Erzsébet Bori
The Hungarian Documentary
...
Newsreels of the period precisely mirror that initial advance
of the left and the subsequent monopoly of the new ideology, which saw film
as a prime weapon of agitprop. Instead of newsreels, documentary and educational
or popularising films as disseminators of information and expositions of reality,
there were triumphal reports: even the "sweeping clean" of barn lofts (the
euphemism for the confiscations and accompanying punitive sanctions inflicted
on peasant smallholders who secreted some of their own crops for their family's
use when faced with the impossibly high targets for compulsory deliveries
of produce), discoveries of "sabotage",
trials and executions on the basis of trumped - up charges were given a positive
spin - showing the party's fist smashing the enemies of the people. Cinema screens
showed wise (and adulated) leaders, enthusiastic young pioneers, shock workers
who overfulfilled their work norms by hundreds of per cent, feats of Socialist
construction, smiles, flowers, ripened ears of wheat - an unending stream of
one success after the other. "I made newsreels up till '55," Miklós Jancsó
recalls of that era:
Reaping, the year - end tallying up on cooperative
farms, that sort of thing. One had to go down there and do on - the - spot
research. For motivation, as film - makers call it. Back home in Budapest,
we would put together a detailed shooting script. I say we, because I did
not do it on my own. We even engaged a writer, a real one - a member of the
Writers' or the Journalists' Union... The go - ahead was preceded by discussion
of the script for all works of that kind. Possibly a rewrite. That is how
a 'documentary film' started life in those times. We would shoot for several
days, often weeks, just to get ten minutes of film. We would talk everything
over with the peasants beforehand. They knew what they had to do. They would
put on their Sunday best, their best bib and tucker, if they had one, pinning
on their Orders of Labour. Sometimes we would even do a make - up job on the
'performers'. Once we had set everything up, they could start feeding the
pigs.
Unmitigated lies? Worthless propaganda? That it was, from one
angle. From another though, this was a period when the great generation of
film - makers of the inter - war years was still alive and active. Considered
as politically unreliable, the majority were not allowed anywhere near feature
films. However, the new régime needed their skills, so they were put to work
in documentary genres, and although this was under close supervision, the
younger generation had a chance to observe and acquire their love for the
medium as well as the technical basics and tricks of the trade. That was the
dismal era our grandparents and parents endured; living in poverty and scarcity
if they were ordinary Hungarians and not part of the leadership circles or
privileged apparatchiks, they rebuilt a country that lay in ruins after the
war, bled dry and plundered several times over, as they studied, worked, paid
war reparations, started families and raised children. Their real lives, the
struggles and sufferings, the varied forms of political repression, persecution,
terror, and the forced resettlements could only be presented in documentary
films three or four decades later. A rounded picture can only be gained if,
alongside the official propaganda films of the Fifties, we set works like
A Dunánál (By the Danube), Pergőtûz (Drumfire) on the
2nd Hungarian Army on the Don, Recsk on the Hungarian Gulag, and Pócspetri
that were put together in the late 1980s and 1990s.
...
The
dual fate of one film
For the few days of the 1956 Revolution ordinary Hungarians
took their fate into their own hands. The setting up of democratic institutions
got under way in every area of life. István Szőts was elected to the three - man
directorate of a newly establish - ed workers' council for film production.
Our job was to ensure orderliness and continuity of work
and to protect the equipment. We headed off any personal vendettas or attempts
by people to take the law into their own hands, justified or not. During the
two weeks not a single punch was thrown in anger at the Hunnia Studio. We
were conscious of the great responsibility that fell to us film - makers to
be faithful and true chroniclers and recorders of the historical events, to
capture as much as possible of those events as a source and authentic documentation
for future historians.
The director recalled in an interview:
Six film crews toured the city. They shot
around ten thousand metres of material. On the morning of 4th November they
wanted to get it out to Vienna, to the International Red Cross and the organisations
of the United Nations, so that the outside world would have objective information
and send aid and medicine... In the panicky mood that was induced by the sound
of dawn gunfire and the tragic appeal that the radio was broadcasting, someone
switched on a light and ruined part of the stock that was being developed.
A couple of cans got out to Austria in the rucksacks of two young Film School
students, and it was that scanty material which later formed the backbone
of the documentary Hungary in Flames that was subsequently put together
in West Germany.
The world got to learn about the 1956 Revolution from that film, which was
naturally not shown in Hungary. Instead, screenings were given of Így történt
(This Is What Happened), directed by Ilona Kolonits in 1957 and cut from exactly
the same material - a horrifying example of how a film document that was shot
with the intention of recording the truth can become the tool of lies, misinformation
and manipulation.
...
At virtually the same time that Imre Nagy and his associates
were executed, the Balázs Béla Film Studio was being formally set up to function
for a long time as an experimental workshop and progressive powerhouse - much
to the envy of professionals in other Soviet satellite countries. It was from
here that the most significant documentaries of the era, still highly regarded
today, emerged. The BBFS organised itself democratically: any film that was
approved by a majority of its members could be shot. Whether it would be shown
was, of course, quite another question.
Amongst those at BBFS were the duo of Sándor Sára and István Gaál, who first
attracted attention in 1957 with the film Pályamunkások (Trackmen).
In 1962 they produced Cigányok (Gypsies), which has become a classic.
Sára was the cameraman of the Sixties, being associated with the cinematography
on feature films such as Gaál's Sodrásban (Current, 1963), István Szabó's
Apa (Father, 1966), János Róna's Gyermekbetegségek (Children's
Diseases), Zoltán Huszárik's Szindbád (Sinbad, 1971), as well as Ferenc
Kósa's Tízezer nap (Ten Thousand Suns, 1965), the first main feature
to be produced by the BBFS itself.
During the Sixties, Hungary clawed its way back, however tentatively and belatedly,
into the mainstream of European film - making. Over and beyond a softening
of the dictatorship that could be ascribed to the ineluctable advance of time:
the new generation of the post - war baby bulge was beginning to come of age.
Precious few signs of that widespread youth subculture are to be found in
the films of the period, however; this was not to be explored until the Nineties,
starting with the films of András Kisfaludy, Törvénytelen muskátli (Muskátli:
The Illegal Café) and Elszállt egy hajó a szélben (A Ship Has Flown
Away). The changes became perceptible in the world of adults only gradually,
inch by inch. The new, unspoken consensus was founded on the premise that
the nation would not rock the boat by questioning the régime's ideological
footing and political legitimacy (i.e. 1956) or its alliances (the Soviet
occupation), and in return it would be allowed to enjoy a measure of relative
freedom, albeit strictly within the bounds of private life. With films like
Kézenfogva (Holding Hands, 1962) by Anna Herskó, Bognár Anna világa
(Anna Bognár's World, 1963) by Márta Kende, or Válás Budapesten (Divorce
in Budapest, 1964) by Mariann Szemes suggest, documentaries also turned their
attention to the private sphere.
Towards the end of the Sixties Hungarian motion pictures became bolder and
more outspoken. What helped create that more favourable climate was the fact
that a string of feature films were then garnering resounding success at foreign
festivals and, eager as it was for any outside recognition, the political
leadership felt obliged to handle directors with kid gloves. It was again
the documentary film - makers of the BBFS who led the way: Judit Elek's first
major film, Meddig él az ember? (How Long Does Man Matter?), which
she made in 1967, was highly acclaimed both at home and abroad. Miklós Csányi,
in Boldogság (Happiness, 1968), and Gyula Gazdag, with the fantastical
flights of Hosszú futásodra mindig számíthatunk (The Long - Distance
Runner, 1968), both pointed to a crisis in society's values. (Virtually all
of Gazdag's subsequent work was to be devoted to portraying the operetta -
style character of Hungarian Socialism.) Amongst documentaries that were produced
in other studios, mention should be made of Péter Bokor's Halálkanyar (Dangerous
Curve, 1961), the first film to bring the subject of the annihilation of the
2nd Hungarian Army on the Don Bend in early 1943 to the screen. (That the
subject continued to be hedged with strong taboos was demonstrated two decades
later by rows over the television screening of the instalments of Sándor Sára's
series Pergőtűz (Drumfire, 1982) - also presented under the title of
Krónika - Chronicle). Another harbinger with regard to the history of the
recent past was Rezső Szörény's Kivételes időszak (Exceptional Times, 1970),
which dealt with the "people's colleges", the institutions set up between
1946 and 1948 to provide residential higher education for substantial numbers
of young people from underprivileged families but which were smartly shut
down by Rákosi's régime a few years later as alleged hotbeds of reaction.
The tiny advances that these kinds of works represented added up over time,
allowing the documen - tary to move from the portrayal of issues affecting
individual lives to the probing of questions that bore on society as a whole.
...
The
Eighties: a golden age
Having pulled themselves up to the level of the feature
film, documentaries then seemed to leave the latter standing during the Eighties.
Through a progressive drying - up of finances and a loss of touch with audiences,
feature - film production went into a major crisis, and full - length or multipart
documentaries, tackling subjects that for decades had been banned or swept
under the carpet, triumphantly pushed ahead to fill the gap. Historical documentaries,
a genre that had barely existed before, burst into life. Workshops toiled
furiously to make up for lost time, well aware that it was almost the last
opportunity they had to locate and record surviving eye - witnesses to some
of the major events of the twentieth century. Mention has already been made
of Sára's Drumfire, which was effectively the opening shot. Nowadays it is
hard, particularly for the young, to understand why the part that Horthy - era
Hungary played in the Second World War was a taboo subject for forty years,
and people whose participation in the German invasion of the Soviet Union
was by no means voluntary, were silenced. To be sure, Rákosi had dismissed
Hungarians as "a fascist people" and Hitler's "last henchmen", and the country
had certainly been responsible for historical crimes and errors, but given
it had also paid a price for that, in human casualties, loss of territory
and wealth, war reparations - to say nothing of the régime that was foisted
on it. There was no rationale for maintaining a deathly hush over the part
played in that war. Sára nevertheless had to overcome many obstacles, from
political obstruction to the misgivings of the interviewees; even after the
series was made, a quite separate set of battles had to be fought before all
25 episodes were broadcast in 1982. By then similar difficulties had been
faced by Judit Ember too with Pócspetri (1982), which dealt with the first
of the post - war "staged trials", finally redressing the injustice of the execution
of the innocent priest of the village of that name, and that done to those
who were falsely arrested, tortured or sentenced to long prison terms for
their alleged involvement in the (purely accidental) shooting of a policeman
during a protest demonstration.
Lívia Gyarmathy and Géza Böszörményi teamed up to make a series of key documentaries
during this period: Együttélés (Coexistence, 1982), Faludy György
költő (The Poet György Faludy, 1987) and Recsk - Egy magyar kényszermunkatábor
(Recsk, the Hungarian Gulag, 1988). Co - existence concerns the tribulations
that were suffered by Hungary's 'Swabian' (ethnic German) minority after the
war, and was followed by a string of further films dealing with this and other
tit - for - tat expulsions that were mounted between Hungary and its neighbours
under the euphemistic label of exchanges of population. The subject was touched
on, for example, by Bálint Magyar and Pál Schiffer in A Dunánál (By
the Danube), which was an adaptation of a book by Pál Závada, Kulákprés (Kulak
Squeezer, 1986), presenting forty years of social history of the partly ethnic
Slovak community in the writer's native village in southwestern Hungary. Another
film to which Závada contributed was Statárium (Martial Law, 1986 -
89), directed by András Sipos, about the trial of a rich kulak.
After ethnic minorities, the next in line for resettlement were "enemies of
the people" - aristocrats, the moneyed upper classes and anyone else whose
wealth was seen as fair game by the Rákosi régime - as examined by Gyula and
János Gulyás in Törvénysértés nélkül (No Offence Committed). The list
of unexplored historical iniquities was literally endless, but some truths
had to wait until the change of régime to be uttered at all, as in the case
of the fate of Hungarians who were carted off to Soviet forced - labour camps,
treated by the Gulyás brothers in Malenkij robot (A Bit of Work).
Whilst historical films undeniably had pride of place, interest in the present
did not flag either. As the country, closed in on itself for so long, began
to look at the world outside, more and more people realised that Kádár's social
contract rested on rocky foundations: lack of democratic rights and liberties
could not be compensated for with consumer goods and, in any case, the growth
of the welfare net was not untroubled. The régime perceptibly weakened, and
as it lost its ability to inspire terror, it began to look increasingly ridiculous.
And that was the sobriquet by which Hungary was known: the merriest barracks.
Documentation of contemporary life was extended to the sick, the poor and
such marginal groups as ex - prisoners, in Sír, lobog a szeretet (Longing
For Love) by Lilla Mátis and Bebukottak (Tripped Up) by András Mész,
and to the "difficult people" of the Eighties whose efforts paved the way
towards exposing the régime's anomalies, as shown by the Gulyás brothers in
Ne sápadj (Don't Go Pale), Béla Szobolits in Aki nekiszaladt a demokráciának
(The Man Who Bumped Into Democracy), or Judit Ember in Hagyd beszélni
a Kutruczot! (Let the Kutrucz Speak!). Satirical indictments, like Gyula
Gazdag's A bankett (The Banquet), József Magyar's A mi családunk
(Our Family), and Béla Szobolits's Macskaköröm (Cat's Claws) also
retained their popularity, and many were curious about the tragic ending to
the career of Hungary's first beauty queen as presented by András Dér and
László Hartai in Széplányok (Pretty Girls). One new issue that horrified
the entire country, and the subject of Ádám Csillag's punningly titled Dunaszaurusz,
or Danubeesaurus, was the plan to construct a barrage across the Danube at
Gabc©ikovo - Nagymaros, a white elephant for which the Kádár régime fought
to the very last ounce of its strength.
Much of the public associates the decline of Hungary's heavy industry and
the fall in working - class incomes with the post - 1989 period, but sharp
- eyed documentary film - makers like Tamás Almási, in Szorításban
(In a Vice), already spotted the incipient signs in the industrial town of
Ózd as early as 1987. Gábor Bódy's Privát történelem (Private History),
which made use of old home movies by amateur enthusiasts, was an innovative
enterprise that inspired a whole new genre in the next decade.
...
The gloomy prophecies, made in the immediate wake of the
1989 changes, that freedom of speech and democracy might suck the life from
documentaries because there would be no subjects left to be explored, no more
truths waiting to be told, no exigency to force filmmakers into ellipsis or
other forms of indirectness, have therefore proved unfounded. There are still
subjects aplenty: in any society that is undergoing wrenching transformations,
as Hungary is, something new is always happening, ever new phenomena materialise,
things are in a continual process of change. There are nevertheless many who
believe that the Hungarian documentary film is in crisis. The difficulties
have been caused in part (and initially) by the break - up of, and the flight
of financing from the entire film sector, but even more seriously by a collapse
in interest, the defection of a paying public. The golden age when the country,
caught up in the fever of the change in régime, suddenly became curious about
itself, wanting to know about its past and to examine its present, receded
rapidly. Then came the mounting problems, the worries about making ends meet,
keeping one's head above water, the testing struggle for a livelihood, and
the ensuing disenchantment. Large segments of society simply turned their
backs on reality, having no desire to see or know anything about it, opting
instead for the long - denied and sorely missed magic of light - entertainment
movies and the cheap thrills offered by new TV channels. Commercial television
broadcasting is irreconcilable with documentaries, and not simply because
the latter just do not fit into its programming; that would not matter had
the public channels been able to respond to the challenge. What has been truly
harmful is that the commercial channels' insatiable demand for content to
fill their schedules has led to the mass assembly of simulated documentary
products. TV screens are now awash with pseudo - reportage, scandals presented
as investigative journalism, celebrity portraits, publicity - seeking treatments
of fashionable topics, travel advertisements dressed up as educational programmes,
much of it so amateurish as to make a mockery of the professional standards
of documentary film - makers. Worse still, the opportunists and their products
siphon the financing, slots in schedules and viewers' attention away from
genuine documentaries.
Erzsébet Bori
is the regular film critic of The Hungarian Quarterly.
