At the age of 62, Déry was imprisoned in 1957 for his activities prior to and during the 1956 Uprising, and was released in 1960 in the first post-1956 amnesty, when he wrote ‘Két asszony’, based on the letters Déry’s wife wrote to his mother during his imprisonment. Like the old lady in Szerelem, Déry’s mother was of Austrian origin, and after he was allowed to publish again in 1962, he published their correspondence under the title Liebe Mutter! Younger followers of writers who, like Déry, were deemed polgári or individualista, also found it difficult to publish in the 1950s, and essentially stayed on the margins until the 1970s.

Makk

Makk gathered the unparalleled ensemble of Lili Darvas as the elderly lady, Mari Törőcsik as Luca, and Iván Darvas as János; and chose János Tóth as cinematographer. Tóth’s method of blending past and present (in Makk’s words, ‘múlt és jelen külön is legyen, de együtt is szóljon’) was to use flashbacks which, as our guest Dr Cesar Ballaster noted, was a popular technique throughout the Eastern Bloc in the 1970s. Flashbacks demystify collective memory by means of individual memory, and introduce uncertainty as a counter to the monologic narratives of the Party-state. Such an emphasis on subjectivity, and the juxtaposition of shots reminiscent of black and white photographs, create a dreamlike, timeless quality which, as the old lady tires, becomes further and further removed from reality. Luca is fired from her teaching job because of her husband’s incarceration, while the old lady dreams of her son’s life in a French castle on the highest mountain in New York. After her death János, who has until now been present largely in his absence, is released from prison and returns to the flat, which his wife now shares with co-tenants.

When Szerelem was awarded the Cannes Jury Prize in 1971, one of the jurors apparently told Makk that although the film, and in particular the actors’ virtuoso performances, had greatly moved him, János’s incarceration required explanation, for it was highly unlikely that such an individual would have committed a serious crime. It is precisely the pointlessness of the prison sentence which constitutes one of the major narratives of the film: János’s release is never explained, neither to him, nor the viewer. In the taxi on his way home, the driver asks, ‘Politikai?‘ , a question János need not answer.

Discussion included the ways in which cinema placed broader historical concerns within ensemble dramas of individual lives, beginning with Szerelem and continuing throughout the 70s and 80s, and whether the viewer can pinpoint the era depicted in the film. Our conclusion was that, despite the use of terms such as kitelepítés (forced relocation, usually from cities to the countryside) and társbérlők (co-tenants), which would suggest the early 1950s, one cannot say for certain that Szerelem was not a contemporaneous document of Hungary in the late 1960s. Indeed, the trauma suffered by the characters could easily have taken place at any point in the interwar years. In any case, Makk and Tóth’s deliberate transpositions of past and present undermine any attempts to tie the film to any specific point in time.

The next film we shall watch will, naturally, be Makk’s Egy hét Pesten és Budán.

Further reading:

Déry Tibor, Szerelem és más elbészélések, Budapest, Szépirodalmi, 1963;
— ‘Szerelem’ in Irodalmi forgatókönyv. Filmkultúra, 3, 1967, 4, pp. 102-29;
Bikácsy Gergely, ‘Szerelem’, Filmtörténet online

Ópium, egy elmebeteg nő naplója (Opium – Diary of a Madwoman) – by János Szász, based on work by writer and psychiatrist Géza Csáth, won four awards at this year’s Hungarian Film Week, including best direction and best cinematography.

Benedek Fliegauf’s Tejút (Milky Way) – by the same director as Rengeteg (Forest) and A Dealer: a young talent of contemporary Hungarian experimental cinema.

Iszka utazása (Iska’s Journey) by Csaba Bollók, winner of the Best Auteur Film Award at this year’s Hungarian Film Week.

The Trap – a rather exciting Serbian-Hungarian-German co-production.

Past Imperfect – a series of short films of which one (18 mins) is titled Helenes (apparition of freedom), which ‘combines two examples of propaganda from east and west. A bleak Hungarian instructional film on nuclear attack is presented in its entirety, strategically subtitled with text from George Bush’s inauguration speech’.

For more information on dates, times and ticket availability, you can read more at the British Film Institute’s website.