Two Films from Hungary

The two films I chose to write about are "Hideg napok" from András Kovács (Cold Days, 1966) and "A tanú" (The Witness, 1969) from Péter Bacsó. I think these two pair up well, for one reason because they depict life under totalitarian regimes (rightist and leftist, respectively), and secondly because both use tools different from the very down-to-the-facts historical narrative with an exclusively naturalistic depiction of brutality. Before going on, just a few words of history to enable us to place the events into a vague background. For Hungary, the short 20th century was a succession of more or less dictatoric regimes. In a very oversimplified manner, the picture is as follows: it started off with a rightist/nationalist regime of regent Miklós Horthy (1920-1944) succeeded by the open terrorism of Ferenc Szálasi (1944-1945). This was followed by the leftist/communist regime, commencing with the Stalinist terror regime of Mátyás Rákosi (1945-1956) succeeded by the system of János Kádár (1956-1988). A more agreeable version of each system was established by Horthy and Kádár, compared to the open dictatorship of Szálasi and Rákosi which followed closely the patterns of Hitler and Stalin.

In Hideg napok the story unfolds from the reminiscences of four prisoners. As military officers of various ranks, they were involved in the Újvidék (Novi Sad) massacre in 1942 when thousands of people were killed into the frozen Danube, a tragedy of the Horthy era foreshadowing the Szálasi terror. All four tells the events from a different perspective, leaving much unanswered, but what does turn out proves to be fatal to some of them. This narrative solution reminds me of Kurosawa's Rashomon, although we do not get a final, conclusive picture of the whole event, or in fact why the massacre has happened. It appears as an automatic process of which the four narrators had no control and the cruelty of which is emphasized by the fragmented view of reality which avoids signs indicating the ongoing insanity covering in cold mist the road leading to an undeniable tragic outcome. During those cold days all four did what they were told, resisted passively as they could, suspecting but not letting themselves realize the events that they are finally forced to face. They are themselves surprised that they have become part of something they have never planned. In the scene I selected, we listen to the speech of Feketehalmy-Czeydner through the ears of Tarpataki, whose skeptic, sometimes uncertain and still very human relation to the affairs I prefer most of the four narrators'.

A tanú is a black comedy about a simple man, who gets wound up in the show trials of the Stalinist era. Before being made a witness in such a trial, this man is appointed to a number of important positions, none of which he has the skills for. Comedy is an ideal means to express criticism of a system in which the paranoia of the dictator causes events so absurd that they would be laughable, were they not deadly serious. As a parody of the Rákosi regime made under that of Kádár, the making of the movie was strictly supervised and it was actually banned for 10 years after its release. One of the few Hungarian movies that had an international success, and has a real cult following among Hungarians. Although the movie depicts no physical brutality, the serious edge of it comes out when people who lived through that era do not laugh after seeing it. Quite understandable if you remember that human lives actually depended on such or even more absurd conditions. This absurdity survives, though to a lesser extent, in later periods, which is partially the reason that the comic effect works even after decades. However, through the language of comedy, the movie manages to convey "the feeling" to an international audience as well (rare for Hungarian movies). I have chosen a notorious scene from the movie, where our hero is head of orange production in Hungary. Though a practical failure, they manage to produce one orange that they can show to the demanding leadership. At least that's what they think, until something unexpected happens...