Miklós Jancsó

PLOT: During WWII, a young Hungarian captured by the Soviets is left in the custody of a young Soviet soldier to assist him on a dairy farm.Read More »

Five different stories are connected by two recurring characters: gravediggers Kapa and Pepe. In one story, the director and screenwriter are characters. Killed by assassins, their ashes are then mixed up by the antic gravediggers. In another, a rich man persuades a poor one not to kill himself, and ends up committing suicide himself, while in a third, characters in a country mansion meditate on Hungarian history, revolution and violence.Read More »

We are in standing in the ‘Puszta’, our pants are flapping, … Kapa and Pepe… Pepe, would you have guessed that you will be a prisoner-of-war in your own country? … There are some, who dig the soul out of its body. But who is to find there? A National German SS, a Hungarian foot-soldier, a Jew with a yellow star, a gymnastorkha Russian and a NATO soldier ride a bicycle on the Chain-Bridge.

Wake Up, Mate, Don’t You Sleep! We lost the sheep with the bell. Jancsó in army uniform, Hernádi in a hat in front of the judges and then on a hospital bed, the T-34 Russian tank brings us Russian oranges and the feeding of fallen angels is strictly forbidden!Read More »

Still photographs and narration give an overview of the history of the American Indian.

The Indian Story is the kind of newsreel short subjects that Jancso made early in his career, and while it doesn’t bear any of his hallmarks as a director, it’s still interesting —an examination of the way that Native Americans were displaced by white settlers in North America, from a critical outsider’s perspective.Read More »

The narrative purports to deal with the barbaric exploits of Attila The Hun (an appropriately brooding if unsympathetic figure throughout)…and, yet, none of the characters ever leave the remote seaside stretch of land on which the film is set or do much of anything – with the ensuing moralizing interrupted only by the occasional (and equally obscure) music-infused rites! …..
by Mario GauciRead More »

Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja (Jesus Christ Horoscope, 1988) was made as the second film of a tetralogy. This time the theme is directly an agony of Communism. Cserhalmi plays a demonic-looking poet named Josef K (who, contrary to the author of Der Process / The Trial, has his surname spelt “Kaffka”) who in a black hat and a waving coat walks through different flats and hotels in Budapest and has unclear relationships with three women: Márta (Ildikó Bánsági) and ex-policewoman Kata (Dorottya Udvaros) are murdered in mysterious circumstances; Josef K himself then vanishes in the presence of a meteorologist, Juli (Juli Básti).Read More »

During the Russian Civil War, the Red Army – aided by Hungarian Communists – and the White Army fight for control of the area surrounding the Volga.

MUBI wrote:
Set in 1919, during the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Miklós Jancsó’s The Red and the White is a war film unlike any other. In the brutal Civil War which took place, Hungarian volunteers supported the ‘Red’ revolutionaries in a war of attrition against the ‘White’ counter-revolutionaries.Read More »

Quote:
Alegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avanges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression. Written by Francisco BaezRead More »

Imdb User Review
To begin with, as I pointed out in my review for Jancso”s earlier ‘epic’ – the made-for-TV TECHNIQUE AND RITE (1971) – much of what constituted its pros and cons, from the heavy-going speechifying to the striking imagery, applies to this one as well. Nevertheless, it emerges to be somewhat more engaging – or, if you like, tolerable than that earlier effort; incidentally, while some sources give the film’s running-time as 100 minutes, the print I watched on Italian TV lasted for merely 78! Even so, we’re still treated to the random intimidation of several characters (shades also of Jancso”s masterpiece THE ROUND-UP [1965])…not to mention the baffling re-emergence of ones who had only moments before been shown expiring!Read More »