologue in favour of a piece of scrolling text that added rather more historical context. The original assumption was that this was common to all international versions, but Jancsó later said that he thought it was unique to the UK. Anyway, the Curzon very sensibly decided to screen the original prologue first (off the DVD), followed by the whole of the 35mm print, so that we got the best of both worlds.
The screening was as enthralling as I’d hoped. It was always obvious that this film desperately needed a huge screen, but actually being able to see it as Jancsó intended made a phenomenal difference. True, the DVD is in the correct aspect ratio (and those under thirty may not recall that this used to be the rarest of luxuries with small-screen transfers until the mid-1990s), but it obviously can’t begin to resolve the same level of detail, whether in the extreme close-ups of János Görbe’s shifty, sweating features (casting of faces is spot on throughout) or the panoramic shots with their intricate geometric configurations of hundreds of extras.
And then Jancsó ascended the stage with Tony Rayns (he’d previously introduced the film by telling a rambling anecdote about the reason he didn’t speak English), and my God that man’s a live wire. It’s impossible to believe that he turns 87 later this year, and I really felt sorry for the Curzon employee desperately trying to wind up the proceedings so that the 9pm screening could go ahead as scheduled – Jancsó was only just getting into his stride.
I didn’t take notes, so I’m paraphrasing from memory – but the subjects discussed included:
Primary influences on The Round-Up: Antonioni, Hitchcock (specifically his long-take experiment Rope) and John Ford – Jancsó grew up watching the latter’s Westerns.
How he was able to make extremely personal films on such a huge scale: Two main reasons – firstly, that his core production team consisted of close friends (at least twice, he emphasised how crucial their input was) and secondly, one of the few advantages of making films in a Communist country was that you could call up hundreds of extras, whereas in the West they’d all have to be individually contracted and paid (which is probably one reason why Jancsó has had so few Western imitators!) He ruefully acknowledged that these situations no longer exist anywhere except in China, but Tony Rayns corrected him on that one, saying that Zhang Yimou could have called up vast crowds a decade ago, but not now.
How he got his films made under a rigidly state-controlled production system: For me, this was the most interesting question, as Jancsó didn’t really know. One of his central theses in The Round-Up was that the oppressors win out in the end because they’re ultimately cleverer than the oppressed, and he said that the West had a tendency to underestimate the cunning of the various Communist regimes. In other words, it’s pretty inconceivable that someone in the ministry of culture wouldn’t have been well aware that there were things going on beneath the surface of Jancsó’s films, and yet they were allowed to be made and often exhibited as outstanding examples of national cinematography. He has no idea why, as these people are now dead and never wrote their memoirs.
Whether it was controversial depicting a friendship between a Hungarian and a Russian in My Way Home, made just eight years after 1956: Annoyingly, Jancsó wouldn’t answer this one, as he was convinced we hadn’t seen it – even though it’s been out on DVD in Britain for a few months.
Bringing up the explicitly erotic Private Vices, Public Virtues, whether Jancsó had a compulsion to challenge censors regardless of regime: Jancsó agreed, and said that he couldn’t behave in any other way (“and that is the problem”!)
There was also an unexpected contribution from a survivor of the 7/7 London bombings, who stood up to say how powerfully she’d been affected by the film and how important it was that such films, with their complex critiques of oppressive power relationships, continued to be made.
Full marks to both Curzon Cinemas and the Second Run team for pulling this off so triumphantly – though the real star of the evening (besides Jancsó) was Lászlo the interpreter, who did just about the smoothest and most professional job I think I’ve ever come across in these situations. To speed things up as much as possible, he quietly gave Jancsó a simultaneous translation of Tony Rayns’ questions, so he could start answering almost immediately, and then translated the response in an immensely engaging fashion that clearly suggested that he knew a fair bit about the subject already (the name suggests he’s Hungarian, but you’d never have guessed from his utterly idiomatic English accent).
Jancsó’s back in London today to discuss his bizarre 1999 black comedy The Lord’s Lantern in Budapest at 2pm at the Curzon Soho (details) – sadly, family commitments mean that I can’t go, but I’ll try to get a review of the DVD up in the next week or so. And there are two more Jancsó-attended screenings of The Round-Up on Monday at the Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge (details), and on Wednesday at the Filmhouse, Edinburgh (details). This really is an unmissable treat.
Rayns’ point about Zhang Yimou interested me because I’m not sure I agree. Around the mid 90s, Zhang Yimou’s credibility with the authorities was incredibly low. Wasn’t he heavily chastised for Shanghai Triad, and even the films that preceded them were acknowledged rather than approved of; shown in the West rather than China? Trying to get official assistance for his films would have been unlikely.
Now of course Zhang Yimou is one of the elder statesment of Chinese cinema, state-sponsored director of the Beijing Olympics, making films like Hero that some see as propaganda. Now if he wanted assistance from the authorities now, I am sure he could. I don’t think he’d be that bothered about using eztras for crowd scenes in the CGI age though.
I suppose Rayns’ argument was that in an age of fast evolving capitalism in China with film now becoming dependent on commercial interests, this is why Zhang Yimou wouldn’t be able to call upon the army or a large group of extras on the command of the authorities. But I think his standing with the state is so different now than a decade ago, that the logic of Rayns’ point would actually work in reverse.