Film Alert 101: Sixty Years of Art Cinema 1960-2020 : Bruce Hodsdon continues his series - Phases in East Central Europe 1949-80. 6 (37 ) Hungary Part 1

Zoltan Fabri b.17 Felix Máriássy b. 19 Miklos Janscó (1969) b.21 Karoly Makk b.25 András Kovács b.25 Marta Mészáros (1979) b.31 Judit Elek b.37 Ferenc Kosá b.37 Istvan Szabo (1982) b.38 Ivan Gaál (1974) b.38 Figure in brackets indicates year selected as one of International Film Guide’s 5 Directors of the Year

Short-lived hope, repression and revival

Unlike other Eastern European socialist countries (except Czechoslovakia) before the World War II Hungary had a substantial film industry, first nationalised in 1919, which through the 30s produced 20 to 30 features a year. Hungarian films produced by private companies under political control found an important market in occupied countries during the war followed by a transitional period after 1945 when the few films that were produced were in the tradition of literary adaptation with some attempt at social commentary. In March 1948 after the Communist Party had taken control of the government by coup d’etat, the industry was fully nationalised. The next few years saw the absolute imposition of socialist realism. The political thaw following the death of Stalin in 1953 and the consequent weakening of the repressive Stalinist regime of Mátyás Rákosi resulted in his replacement in 1954 as premier by the more liberal Imre Nagy, who had months earlier returned from political exile. Nagy proceeded to release 10,000 political prisoners, bring members of the state security apparatus to trial and rescue an economy bankrupted and exhausted by failed central planning.

In 1955 Stalin’s immediate successor, Malenkov, who had supported Nagy, was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev. Nagy went on leave of absence “for reasons of health” and was subsequently accused of “rightist deviation.” Attempts to stop reforms were greeted with calls for solidarity with the Poles and for the return of Nagy who again became premier along with assurances that all Hungarian demands would be met. A few days later Soviet tanks which had earlier been greeted with Molotov cocktails in Budapest, occupied the whole of Hungary. Hundreds of protestors were shot in the streets by Russian troops. Nagy and many of his collaborators including revisionist Marxist philosopher Gyorgy Lukcás, who had been his minister for culture, were arrested. The new government was headed by a new first secretary of the Party, Janos Kádár, who oversaw the disbanding of the Hungarian Communist Party and its replacement by the Socialist Workers’ Party. There was a mass exodus of 200,000 from the country, many later returning. On May 27 1957 an agreement was signed concerning the “temporary presence” of Soviet troops in Hungary. After a secret trial in 1958 Nagy and others were executed.

The Liehms note that the historical records show that the period of freedom of expression was very short in Hungary compared with Poland, for example. This meant that there was no time for the emergence of a younger generation therefore the best films were made by the directors of the preceding period. Nor was there time to create an autonomous structure of thought and form that would leave a more permanent mark on following productions. “Hungarian films of the period were more notable for their content and the manner which they viewed reality, than for the manner in which they interpreted reality. Form remained merely a link with the traditions of Hungarian populism, and on the other hand, was simply an adaptation of Italian neorealism” (Liehm 164). Soviet influence was imposed by V.I. Pudovkin acting as special adviser requiring the imposition of dominance of the script over direction. The break with Zhdanovist socialist realist aesthetics was initially provided by Fabri’s striving for authenticity and the bringing to the screen real problems in place of cliches.

Zoltán Fábri

During the brief period of freedom of expression before the 1956 repression, the most notable films were directed by Zoltán Fábri (1917-94) who, it is noted, had a special feeling for rural life where he found the core of national life. Fábri's second and third features Eletzel / Fourteen Lives in Danger (1954) were a first step towards “the new realism” in approaching Hungary's past, and with Körhinta / Merry-Go-Round (1955), were both landmarks in Hungarian cinema's break with Stalinist social realism. This was further realised by Felix Máriássy (1919-75) Egy pikoló világos/ A Glass of Beer (1955) “made in the best traditions of the doyen of Italian neo-realism, Cesare Zavattini, Máriássy and the scriptwriter, his wife Judit, focussing attention on the day-to-day events in the life of a family of workers. In Budapesti tavasz / Spring in Budapest (1955). Máriassy avoided some of the usual cliches in “attempting to show the end of the war as the inhabitants of the war-torn city experienced it” (ibid 165).

Merry-Go-Round, like most Hungarian films, was literary based, a short story by Imre Sardaki “whose populist-inspired work is exceptional in its cruel view of contemporary man’s morality.” The film is described by the Liehms as “one of the best Hungarian films” although his Hannibal tanár úr/ Professor Hannibal (1956) they regard “as more important” because Fábri succeeded, in a difficult political climate, in telling “a story about victims, execution and envy in the 1930s comparable with that of Rakosi's Hungary from 1949-53.

A major hope of Hungarian film-makers for greater freedoms - the establishment of autonomous production units like those in Poland that would replace the central administration and give artists more authority - ended with the suppression of the revolution in1956. The Liehms point out that the the majority of noteworthy films had been made in 1955. The effort of Hungarian film-makers “to do away with the traces of the recent past, both in form and content, “had the effect of ‘a bolt of lightening’, not only at home, but also in other Eastern European countries […] It was, above all, the films of Fábri and Máriássys that became the symbol of faith in the possibility of speaking a new language for the countries that had, until then, been forced to hoe (sic) the Stalinist line”(164).

Károly Makk

Károly Makk (1925-2017) made “a remarkable debut” in 1954 with Liliomfi, an adaptation of a Molnár comedy, followed by an exposure of the wrongs in contemporary society with A 9-es korterem / Ward No.9 (1955), “a promising neo-realistic attempt to capture the atmosphere of waiting in a hospital, and the partial destinies of several patients.” This revival of film production was cut short by the 1956 revolution in which many film-makers took part.

Makk directed Megszallottak/ The Fanatics (1962) the release of which, with Jancsó's Cantata, indicated a change in the political environment as the film's story included bureaucratic misjudgment and indifference, abandoning populist themes “a rut into which […] Hungarian film and literature were falling” (ibid 172). Makk subsequently made an international breakthrough with Szerelem/Love (1970) in what Hendrykowski describes as a masterful “symbiosis of literature and film” with writer and poet Tibor Déry (633), centred on an aged woman, her daughter in law, and her husband. Their absent son who is gradually revealed to have been imprisoned in a Stalinist purge, is suddenly released without explanation. The delicately balanced, emotionally bitter-sweet story does not ignore political realities. Her son will not be returning. The only encounter she can have with him is in her daydreaming. Makk’s considered peak is shared with Egymásra nézve / Another Way (1982) set in 1958, a story controversially involving the issues of censorship and lesbianism, stylistically alternating between the realistic and the lyrical. “Although his best stories are set in the past,” Paul concludes, “their lessons relate unmistakably to current political problems” (192).

Hungarian cinema was slow to revive. Seven empty years came to an end with films like Current (1963), The Age of Daydreaming and Andras Kovacs' Difficult People (1964), Gaal's Green Years and Ferenc Kosá's Ten Thousand Suns (1965), Fábri attracting international attention with Húsz óra / Twenty Hours (1964), an epic spanning of 20 years of Hungarian life. “The new poetical approach of these films was founded on the thoughts and emotions of the up-and-coming generation: it was no longer just a matter of coming to rationalistic grips with fateful events like the war and the resultant historical transformations, but also grasping, on an individual basis, the emotions of the day” (Liehm 386 ).”

Hungary's four production groups for fiction film had been finally set-up in the early 60s and fiction feature film production increased to 15 - 20 films per year Including what is referred to by the Liehms as a “comparatively large number of high-quality films – about 5 annually.” Although the relationship between artist and the establishment was far from ideal, it was indisputably more productive than in the other countries in Eastern Europe – with the exception of the brief Czech intermezzo. “The situation in the cultural sphere under the Kádár government began to again resemble situations in Hungary's past.”

István Gaál

As one of a new generation of filmmakers beginning their filmmaking careers at the Bela Balázs Studio film school, István Gaál (1933-2007) the complete auteur – scriptwriter, cinematographer, director, editor – employed unconventional musical rhythms in structuring Keresztelo/Baptism (1968) “like a cantata” (Paul). Gaál places local communities and their lifestyles in starkly beautiful landscapes. His first feature Sodrasban/ Current is essentially an emotion-filled film monologue on the subject of how we live, the lyrical confession of a generation (Lieham 387), one of a number of films made in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia at this time on existential ‘apolitical’ themes circumventing political requirements. In Falcons(1970), stylisation turns the birds into threatening symbols manipulated by their trainer who comes to be viewed with fear by his young helper and the villagers, described as almost Buñuelian at times.

István Szabó

István Szabó was 26 when he directed his first film, was prodigiously attuned to capturing what was happening with his generation. He was strongly influenced by the French New Wave when he directed Álmodozasok kora/ Age of Day Dreaming (1964) in which he pays homage to Truffaut. ”His heroes are his contemporaries seeking their identity for their generation in the world formed by their parents.” In his second film, the lyrical diary-like Apa / Father (1966) Szabo displayed his originality in centring the story on representing an entire emerging Eastern European generation through an orphan boygrowing up amid postwar political chaos and social change. His third film Szerelmes/ Love Film (1970) is closer to Resnais in the interweaving of reality, memory and fantasy in presenting a specifically Hungarian story but marred by the lack of credibility in the relationship two young lovers separated by the national tragedy in 1956 (402). In this trilogy of films Szabo developed a visual technique that moves the stories from the personal to the universal (Paul 186-7). In his next featuresTuzolto utca 25 / 25 Fireman's Street (1973) Szabo further employs experimental narrative styles in collaboration with cameraman Sandor Sára to successfully return to “the illusive essence of his work, filming a story about the dreams and memories of the inhabitants of an old house in postwar Budapest” (Liehm 403). Sára, described as “one of the motive forces behind the film renaissance, ” with his unrestrained photography contributing greatly to the original impressionist styles of Current and Father. He painted surrealistic visions of refined colours with his camera in Szinbad /Sinbad (1971) in accord with the unique expression of the director, graphic artist Zoltán Huszárik’s revival of the hero of the stories of symbolist writer Gyula Krudy whose main theme is “life is not worth discussing” (Liehm 406).

Ferenc Kosá

“From the very outset Ferenc Kosá (b.1937) differed from his contemporaries in his analytical approach to his own subjective creed” (ibid 388), the title referring to the number of days imprisonment the farmer is returning from for refusing to enter the collective farm. Ten Thousand Suns (1963) is a strong drama “that skilfully draws on the best traditions of Hungarian populism – which is rich in ballardry and folklore, and relies on beauty of expression as the only defence against poverty – at the same time a lyrical appraisal of, and farewell to, rural Hungary” (ibid).

András Kovács (2010)

András Kovács (1925-2017) in Hideg napok/ Cold Days (1965) tackles the story of three days in 1942 when more than three thousand Serbian and Hungarian nationals in an ethnically mixed region, were slaughtered by Hungarian soldiers merely because they were ordered to do so. Set in 1946 with most of the action taking place in an ascetic chamber providing a fitting background for the black and white images, the predominant close-ups and medium close-ups of the protagonists, their abrupt dialogue and frequent outbursts are interspersed with with flashback reminiscences to intimate moments and scenes alluding to the massacre. “The narrative cuts between conversations in the cell and flashbacks chronicling human degradation in the progrom, and, like the consciousness of the protagonists, the camera persistently shies away and avoids showing the killings directly. […] The greatest achievement of the film, however, is its representation of the responsibility that is shifted between the men, each of whom is an essential link in the chain of the massacre. The film […] illustrates how talking about the massacre proves more painful for the perpetrators than the actual slaughter.” In seeking answers Kovács makes a straight criminal accusation against Hungarian fascism (Iodonova 76).

Fabri and Kovacs (together with younger filmmakers like Kosá) of the generation that had been a motivating force in 1954-7, sought their inspiration in Hungarian history with its vicious circles of violence, repression, and resignation (Liehm 390).

Péter Bascó

Beginning as a scriptwriter and spending years teaching scriptwriting Péter Bascó.(b.1928) made his debut as a director in 1963. “Although he remained true to classical narrative structure with a precisely detailed script as the basis of his work, in his fifth film he found his own approach (Liehm 409). In 1969 his Kitorés / Outbreak (1970) as well as Jelenido / Present Indicative (1971) and Haramadik nekifutas / The Last Chance (1971) are all films about official heroes of the official Hungary, the working class. In Bascó’s films, however, “they are tragic heroes trying to remain “revolutionaries” in the land of a vicarious revolution,” but succumbing in the fight against slipshod attitudes, greed, and the new class stratification. In 1969 Bacsó’s Tanú / Witness, a political tragicomedy whose hero is a witness for the prosecution in the political trials of the fifties, was banned” - to be finally released in the early 80s with great success (ibid).

Judit Elek

For the Liehms, Judit Elek (b.1937) “is significant for her profound philosophical contemplation of the cycle of life.” After two documentaries on the theme of “humanity in its social context” appearing almost simultaneously with the publication of her novel,'The Awakening', she made a medium length fiction film Meddig el az ember/ How Long Does It Matter? (1967), a meditation on the beginning and end of one's working life. Elek's first feature, Sziget a szárazföldon/ The Lady from Constantinople (1969), is on the theme of the cyclical nature of life with an old lady trying in vain to accommodate her present world with the one that was “hers.” In two more features in the 70s, dealing with the life situation of two young girls in a Hungarian mining village, Elek continued to develop her politically engaged montage style working with non-professional actors whom she interviews on screen (ibid 400-1).

Márta Mészáros

Márta Mészáros (b.1931) is one of the first women to direct a feature film - Eltávozott nap/ Girl (1968) - in Hungary, one of three women making their directing debuts in feature filmmaking in the late sixties. She has always resisted “feminist” as a label imported from the West. Its open adoption in a difficult political environment would remove a certain veil of ambiguity making the commitment of remaining true to one's intentions that much more difficult. The Liehms write of “her intense desire to speak of human relationships as they are experienced at moments of crisis.” They write further of her long road to find her own personal truth that keeps reappearing in her films. It is always female characters who are “the bearers of restlessness and social anxiety” (ibid). Her films “disclose more than the bitter consequences of centuries of female inequality which weighed heaviest in contemporary Hungary on women in the lower social strata.” This struggle for emancipation is the subject of what has been described as “her first masterpiece” Orokbefogadas/ Adoption (1975). In addition Mészáros also tells, with unusual frankness for Hungarian cinema, of additional aspects of life in Hungary such as “the profound alienation of young people from socialist society” as, for example, the stifling influence of class difference imposed on two young people in Szabad lélegzet/ Riddance (1973) (ibid 399)

Mészáros's films have been reflective of her experiences of growing up in a climate of tragedy and oppression in Stalinist Russia. Her father, Laszlo Mászáros, one of Hungary's leading sculptors migrated with his family to the Soviet Union in 1936 as a communist artist. He was arrested and executed in 1938, a victim of the Stalinist purge of intellectuals. Her mother died giving birth. Mászáros was raised by a foster mother attending school in the Soviet Union, returning as a teenager to Hungary in 1946 and then back to the Soviet Union on a state scholarship having been chosen for training at the VGIK film school in the early fifties, returning to Hungary once again after her graduation in 1956 where she worked making 25 short documentaries over the span of a decade.

Mészáros has completed 20 features, 1968-2017, seven in the 70s. Her semi-autobiographical Diary films: Napló gyermekelmnek / Diary for My Children (1984), Napló szerelmelmnek/ Diary for My Loves (1987), and Diary for My Mother and Father (1990) made a major impact in Hungarian cinema for their impassioned and challenging portrayal of individual lives interwoven with the brutally tragic politics of the Stalinist and post Stalinist years. Mészáros completed a fourth film in the series: Kiswilma-az utolso naplo/ Little Wilma-the Last Diary (2000) which has reportedly not been subtitled.

Unlike the other socialist states, the film industry in Hungary in the 60s and early 70s was not deprived of an influx of new film-makers. The Bela Balazs studio set up in 1961 supplied young artists with basic knowledge and material aid (Liehm 398).

David Robinson in 1971 commented that “the films of the new Hungarian cinema are not, in a wide sense, popular...but they appear to reach the audiences for which they are intended. Cinema-going is an essential part of Hungarian intellectual life, and the aware young seem to follow the new films.”

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Forthcoming: Miklos Janscó

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Previous entries in this series can be found if you click the following links

Sixty Years of International Art Cinema: 1960-2020 - Tables and Directors Lists to Accompany Bruce Hodsdon's Series

Notes on canons, methods, national cinemas and more

Part One - Introduction

Part Two - Defining Art Cinema

Part Three - From Classicism to Modernism

Part Four - Authorship and Narrative

Part Five - International Film Guide Directors of the Year, The Sight and Sound World Poll, Art-Horror

Part Six (1) - The Sixties, the United States and Orson Welles