During the dozen or so days I spent at the Era New Horizons festival in Wrocław last month, I divided much of my time between compulsory jury duty (i.e. watching all thirteen films in the New Polish Films competition) and sampling as much as my schedule would allow of their mouthwatering 1960s/70s Hungarian retrospective, ‘Melancholy and Silence’. This didn’t just give me the chance to see many of these films on the big screen – in many cases it was the first chance I’d ever had to see them at all. Sadly, the intros and Q&As (often featuring the relevant directors) were strictly for Polish or Hungarian speakers, and the accompanying festival publication was in Polish (though the organisers kindly gave me a copy anyway), but I took copious notes and am planning to upload pieces on many of them over the next three weeks or so.
There were twenty features in all, plus three shorts programmes, and I managed to catch the vast majority that I hadn’t already seen – exceptions are marked with asterisks in the following list (though István Szabó’s Father is at least out on DVD in the US).
- Adoption (Örökbefogadás, d. Márta Mészáros, 1975)
- Agnus Dei (Égi bárány, d. Miklós Jancsó, 1970)
- Cold Days (Hideg napok, d. András Kovács, 1966)
- The Confrontation (Fényes szelek, d. Miklós Jancsó, 1968)
- Current (Sodrásban, d. István Gaál, 1963)
- *Do You Know Sunday-Monday? (Ismeri a szandi-mandit?, d. Lívia Gyarmathy, 1969)
- *Father (Apa, d. István Szabó, 1966)
- Football of the Good Old Days (Régi idők focija, d. Pál Sándor, 1973)
- Holiday in Britain (Jutalomutazás, d. István Dárday/Györgyi Szalai, 1974)
- Love (Szerelem, d. Károly Makk, 1970)
- Photography (Fotografia, d. Pál Zolnay, 1972)
- The Red and the White (Csillagosok, katonák, d. Miklós Jancsó, 1967)
- The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, d. Miklós Jancsó, 1965)
- Silence and Cry (Csend és kiáltás, d. Miklós Jancsó, 1968)
- Sindbad (Szindbád, d. Zoltán Huszárik, 1971)
- Ten Thousand Suns (Tízezer nap, d. Ferenc Kósa, 1965/67)
- Twenty Hours (Húsz óra, d. Zoltán Fábri, 1965)
- The Upthrown Stone (Feldobott kő, d. Sándor Sára, 1968)
- *The Whistling Cobble Stone (A sípoló macskakő, d. Gyula Gazdag, 1971)
- The Witness (A tanú, d. Péter Bacsó, 1969)
…plus three programmes of shorts by the renowned Béla Balázs Studio. I caught the first two, and managed to see:
- Capriccio (d. Zoltán Huszárik, 1969)
- Gypsies (Cigányok, d. Sándor Sára, 1962)
- A Mother (Anyaság, d. Ferenc Grunwalsky, 1972)
- New Year’s Eve (Szilveszter, d. Elemér Ragályi, 1974)
- Princess in Rags and Tatters (Rongyos hercegnő, d. István Dárday, 1975)
- Punitive Expedition (Büntetőexpedició, d. Dezső Magyar, 1970)
- Relative Swings (Relatív lengések, d. Dóra Maurer, 1973)
- Swimming-Pools (Strand, d. István Ventilla, 1963)
- You… (Te, d. István Szabó, 1962)
I’ve linked to existing Kinoblog reviews, and will be updating this post as more are added.
Before coming to Wroclaw I few zero Hungarian movies except a few recent ones that were being shown in Polish cinemas. It was a huge surprise for me to discover the amazing world of Hungarian cinema of the 60-ties, with their many original directors, each of whom kept their own specific style.
I watched four movies of the retrospective, each by a different:
– “Adoption” feels like a great movie from the very first scene. Fantastic music makes for a great climax. A story about love, friendship and loneliness and the need to have someone to take care of is almost perfect in its category.
– “Witness” – a cult comedy that is still funny after 50 years. A must see for all Eastern Europeans. A mix of two Polish counterparts: Zezowate Szczescie by Munk and Mis by Bareja. Probably not funny at all for people who never lived in a communist country, though.
– “Love” is a beautiful and simple movie about love in the hardest times of Hungarian communism where people were being sent to prison for 10 years for their beliefs. A very simple plot suits the story of two women — the dying mother and the wife — that in two ways miss and talk about János. A very touching picture that didn’t try to kill us with pathos. A pearl of the Hungarian and Eastern European cinema.
– “Silence and cry” — In this one I did not understand much of the plot and I believe not many of the non-Hungarians would. Still I enjoyed the fantastic cinematography and the climax created by the director and the impassionate characters. It may be a Hungarian masterpiece but I’m Polish.
Even though I rated “Silence and cry” worst, I’s still mostly looking forward to see other, more universal movies by Miklós Jancsó as his style is the most fascinating of the above. Two of them: “Round up” and “The Red and the Wite” are already on my LoveFilm wishlist.
The above comment was extracted from my longer coverage of ENH9 from my Filmaster blog: Era New Horizons 9 Film Festival – impressions.
What an exciting lineup of films. I’m most jealous about Ferenc Kosa’s Ten Thousand Suns as I’ve heard that that is a great under-appreciate work (ok, whatever that means!).
Keeping in mind that Sandor Sara was the wiz-bang DP of Szindbad, how do his own films stand against Huszarik’s masterpiece?
So sad to consider how few of these are available even here in Hungary.
Best,
stefan
Believe it or not, I actually had breakfast with (or at the same table as) Sandor Sara, but we established very early on that we lacked a common language.
His own films (or at least the two early ones that I saw) aren’t quite what you’d expect from his work as DOP – they’re much closer to anthropological documentaries (in fact, Gypsies IS an anthropological documentary, and it clearly influenced The Upthrown Stone, a possibly autobiographical piece about a young man denied a place at film school for petty political reasons who ends up learning far more about the world while working on a rural engineering project).
As for Ten Thousand Suns, it provides clinching proof that Miklos Jancso wasn’t the only mid-1960s Hungarian filmmaker routinely assembling absolutely astonishing Scope compositions involving hundreds of people and horses. It’s less formally original than Jancso’s work, but was a genuinely thrilling discovery – especially as I knew next to nothing about it beforehand other than regular namechecks in histories of Hungarian cinema.
I’ve drawn up a schedule of two reviews per day, at 6am and 6pm British summer time – four pieces have already been pre-loaded, and I’ve literally just had a huge weight lifted off my schedule for this week, so fingers crossed I’ll be able to keep up that rate.
@Michael: is there any chance for a Hungarian retrospective in BFI Southbank some day?
It would be amazing to be able to see more of those movies as I managed to see only 4 during the ENH9 and LoveFilm has maybe 3 more (mostly of Jancso).