This past weekend saw the Chicago release of Sunset, László Nemes’s first feature since his widely debated debut, Son of Saul. Regardless of how one feels about these films (which have inspired strong reactions both pro and con), their prominence in film discourse confirms that Nemes is the most internationally visible Hungarian filmmaker since Béla Tarr—which is to say he’s one of the few internationally visible Hungarian filmmakers working today, period. The cinema of Hungary may not receive a lot of attention stateside, but its history is nearly as old and as varied as that of cinema itself, making it an area worthy of investigation by film lovers everywhere.
The Red and the White This 1967 feature was one of the first by Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancsó to have some impact in the U.S., and the stylistic virtuosity, ritualistic power, and sheer beauty of his work are already fully apparent. In this black-and-white pageant, set during the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the reds are the revolutionaries and the whites are the government forces ordered to crush them. Working in elaborately choreographed long takes with often-spectacular vistas, Jancsó invites us to study the mechanisms of power almost abstractly, with a cold eroticism that may suggest some of the subsequent work of Stanley Kubrick. If you’ve never encountered Jancsó’s work, you shouldn’t miss this. He may well be the key Hungarian filmmaker of the sound era, and certain later figures such as Béla Tarr would be inconceivable without him. —Jonathan Rosenbaum
Hukkle
