Hungarian National Film Archive Cannes 1969
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2 0 1 9 HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE CANNES 1969 Márta Mészáros: Binding Sentiments 50 Years Ago at Cannes – La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs © Gyula Szóvári In 2017, the Hungarian National Film this legendary figure of universal Between 4-8 September 2018, nearly Fund announced its long-term digital filmmaking. 15,000 attended programmes of the film restoration programme, in which The other focus of our film restoration 2nd Budapest Classics Film Marathon. annually 25 films are renewed under programme this year is world- The square in front of St. Stephen’s the professional guidance of the Film renowned Hungarian animation: the Basilica and the two cinemas hosting Archive working in collaboration with audience will be able to watch films in the festival were packed each evening. the Hungarian Filmlabor and Hungari- far better quality than earlier. Their Visitors also had a chance to meet an Society of Cinematographers (HSC). complete restoration is being aided global stars: Budapest welcomed the This year, we are present in the classics by renewal of the original tonal palette outstanding personality of European section of the Cannes Film Festival and with the collaboration film art, Claudia Cardinale; star of with yet another great work of Hun- of the creators. János vitéz/Johnny The Big Blue, Jean-Marc Barr; and the garian filmmaking: Péter Bacsó’s Corncob (1973) with its astonishingly protagonist of Oscar-winning film A tanú/The Witness shot in 1969. On colourful visuals, and the favourite of Mephisto, Klaus Maria Brandauer. the 30th anniversary of the change of Hungarian audiences, Macskafogó/Cat In September 2019, there will be a new regime in Hungary, the spotlight turns City (1986), were invited to Annecy, and extended edition of Film Marathon on a 50-year-old film classic restored in the biggest festival of animation films. with about 100 films, movie rarities 4K, which became a symbol of the We make every effort to give audi- and open air screenings – all in a single ousted socialist dictatorship. ences access to these restored works, week. This year’s lead topics are the Márta Mészáros made history at both on the cinema screen and on the relationship between music and film, Berlinale in 1975: she was the first small screen. For instance, we made and the 30th anniversary of the change Hungarian and the first woman to 100 movies freely available on our vi- of regime. Let’s meet in Budapest! win the Golden Bear, for her film deo sharing site as a Christmas surprise. Örökbefogadás/Adoption. In 2019, During the seasonal festi-vities, more György Ráduly restoration of nine films by Márta than 420,000 people clicked on the Mészáros will be completed; this is digitally restored films. our way of honour-ing the work of 1 Péter Bacsó (1928–2009) Kossuth and Balázs Béla Prize-winning could only work as a script consultant director, screenwriter, lyricist, studio because of his role in the Revolution of director, Master of Hungarian Moving 1956. He directed 33 full length feature Pictures, and ‘institution’ in the history films and TV series. His first film about of Hungarian film. The list of his youth still fascinates with its freshness activities as script consultant, ideas No Problems in Summer, 1963). man, screenwriter, studio director and Cyclists in Love (1965) Fatal Shot (1970) producer is inexhaustibly rich. He had He gained international fame with his a lion’s share in the creation of film Summer on the Hill (1967) numerous outstanding works. As processing the war and internment screenwriter and script consultant camps in Modernist style. The best- he collaborated in the production of known work in his oeuvre, The Witness such pinnacles of Hungarian film- (1969) depicting the show trials of the making as Zoltán Fábri’s Anna, 1950s, became a symbol of the era. Two Half- Times in Hell, The Boys of He analysed this era also in a Paul Street, Károly Makk’s Liliomfi, biographical-like dramatic form in Love, Catsplay and A Very Moral Night, A Day Before Yesterday (1981), Stalin’s all were at Cannes, in competition. Bride (1990), and in operetta form in He was born in Kosice in 1928. His Oh, Bloody Life! (1983). He directed mother was the Hungarian writer a canning factory musical (Dashing Boris Palotai. In 1940 he and his Girls) and historical films of various mother escaped the deportations genres (Titania, Titania and What’s in the countryside by moving to Buda- the Time, Mr. Clock?, Smouldering pest. Bacsó studied at Hungarian Cigarette?). In 1995, he made the Academy of Arts from 1946. In the change-of-regime adventures of dyke- 1950s he was a script consultant and reeve Pelikán (The Witness Again). screenwriter. For quite some time he 2 The Witness (werk) – Zoltán Fábri, Ferenc Kállai & Péter Bacsó © Sándor Domonkos 3 The Witness A tanú (1969) Péter Bacsó Directed and screenplay by: Péter Bacsó Director of photography: János Zsombolyai Music: György Vukán Cast: Ferenc Kállai, Lajos Őze, Zoltán Fábri, Lili Monori, Béla Both Sound: Károly Peller Art director: Tamás Vayer Costume design: Katalin Ján © Sándor Domonkos Genre: satire Production Mafilm Studio 1, 1969 The Witness is set in the Rákosi era during the 1950s. Dyke-reeve József Technical Spec: colour, Pelikán lives with his large family on the dyke. One day he comes across a Standard version 104 min poacher fisherman who turns out to be an old friend, Zoltán Dániel, who was Uncensored original version 111 min made a minister of state in 1949. In 1944, the two of them had battled against Format: 2.35:1, 4K restored, grading the fascist Arrow Cross party, and Pelikán had hidden the one-time resistance supervised by Tamás Andor DOP (HSC) fighter in his cellar, precisely where he now has pork sides of an illegally slaughtered pig concealed. When the State Security Force (ÁVO) turns up in “The Witness is something like a collaboration among Kafka, Orwell, Pinter response to an anonymous tip, it is the minister himself who betrays his friend and Jaroslav Hašek (The Good Soldier Svejk). and reveals his one-time hiding place to the police. After this, the naive It’s a blend of bureaucratic nightmare, Big Pelikán finds himself caught up in a series of incomprehensible events… Brotherism and evasive ambiguity that might have been sinister were it not for the comic, state-implemented misadventures of its bungling protagonist, József Pelikán.” (Newsday Garden City, N.Y. by Alex Keneas, 14 July 1982) 4 ZOLTÁN FÁBRI 100 György Illés & Zoltán Fábri © József Hunyady / FORTEPAN 135 ZOLTÁN FÁBRI 100 14 films restored in 2017 (15 October 1917‒23 August 1994) He studied painting and graduated at (The Brute), also entered into compe- the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in tition at Cannes, while his other films, A 1938 before attending the Academy of Pál utcai fiúk (The Boys of Paul Street) Performing Arts between 1938–41. He and Magyarok (Hungarians), were nomi- was a renaissance artist par excellence; nated for the Academy Awards. One of starting his career as a painter, he later his most famous works, Húsz óra (Twenty trained as an actor and stage director, Hours), won the Golden Prize of the followed by a qualification in stage de- 4th Moscow International Film Festival. sign. In 1941, at the age of 24, he was Az ötödik pecsét (The Fifth Seal) won invited to direct the National Theatre the Golden Prize of the 10th Moscow of Hungary. He began working in the International Film Festival in 1976 and Hungarian film industry in 1950 as a was entered into the 27th Berlin Inter- production designer and as artistic national Film Festival. director of Film Company. He directed his first film, Vihar (Storm), in 1951. Zoltán Zoltán Fábri was a classic of Hungarian Fábri became an internationally acclai- film history even in his lifetime. Most of med director with his third feature, his 21 films were based on literary Körhinta (Merry-Go-Round), in 1956. It works and his subjects were always was Merry-Go-Round, a love film set in dedicated to the ‘defenceless little a rural environment, that introduced man’. His style of filmmaking is mainly the world to Hungarian filmmaking at ‘classical’, using academic techniques Cannes International Film Festival in of art filmmaking. During the 1960s he 1956. This film returned to the Cannes experimented with flashback and Film Festival in 2017. Two more films by highly surrealistic scenes (in Twenty Fábri, Édes Anna (Anna) and Dúvad Hours, Late Season and The Fifth Seal). 6 Merry-Go- Round Körhinta (1955) Zoltán Fábri Directed by: Zoltán Fábri Written by: Imre Sarkadi (novel) Screenplay by: László Nádasy, Zoltán Fábri Director of photography: Barnabás Hegyi Music by: György Ránki Cast: Mari Törőcsik, Imre Soós, Ádám Szirtes, Béla Barsi, Manyi Kiss © Teréz Schandl Genre: drama Production: Magyar Filmgyártó ÁV In a village subject to serious social change, the young Mari Pataki, daughter Technical specs: black and white, 90 min of a humble yet promising farmer, is forbidden by her father from seeing her Format: 1.37:1, 4K restored, grading supervised lover. All he cares about is farming and making a fortune. He decides to marry by Gábor Szabó, DOP, HSC her off to another man, a colleague of his. “Land marries land”, he keeps saying, believing the old Hungarian farmers’ law to be immutable. However, the “The human observation of ‘Merry-Go-Round’ young lover is able to overcome every obstacle to win Mari’s love. With is also of the greatest sensitivity. But the amazing poetic force, ‘Merry-Go-Round’ expresses the triumph of love over somewhat lightweight title does not prepare social expectations that rigidly hold on to old traditions.