Graham Petrie
Hungarian Silent Cinema Rediscovered
A total of 460 films were made in Hun gary during the silent period;
only 33--some in fragmentary form of only a few minutes in length--are
known to survive today. Depressing as this figure sounds, it is at least
an improvement on the situation as recently as fifteen years ago, when
none of the 24 films that Sándor Korda (later Alexander Korda) made
in Hungary was thought to exist any longer, and the noted Hungarian film
historian István Nemeskürty could state that only a few scenes
from one of the 38 (or, by some counts, 47) Hungarian films of Mihály
Kertész (later Michael Curtiz) still remained. The total production
of other noted directors of the period, such as Alfred Deésy, Márton
Garas and Béla Balogh (not to be confused with the film theoretician
and scriptwriter Béla Balázs) was likewise believed to have
entirely disappeared. Fortunately, supposedly lost films are constantly
being discovered all over the world and restoration progammes by the major
film archives are making them available once again in something close to
their previous splendour in newly struck prints that often recreate even
the tinting and toning of the originals.
A major venue for the screening of these restorations is the Pordenone
Silent Film Festival, held each October in a small town in north-east Italy,
and attended by film lovers, critics, historians, and archivists from all
over the world--as well as by a healthy segment of the local population.
This year one of the Festival's themes was "Magyar Dynamism",
which involved the screening of six newly restored features (two by Deésy,
three by Balogh and one by Korda), together with a short film by Kertész,
fragments of some other films, and some newsreels of the period. Small
as this sampling is, it helps to illuminate the overall development of
the early, and very lively, Hungarian cinema and to provide some interesting
com parisons with the current situation, where once again Hungarian filmmakers
find themselves forced to compete in a world market deprived of the security
provided by the state-supported system of the Communist period.
The most prolific period for the silent Hungarian cinema was pre-1920;
after that political censorship and the emigration of the three most talented
directors of the time--Korda, Kertész and Pál (later Paul)
Fejos--ensured that the overall quality was largely mediocre. Influenced
by the French, Danish and German cinema of the era, as well as that of
America, most filmmakers of the pre-1920 period attempted to compete in
the European market with lavish productions with elaborate sets and costumes,
dealing with middle class or aristocratic life and its--usually romantic--problems.
Yet, in several films, an undercurrent of social and political protest
is also evident, suggesting that the notable achievements of Hungarian
cinema in the 1960s and 1970s were rooted in a national tradition and were
not simply the result of the specific political circumstances of the Communist
era.
The post-Second World War Com munist government had of course its abortive
predecessor in the Republic of Councils in mid-1919, during which time
the Hun garian film industry was briefly nationalized. Most of the prominent
figures in the film industry--including the later arch-capitalist Korda,
as well as Kertész and the actor Béla Lugosi--seem to have
offered the revolutionary government enthusiastic support, and as many
as 31 films appeared during its four-month rule. Some of these had, of
course, already been in pre-production and not all of them were filled
with the revolutionary fervour of one of the only two known to survive
today, Mihály Kertész's 12-minute long My Brother is Coming
(Jön az öcsém), but it seems clear that many filmmakers,
when given the opportunity, were concerned with something more than mere
entertainment or financial profit.
My Brother is Coming, Kertész's last Hungarian film, is based
on a revolutionary poem by Antal Farkas, whose words appear on the screen
rhythmically inter-cut with the images of the hero returning from political
exile and imprisonment, seen at first as an individual waving a huge red
flag and finally being joined by an ever-growing crowd as he nears home
and is reunited with his family before giving a speech to a procession
assembled in the street outside. Although written text and images share
roughly equal time on screen, the film is undeniably effective and some
images (such as a crowd pouring down a hillside) seem to anticipate later
works, such as Miklós Jancsó's Red Psalm.
Given the often random nature of the process that determines which
films from the silent period survive and which do not, it is dangerous
to draw conclusions concerning popularity or artistic merit from the limited
amount of evidence available. Two of the feature length films shown at
Pordenone were made by the prolific Alfred Deésy, to whose name
the adjective "mediocre" is invariably attached by critics, yet
the films themselves are not without interest and, at the very least, represent
what seems to have been one of the major trends of the period.
Aphrodite (Aphrodite, 1918) has very little that is specifically "Hungarian"
about it--not even in the setting, which is largely anonymous in the first
half of the film and then becomes the Dalmatian coast for most of the remainder.
The location shooting is impressive and the interior sets at the beginning
of the film are suitably lavish and larger than life-size. But the acting
is often overly theatrical, even for the period, and moments of emotional
crisis (which occur with almost predictable regularity throughout the film)
are invariably ex-
aggerated through gesture and movement. The extraordinarily complicated
plot is spread over a period of some thirty years and the intertitles are
enlivened by quotations from Tennyson's poem "Break, break, break"
that seem to have only minimal relevance to the actual events.
The theme of the film--"Love, Beauty, Marriage", as an initial
title informs us--has much in common with the pre-Soviet Russian films
of the period and moves towards a climax of what the Pordenone programme
notes describe as "damnation, redemption, mystical exaltation".
The film begins with a sculptor making a statue of Aphrodite for his patron,
a Prince; both men fall in love with her and, though she professes to place
Love above all other motives, she ends up marrying the Prince for money.
The rejected Giovanni continues to pursue her, however, and, when the Prince
comes across them in a compromising situation, he promptly and dramatically
has a heart attack and drops dead. Already suspicious of his wife, however,
he had taken the precaution of leaving his fortune to her only if she never
remarried; still putting mercenary motives ahead of emotional ones, she
now refuses to marry Giovanni, even when she gives birth to his child a
few months after the Prince's death. When he tries to take custody of their
daughter, Juliette puts her in a convent and the dejected Giovanni decides
to become a monk. Some years later, how-ever, Giovanni accidentally encounters
his daughter, abducts her, and leaves her to grow up with the family of
a nearby fisherman.
More years pass and the plot becomes too complicated to disentangle
in detail with any kind of brevity. Giovanni, who is now a priest, and
Juliette meet once more and a series of romantic entanglements develop
among the younger generation, which consists of their now adolescent daughter
Marianne; her foster brother and sister Beppo and Camilla (though all think
they are natural siblings); Juliette's stepson Paul from the Prince's previous
marriage; and a jealous outsider, Danica, who professes an unrequited love
for Beppo. After many misunderstandings, including fears of possible incest,
all the young people end up with appropriate partners and Giovanni and
Juliette abandon the hostility that has grown up between them. When she,
however, somewhat belatedly attempts to rekindle the flames of their previous
passion and even resumes the pose of Aphrodite that had originally brought
them together, the sound of the church bell recalls Giovanni to his duties
and he asks her to leave. The film ends with Giovanni on the seashore watching
as they all depart and a double exposure places a lifesize cross beside
him.
The film is, obviously enough, no masterpiece, but it probably reflects
quite accurately a mainstream of bourgeois taste of the time, combining
eroticism, spectacular scenery, luxurious interiors, costumes and furnishings,
and a high-minded plot dealing with art, religion, duty and renunciation.
The Young Wife (A leányasszony), also by Deésy and also from
1918, incorporates many of the same ingredients, in a complicated plot
dealing with the emotional torments of a group of upper-class characters.
Once again there is little speci fically Hungarian about the setting, which
in fact employs several of the same locations as Aphrodite, though there
is one short scene in Budapest which, significantly, takes place in the
Fishermen's
Bas tion, a favourite exotic tourist locale. (There are similarities here
to the first wave of Hungarian co-productions with West ern countries in
the late 1980s, where scenes invariably took place in the most prominent
of the city's landmarks and characters tended to live in luxurious apart
ments or hotels with a perfect view over the Danube and the Buda side of
the river.)
In The Young Wife a rich Baron loses all his money gambling and leaves
for America to re-establish his fortune, entrusting his young daughter
Veronika, together with the inheritance left her by her dead mother, to
the care of a neighbour, a widowed Baroness with daughters of her own.
Ten years pass and the Baroness has spent all Veronika's money and has
begun to neglect her. Romantic rivalry between Veronika and one of the
Baroness' daughters for the hand of a rich Count leads to further tension,
but Veronika finally marries George, a poor but virtuous young composer
instead. More years pass and George, after suffering a heart attack while
performing at a party, is sent to the seaside to convalesce; meanwhile
the Baro ness, now reduced to poverty herself, receives a letter from Veronika's
father, who has made his fortune in America and plans to return home. The
Baroness arranges a reconciliation with Veronika and (for reasons which
the film does not make particularly clear) persuades her to conceal both
her marriage and the existence of her son from her father, who returns
bringing with him a friend who he sees as a suitor for his daughter. The
virtuous Veronika, gradually corrupted by the influence of the Baroness
and the prospects of renewed luxury, persuades her husband, when he returns
home restored to health, to continue with the deception, resulting in the
somewhat ludicrous situtation of her being forced to visit him and her
son in secret.
Retribution, however, is at hand: George's opera is accepted for performance,
but, on the very night of the opening, their son falls seriously ill, with
the doctor helpless to assist him. While Veronika flirts shamelessly with
the guests at a party held by her father, George ignores frantic requests
to come to the opera house to witness the triumph of his work. He seeks
out Veronika at the party and she finally agrees to leave with him, but
when they arrive home the child is dead. The repentant Veronika falls ill
and seeks atonement by constantly visiting her son's grave; finally she
explains everything to her father and asks for and receives forgiveness.
A few interesting stylistic touches enliven the moralizing of the plot,
especially in scenes where characters visualize action taking place elsewhere
or anticipate possible outcomes in their future, as where the convalescent
George imagines both being welcomed and being rejected by Veronika on his
return, or "sees" the performance of his opera while he is at
the bedside of his dying son; but for the most part the filming is relatively
unimaginative and the acting once again tends to over-emphasis in the many
moments of emotional crisis.
These two films seem fairly representative of Deésy's work both
in theme and in style and any further discoveries are unlikely to enhance
his reputation to any great extent. A more interesting figure is Béla
Balogh, three of whose films were screened at the festival. All three were
made in 1920-21, after the fall of the Re public of Councils and during
a period of right-wing political repression--which makes the outspoken
social protest of the finest of them, The Frozen Child (A meg fagyott gyermek,
1921) even more remarkable. Here we are very far from the anonymous Mitteleuropa
world of Deésy, where wealthy and elegant characters agonize over
the conflict between love and duty or have to choose between material and
spiritual satisfaction. Instead, we are in a world of grinding poverty
and misery that is given a very specific setting in place and time.
Ironically enough, the plot has many similarities to The Young Wife,
though in a very different social milieu and treated very differently.
Laci, the 5-year-old boy of the title, lives in a wretched little village
with his widowed mother; his best friend is Terike, a slightly older girl
who lives next door with her widowed father. The opening scenes establish
a sense of the routine of village life, with the children helping to look
after the animals and celebrating the grape harvest and Christmas. But
Laci's mother is in debt and her one possession, her cow, has to be sold
at auction. (During this scene the boy offers to sell his own single possession,
a small rocking horse, instead, but his attempt is ignored.) The mother
decides to move to Pest (to a less glamorous, working-class part of Budapest),
where Terike and her father now also live, so that the children are reunited,
though their lives still remain harsh and impoverished. The scenes in Pest
are shot on location and present a very different image of the city from
that experienced by tourists, and the acting, by both children and adults,
is far more naturalistic than in Deésy's films. They spend much
of their time in the company of a blind man, dancing to the sound of his
music box in the hope of earning a few coins, but are constantly harassed
by an officious neighbour who sees their activities as degrading.
Like Veronika's father in The Young Wife, but in very different circumstances,
Terike's father decides to go to America to seek his fortune, leaving his
daughter in the care of Laci and his mother. The children continue their
wandering life around the city, gaping in amazement at the life style of
rich children they encounter, and being chased away as nuisances, and occasionally
getting lost. Their pitiful dreams of happiness and luxury are embodied
in visions of a beautiful doll on Terike's part and a carriage on Laci's.
Now Laci's mother falls ill and decides to return to the village for a
few days to recuperate, taking Laci with her but leaving Terike in the
care of the porter's wife in their apartment block, a spiteful and mean-minded
woman who demands payment for doing even this small favour. In the village,
Laci's mother collapses and dies, leaving her bewildered son to fend for
himself; he manages to return to Pest, but the porter's wife refuses to
take care of the children and throws them out on to the street, where they
try to survive on their own but are mistreated and exploited, even by other
children. They finally team up with the blind man until Terike--but not
Laci--is summoned to join her father in America. Laci stays with the blind
man till the latter is knocked down in the street and taken off to hospital;
Laci, wandering on the river bank clutching the pitiful rag doll
that Terike has left with him, is accosted by a drunk who throws the doll
in the river. He tries to seek shelter from the porter's wife but is turned
away; finally he makes his way back to the village and his mother's grave
where he freezes to death in the snow.
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek epilogue attempts to enlighten the despair
of the story by showing an angel transporting Laci's body to Heaven, where
he is warmly welcomed by St. Peter. Heaven is filled with angels dancing
and playing music; he is reunited with his mother, who gives him food to
eat, and with the blind man and Terike; he is even given back his lost
rocking horse. The wish-fulfilment fantasy, however, is abruptly, and literally,
brought down to earth in a final shot that shows the boy's frozen body
lying on the grave.
Though the plot certainly has its melodramatic aspects, these are largely
counteracted by the starkness, intensity and indignation with which the
story is told. Though much of the blame for the children's plight is placed
on selfish and uncaring individuals, behind this is a larger criticism
that asks why society allows this to happen and why no help is available
to people whose sufferings are caused by forces beyond their control or
understanding. Here the other side of the Hungarian film tradition, the
cinema of social and political criticism, finds one of its roots.
Balogh's two other surviving films, however, are rather different in
theme and tone, and closer to the more escapist cinema of the time. The
lengthy, two-part The Fourteenth (A tizennegyedik, 1920) presents the somewhat
improbable fortunes of Jim Jeffries (much of the film seems to be set in
London), a layabout who is picked at random off the street to make a fourteenth
guest at table at a dinner party, where he becomes involved in the shady
financial machinations of a crooked Prince and Baron. His native wit and
shrewdness enable him to exploit the situation and soon bring him wealth
and social position, though he never abandons his cronies from the past
and makes use of them to protect him from the double-dealing of his new
associates, who increasingly resent his success. Various episodes of intrigue,
plotting and attempted murder and kidnapping end with Jeffries reduced
to something like his original condition, but rescued once more by a stroke
of chance that has him married to a rich young woman whose guardian wishes
in this way to control her fortune. The marriage, which is performed with
both parties blindfolded, is a pure formality, and after it Jeffries is
bribed to set off for America on his own.
In the film's second part, the hero, now calling himself Riche Richson,
engages once more in unscrupulous financial and romantic entanglements,
but the tone now is rather more light-hearted and comic. In the film's
best scene--which strangely anticipates in some respects the famous "Walls
of Jericho" motel scenes in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night a
decade or so later, the hero meets up with his wife on a train; neither,
of course, recognizes the other and, when the train breaks down, they have
to share a room overnight in a hotel. She rigs up a curtain around her
bed to shield herself from possible unwelcome advances, and he gallantly
gives her a pistol so that she can defend herself if his self-control breaks
down. After a chaste night's sleep, he wakens her in the morning by coming
to her bedside and kissing her; she grabs the gun and he unfolds his clenched
fist to show that he has removed the bullets: "You can't always trust
the word of a gentleman," he advises her smilingly. Finally the various
misunder-standings are cleared up in a scene filled with comic revelations
and reactions and all ends happily. The film seems to have had no higher
purpose than sheer entertainment--suspense in the first part and comedy
in the second--but it achieves its limited aims efficiently and smoothly
enough.
Under the Mountains (Hegyek alján, 1920) is different again,
and based on an opera Tiefland (1903) by Eugen d'Albert that was also filmed
by Leni Riefenstahl in 1944. The plot concerns the sexual rivalry for the
favours of Marta, the heroine, between Petr, a naive and virtuous goatherd,
and an unscrupulous older man who is openly having an affair with Marta
while trying to arrange a marriage with the daughter of a rich villager.
The older man persuades Petr to marry Marta, fully intending to continue
his affair with her after his own marriage; Marta reluctantly accepts,
but--to the scorn of the neighbours--refuses to consummate the marriage
and forces Petr to sleep outdoors in the street. When Petr, however, proves
his manhood by confronting his rival in public and accidentally killing
him--even wounding Marta in the course of the struggle--she is happy to
go off to live with him in the mountains, with the blessings of the villagers
who conclude that the killing is acceptable as "a judgement of God".
The main virtues of the film are in the location shooting and the strong
characterization that create a sense of genuine realism from the melodramatic
events. A flashback, explaining Marta's association with her unscrupulous
lover as the result of her literally being sold to him as a child by her
brutal stepfather, introduces an undercurrent of social commentary that
is reinforced by the obvious divide between wealth and poverty within the
village itself. According to Balogh's daughter Mária Szepes (who
played the role of Terike in The Frozen Child), her father made nearly
one hundred silent and sound films; on the evidence of these three, it
is to be hop ed that more of them will be rediscovered.
The only feature film by Korda to have surfaced to date, The Golden
Man (Az aranyember, 1918), based on a novel by the prolific and popular
Mór Jókai, is fortunately one of his most spectacular and
successful productions. Originally 16 reels (almost three hours) in length,
but later cut to closer to two hours, it deals with the exploits of Mihály
Tímár, the servant of a Greek merchant who is attempting
to escape with his daughter and his fortune from the Turkish empire. When
his employer poisons himself in order to avoid capture, Tímár
takes the opportunity to steal the money (which is, of course, the property
of the daughter Tímea) and, after taking refuge for a time with
a woman friend and her daughter Noémi on a small island in the Danube,
returns to the city with Tímea, leaving her in the care of his mother
and step-sister while he sets off to increase his ill-gotten gains and
establish his position in society. His relatives abuse and exploit Tímea,
however, and his conscience eventually forces him to marry her; but he
later also establishes a second household and family with Noémi.
Throughout the film, first the merchant and then Tímár have
been pursued by a mysterious stranger, Tódor Krisztyán, who
knows both about the stolen money and Tímár's double life,
and attempts to blackmail him. After a confrontation between the two men,
Krisztyán dies accidentally and, as he is wearing Tímár's
clothes that he has stolen from him, his body is identified as Tímár's,
leaving the latter to continue his life with his true love Noémi
while Tímea (who had accepted the marriage reluctantly in the first
place) is free to marry a lover whose attentions she had virtuously resisted
up till then.
The film is conceived and executed on an epic scale, with vigorous characterization
and some spectacular scenes of storms and shipwreck on the Danube. The
acting, though stagey at times, is generally convincing, the camerawork
is skilful and inventive, and there are many subtle and atmospheric lighting
effects. It is easy to see on the basis of this how Korda, after relatively
unsuccessful interludes in Germany, Austria and Hollywood, should have
come to create such grandiose works as The Private Life of Henry VIII and
Rembrandt in Britain during the 1930s.
Not all "lost" films are silents, however, and, worldwide,
many significant works from the early sound period in particular have disappeared.
In the case of Hungary, one especially unfortunate loss from the 1930s--a
decade that otherwise produced little of value in that country--was thought
to be The Sentence of the Lake (Itél a Balaton) one of two films
that Pál Fejos made in 1931 during a brief return to his native
country after becoming disillusioned with working in Hollywood (despite
achieving considerable success there). The second film, Spring Shower (Tavaszi
zápor) has long been known and admired, but it is only recently
that a print of Sentence of the Lake has been rediscovered. As it is a
sound film, it was not, of course, shown at Pordenone, and it has already
been briefly discussed in The Hungarian Quarterly (No. 139, Vol. 36, Autumn
1995, pp. 143) by István Nemeskürty. I include it here for
the sake of completeness, however, and also because Mr. Nemeskürty
unfortunately describes the film's ending incorrectly: as my own viewing
and published synopses of the film confirm, it is the husband who sacrifices
himself for the sake of his wife's lover, rather than the other way round--which
makes the film even more subversive and controversial.
Sentence of the Lake is a work of considerable power that foreshadows
in many respects the Italian Neo-realist films of the 1940s, especially
Luchino Visconti's La Terra Trema, whose setting of a fishing village and
the dangerous lives of the fishermen it closely resembles. The story has
a fairly traditional Romeo and Juliet theme, with the richest fisherman
in the village refusing to allow his daughter Maria to marry her sweetheart
Mihály from the rival Kovács family and forcing her to marry
one of his underlings, János, instead. Maria and Mihály continue
to yearn chas tely for each other, attracting the attention of the villagers
who soon attribute the unexpected failure of the fishing expeditions to
János' inadequacy as a husband and the problems in his marriage.
One day the desperate fishermen set out once more despite obvious signs
of a storm brewing; after hours of prayer and suspense on the part of the
villagers, the men finally return empty-handed yet again. To the indignation
of the villagers, Maria openly embraces Mihály in relief at his
safe return, and János and the women of the village promptly accuse
her of causing the storm and insist that she should be put to the traditional
ordeal of being set adrift on the lake in a small boat; if she survives,
she is innocent. The horrified Mihály sets off after her, quickly
followed by the repentant János; both their boats are overturned
by the waves and, after the men have struggled with each other in the water,
János manages to climb into Maria's boat. She pleads with him, however,
to save the drowning Mihály, her true love; he does so and then,
seeing Maria tenderly embrace her lover, he allows himself to slip back
into the water and drown. The storm subsides and Maria and Mihály,
now unable to return to the village, sail on together into the sunrise.
The power of the film comes largely from the realism with which the
somewhat conventional story (apart from the ending, which must have contributed
to the displeasure with which the film was officially received) was filmed.
The storm scenes, shot on location with the camera obviously in the midst
of the action, are vivid and convincing, as is the presentation of the
rhythms and rituals of village life--a sermon by the priest warning against
family hatreds and rivalries; relaxation at a fairground with music and
dancing; the celebration of the grape harvest; the marriage ceremony and
the wedding feast, with the bride's dowry solemnly carried to her new home;
the harsh and precarious daily existence of the fishermen and the relief
with which a successful catch is greeted; the women waiting anxiously,
clustered round a huge cross in the village square, as the storm threatens
their menfolk. The camera is constantly mobile and the editing effectively
contrasts moments of relaxation and festivity with those of danger and
suspense. One particularly successful sequence shows Maria and Mihály
walking away from the grape harvest on opposite sides of the road, with
the cutting first separating them as they exchange shy smiles and then
joining them as Mihály plucks up courage to approach her and give
her a present. The mood here is reminiscent of Fejos' finest American film,
Lonesome, and is a reminder of the loss to the Hungarian film industry
that resulted when the unfavourable reception of Spring Shower and Sentence
of the Lake (both accused of subverting accepted moral standards) sent
him on his travels once more.
What, briefly, can be concluded from this survey of the remnants of
a once flourishing film tradition? First, perhaps, that, up till 1919 at
least, Hungarian cinema was capable of producing works that were technically
accomplished and, at their best (as in The Golden Man) could provide sophisticated
and intelligent entertainment, though they seem rarely to have attempted
to go much further than this. After a brief flurry of overtly political
work in 1919, censorship and repression silenced or exiled much of the
finest talent, though films such as The Frozen Child proved that some degree
of social criticism still survived, an example that was followed in Fejos'
films of the 1930s and a handful of films in the 1940s. The generation
that came to maturity in the mid-1960s restored that tradition, whether
consciously or not, and produced a series of films acclaimed all over the
world. In the cold free market environment of the 1990s the aim appears
to be to retrench, to have few higher ambitions than those of Deésy
or Korda. This may be understandable and even inevitable, but it is unlikely,
unfortunately, to produce many enduring masterpieces.
Graham Petrie
is a British film critic and novelist living in Canada and teaching
film at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. His book on Hungarian film,
History Must Answer to Man, Corvina Books, appeared in 1979.
