Éva Ruttkai

  • György Révész – Utazás a koponyám körül AKA Trip Around My Cranium (1970)

    1961-1970ComedyFantasyGyörgy RévészHungary

    Quote:
    A thoroughly original, delightful comedy with serious undertones, this film is based upon the writings of a famous Hungarian journalist, Frigyes Karinthy. Karinthy, who, in his later years, suddenly became afflicted with a brain tumor, wrote a humorous novel about his thoughts during his illness. A Journey Around My Skull is not only a description of the illness and the great medical adventure of the writer, a strange, constantly unbalanced manner of life, but blends in several characteristics of Karinthy’s earlier works. The writer (played by Latinovits, who won the Best Actor Award at the recent San Sebastian Film Festival for his role here) is placed in pre-war Budapest, during the 1930s, and, while seated in his favorite cafe one day, he hears the roaring of trains. Read More »

  • Zoltán Huszárik – Szindbád AKA Sinbad (1971)

    1971-1980ArthouseHungaryZoltán Huszárik

    Quote:
    Adapted from the short stories of Gyula Krúdy, a beloved Proustian author of the Magyars, Szindbád is an autumnal, reflective, and poetic film set during fin de siècle Hungary, and centers on a dying libertine’s thoughts and memories. Although named after the character in One Thousand and One Nights, Szindbad is more of a wilting Casanova. A womanizer and a gourmand, he both regrets and revels in his past pursuits of the flesh and stomach. Counter to the long shot, long take aesthetic that’s the default mode for European art cinema then and now, Huszárik—a graphic artist and painter as well—opts for montage editing. Haptic inserts, rich in sensuality and eroticism, of water droplets, globules of food oil, and blooming flowers, are counterpoised with the film’s melancholic tone channeled through Szindbád. A life lived purely for pleasure never seemed so gloomily romantic.Read More »

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