Many believe that in the present grave economic situation, beyond keeping the industry infrastructure going and providing a living for production staff, there is not much reason to keep Hungarian feature films alive. At the same time, Hungarian feature filmmaking is obviously determined to go on living. There are still a number of people who want to make films at any cost, not only directors but also producers and other production staff. To earn a living? That is one reason, of course. But they would be better off making commercials and various bread and butter TV programs.
It is precisely in these branches of the industry that filmmaking will continue whatever happens. So in the future, there will still be a need for the infrastructure, for technical equipment, and for well-trained technicians. The volume of programming, the capital invested, and the turnover will be many times more than the country has ever spent on the feature film industry. In this ever-expanding branch of the industry, why should there not be space to make 20 or so feature films, which would enrich the television schedules in addition to the limited spheres of art cinemas and video distribution.
It would certainly be a good thing if these films addressed as wide an audience as possible. But the success of a film cannot be expressed directly in terms of audience statistics during the weeks following its release, but is reflected much more in the many one-off screenings, hopefully to be continued for a long time, in cinemas, on television, or on video.
The six comfortable, modern screening rooms of the newly-renovated Corvin cinema and the efficient organising team made a success of the 1997 Film Week, creating a civilised and cultured atmosphere.
The majority of feature films shown were generally of a high standard, but only two or three films really reached beyond the average, and even they were not outstanding. By and large, this is what the jury's decisions expressed. Long Dusk by Attila Janisch and Dollybirds by Péter Timár shared the prize for best film, and the former also won the best director award. They brought something new to a field where familiar old themes and traditions were more prevalent. The 70-minute length of Long Dusk makes it just barely a feature film, but it goes a long way in this relatively short space of time. It puts life's day and night aspects, life and death, in direct confrontation. On a ghostly bus journey, an elderly woman shows how someone can lose their way in life and, from that point on, drift towards death. We see the woman at the beginning of the film, in beautiful natural surroundings, in a hilly Transdanubian landscape bathed in the light of approaching dusk, and all we are told about her is that she is a university lecturer. Leaving the company of her friends, she sets out for a walk. In a remote place, she is unexpectedly beckoned onto a shabby old bus, and from then on, as it slowly grows dark, her journey becomes a nightmarish dream. Neither she nor the viewer knows which part is really happening and which is imaginary. In her fantasy, the oppressive, mysterious events extinguish and cancel each other out or became intermingled. Actually, there is no reality or dream, only a series of images and visions, which are metaphors for an unknown, terrifying thing, namely, the approach of death. Mari Törõcsik plays the woman with admirable finesse and sensitivity. The images of cameraman Gábor Medvigy suggest a hovering uncertainty throughout which blurs our accustomed sense of reality as we drift helplessly towards complete darkness. Even when compared to Attila Janisch's last memorable film, Shadow on the Snow, this mode of expression is fascinating in its novelty.
Dollybirds by Péter Timár has something new to say as an entertaining and probably successful popular film. Apart from the tried and tested dramatic clichés, it evokes the early Sixties by turning the fashionable pop songs of the period into "pop views." But it also vaguely sketches, in a few characters belonging to a "residents' community," a group of loosely connected young people and adults. They are watched over by the once active, now redundant informer, Uncle Simon, played by János Gálvölgyi as a characteristically grotesque jack-of-all-trades of the residents' committee. The young people are crazy about Western fashions and rhythms and in a loosely-woven series of musical numbers, in scenes laced with comic improvisations they act out the situations suggested by the silly pop song lyrics. The meaning of all this becomes clear towards the end of the film in the twists and turns of the mock "Who Can Do What" talent shows: the songs which flowed freely up to now along with memories, desires, and emotions, end up assigned to the place the authorities have ordained. Uncle Simon himself sees to it that they get driven back onto the right official track. Despite its original ideas, Dollybirds is a fairly uneven film; the witty, amusing gags alternate with flat and banal ones, and after a while, the mechanical repetition of scenes following each other like comedy acts becomes forced.
The situation is similar in the other potentially popular film at the Film Week: Return by György Palásthy. Poverty-stricken old men, played by the grandees among popular actors, spend the night on a train because they can travel free as pensioners whilst having a good chat in a warm compartment. In fact, the film is not much more than some humorous, bitter-sweet conversations and a few comic or tragic interludes strung together. Witty anecdotes follow one after the other, good and stupid ones in equal measure. Our heroes don't mince words about the system which is cheating them, but in the end the jovial tone and the exchange of knowing looks which relies for effect on the popularity of the actors take the edge off the film's intended impact.
There were high expectations for The Witman Boys by János Szász, and even after seeing it, many viewers thought it stood a good chance of winning the main prize. The jury has been criticized for rewarding Szász's film-just as the foreign critics awarded it the Gene Moskovitz prize. Adapted from the short stories of Géza Csáth, it is based primarily on Matricide (1911). This enormously powerful, dense short story, which originally consisted of only ten pages, has been re-interpreted by Szász, who elaborated its elements in minute detail and with utmost care, extending it into a slow-moving, subdued story, lasting over an hour and a half. Tibor Máthé, who received the lighting camera prize for his work, has created a hypnotic visual medium, with his daring images of wintry Selmecbánya and his gauzy interiors. The director cast the two Witman boys with rare skill and good luck: an incredible amount happens on the faces of Alpár Fogarasi and Szabolcs Gergely, repeatedly shown in close-up. In fact, the real subjects of the film are the faces of these two teenagers, which express more than mere acting. But the film still leaves a feeling that something is missing: it is too artistic, too calculated; the dramatic strength which characterizes Csáth's short story ebbs out of the beautiful lighting set-ups held for so long. The strongest scene in the film is the matricide itself since it hits the viewer with a brutal abruptness.
At this year's Film Week, several films again evoked the historical shock waves of the Forties and Fifties from a private and personal point of view. The masochistic interrogation of the past is an established tradition of Hungarian cinema; it would be a pity to lose it, but it is difficult to say anything new with it. The heroine of Every Sunday by Sándor Simó is an illegitimate child from a poor peasant family. Whilst working as a maid, Franciska falls in love with a married working class man of Jewish extraction, older than herself. Though deported during the war, he returns safe and sound, and since his family has broken up, he moves in with her. Franciska, the naive, innocent, slightly foolish girl joins the police force as the new people's democracy starts up and later becomes a secret police prison supervisor. The man, who is trying to make his way with his own small business, is not happy about this but turns a blind eye. He loves the girl. Nevertheless, after a time he defects to America where his daughter lives. Simó has made a finely crafted, credible film out of this story. Éva Kerekes plays Franciska so that we believe in her honesty and her innocence. She was given the best actress prize for the part. Perhaps the jury overlooked Mari Törõcsik because she has won this award so many times.
Based on a real event, Escape by Lívia Gyarmathy tells the story of the escape of seven prisoners from the Recsk forced labour camp in the Fifties. The story is reminiscent of Anna Seghers' novel, The Seventh Cross. Of the seven escapees only one remains free, the others are recaptured one by one. The successful one gets as far as the Radio Free Europe studios in Munich, where he is the first to bring news of the Recsk Gulag and recites the entire roll call of prisoners from memory. Escape is a tautly, purposefully constructed, gripping, rock-hard adventure film. Apart from one or two small stylistic hiccups, it succeeds in satisfying the demands of a popular film with a high professional standard by not for a moment losing sight of its heroes' human and historic truth. An escape like this with real life and death stakes is far more exciting than the escape of any regulation American hero clone. Géza Böszörményi's script, which deservedly won a prize, plays no small part in the film's success.
The Hungarian film industry has survived another year, and though its prospects have not improved at all, this was already the case last year. In any event, the really big revelation is still to come. This would be a film which would finally say what is happening to us here and now. The Hungarian feature film has a raison d'être if it aims for nothing less.