Sunshine was awarded three Europe Prizes in Berlin and was nominated for the Canadian Film Academy’s Génie Prize in fourteen categories. The film, a Canadian-German-Austrian co-production, made with a grant from Eurimages, was shot on location in Hungary with a Hungarian crew. The cameras were handled by Lajos Koltai, who has been Szabó’s constant creative companion for over twenty years. The leading roles are taken by British and Canadian actors.

John Neville, the British actor, who is one of the leads in the film, said that "One would give up a lot of things gladly just to work with István Szabó." Ralph Fiennes said that during shooting he received unusually thorough directorial instructions.

As far as I am concerned everything must be subordinated to the actor. I do not let anything or anyone interfere with that. In our films the actor does not have to stand where it best suits the cameras. We conform to what is best for him or her. We arrived at this by asking ourselves what is it we consider most significant in a film. In every art form there is something which that specific genre is able to express best. What is it that films show us best? I asked myself. Not a landscape, which you can paint and not even a portrait, because you can hardly say something about man more beautifully or enticingly than Rembrandt or Titian, recording facial expressions in a certain state or mood. But continuous movement, the way emotions are born on the faces of human beings, only to become other emotions, the way expressed thoughts spring out of ideas, once again to change into others, the way doubt turns into action or love into jealousy, right in front of the audience’s eyes, well, all these things can only be shown by a film. The light suddenly changes in an actor’s eyes, to express something you already know from your own life or from the eyes of a person close to you. This is where a feature film is different, where it can give more than a text or a painting can.

The actor’s face primarily carries thoughts and emotions?

Since that is so, then the most important question is what a certain face represents, what social class, what age, what notions. The actor’s face, with all its changing thoughts, radiates a kind of energy, which meets another force radiating from another face towards him and towards the public. This exchange of energy carries the message of the film. Of course, the faces have to be placed in an environment, in a certain setting, in a social context. Just as a painter chooses colours for a picture to be painted, or a writer jots down certain words to be used when describing something, when I invite an actor to work with me I am in effect making a decision about what the film is going to be like. This also means that I respect and like good actors, and I make absolutely sure that the ideal circumstances are present so that they can feel free. In this way they will not give us pre-programmed reactions to emotions, they will be able to evoke real feelings and energies so that we get that strange, warm, tingling feeling when we are sitting in a cinema. Our goal is for the public to get goosepimples from the emotions, the joy, the eroticism, the rage, or the desperation radiating from the screen. Otherwise, his only reaction will be to mention at some intellectual gathering how thought-provoking and politically significant the film was.

You took a long time deciding who would play the leading roles, you went to see actors working in the theatre and in other films. And still, you took a certain risk, because Sunshine is about identities, about losing the safety of one’s home, and although this could happen anywhere, it is given a Central European setting.

Naturally, this risk is always present. But Ralph Fiennes, William Hurt and all the others are great characters, and I think they are capable of expressing even more than we asked them to.

One of the scenes takes place in prison. Valéria Sors, the heroine of the story and the individual who conveys moral righteousness, is played in her old age by Rosemary Harris. During a prison visit time, she winks reassuringly at her grandson. Was this the actor or the director?

It is in the script, but that’s not the point. The point is who does it and how. This is the secret of interpretation. In order for that wink to mean something to the public, we needed Rosemary Harris, one of the best of English actresses, and no-one else.

There were a few disparaging remarks after the premičre about the leading roles being played by British and Canadian actors.

A film is made for an audience, so it is in effect public. Picking a quarrel with it and how depends on that person’s taste, and on the interests motivating him. My aim is just to tell a story, and I consider it important that the public should accept the people depicted in the film. If I am lucky, they may even come to like them, they may understand their story, the explanations for their actions. If someone does not want to do that, that’s their business. It is undeniable that in Sunshine my Hungarian actor-friends only play minor roles. That is because the production was financed by Canadians and Germans. This film was very expensive by Hungarian standards and we could not have done it otherwise. The relatively high costs demanded that we make the film in English, and that’s what we received the money for. You can only make a film in English with actors whose native language is English. Those Hungarian actors who speak English well enough were given minor roles.

You could not call them minor parts. Mari Törőcsik, for instance, plays a very important figure: Kató, a servant. She is part of the family because she sticks with the Sonnenscheins through thick and thin. They go through life together. She is present at the birth of the children, at the death of the grandparents, she is there in happiness and in sorrow, in glory and in humiliation.

When Mari Törőcsik read the script, she said: it’s a small part, but I can see why you need me. I’ll do it. Her character really is important. In the part of the film set in the 1930’s, Kató and General Jákófalvy, the secretary of the officers’ sports club, mean solidarity and understanding, generosity and loyalty, precisely those human qualities which show Hungary’s most humane and unblemished side. The real Hungary, which was not duped by Parliament and which refused to take notice of the anti-Jewish laws. A Hungary which can be proud of its attitude to this day, and one which has nothing to be ashamed of. Another Hungary, however, unfortunately, has much it ought to ponder. This has been true throughout the ages.

How did the British and Hungarian actors get on together?

Excellent relationships took shape. István Bubik, László Gálfi, Zoltán Seress, János Kulka and the others often appeared on the set even when they had nothing to do, just to see their new friends. I learnt from Brandauer early on that with actors it is not linguistic comprehension that matters, they read each others’ eyes. When Mari Törőcsik appeared on the set for the first time, she introduced herself to everyone before standing in front of the cameras. All she had to do then was to stand in silence next to a stove in a corner of the room and watch the family. After we shot the scene Rosemary Harris and Ralph Fiennes came up to me and asked: that lady by the stove is a really great actress, isn’t she?

Sunshine covers a period of over a hundred years. During this time fashion and hairstyles changed, so did the objects and the colours around people. You and Lajos Koltai have always taken great pains to provide an accurate picture of the world around your characters. Here it must have been exceptionally difficult because of the time span.

We had first-class help, and we were able to make good use of the tremendous amount of information they amassed. Over the last fifteen years we have done everything we could to bring our films to Hungary and to work with our team. This is what happened with Mephisto and with Colonel Redl. The producer of Meeting with Venus, who is English, wanted to shoot the film in the opera house of Buenos Aires. I had a three-month battle with him to bring the production to Budapest. The shooting gave the Hungarian film industry a good name and we must hold on to this reputation.

Last year you backed out of a Boris Godunov for the Budapest Opera because you were putting the finishing touches to Sunshine. But you have taken on a new work to be premiered during this year’s Budapest Spring Festival, Three Sisters, by Péter Eötvös, who is an old friend of yours and who composed the music for your film, The Age of Day-Dreaming.

Eötvös created an extraordinary opera, basing his libretto on Chekhov’s Three Sisters. He does not follow the scenario or the chronology of the original play, which is the story of three sisters, their brother, Andrei and his wife. Here each act -- or sequence, as he calls them -- is centred on the fate of the characters he considers important. The first act is all about Irina, her desires, her struggles for love, the second is about Andrei, and the third about Masa. The music is fascinating, beautiful. I am not qualified to judge its value, but I know that it had a great effect on me. That is unusual because -- I must confess -- I find 20th-century music after Bartók and Stravinsky difficult to follow. This opera was an exciting emotional journey for me. Visually I try to emphasize everything that Eötvös wanted to accentuate, so what I have to do is to show what the music expresses using colours, light and movement. Although every act has its central character, the work requires constant and complete concentration from all the actors. I am an absolute amateur in directing opera, so I believe in the help of the singers and the conductor, who is none other than the composer himself.

Is it true that you will start work on a new film this autumn?

No, I need to collect my thoughts first. Seven years passed between Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe and Sunshine. Of course, we did a lot of work in that time. We completed a highly subjective documentary on Budapest called The Boat’s Stability for the BBC, and we turned two one-act operas by Offenbach into an ironic, musical costume drama for the German-French channel Arte. These were enjoyable and we learned from them too. But large-scale films are slow in the making. I think the right time for me to embark on a film is when an idea inspires me to the extent that I become convinced: it is important for the public too.

Mária Albert