Miklós Jancsó
Encyclopedia
Miklós Jancsó is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter.
Jancsó achieved international prominence from the mid-1960s onwards, with works including The Round Up (Szegénylegények, 1965), The Red and the White
(Csillagosok, katonák, 1967) and Red Psalm
(Még kér a nép, 1971).
Jancsó's films are characterized by visual stylization, elegantly choreographed shots, long takes, historical periods, rural settings, and a lack of psychoanalyzing. A frequent theme of his films is the abuse of power. His works are often allegorical commentaries on Hungary under Communism and the Soviet occupation, although some critics prefer to stress the universal dimensions of Jancsó's explorations. Towards the end of the 1960s and especially into the 1970s, Jancsó's work became increasingly stylized and overtly symbolic.
, and Angela Poparad, a Romanian
. After graduation he studied law in Pécs
, receiving his degree in Kolozsvár (Cluj
) in 1944. He also took courses in art history and ethnography, which he continued to study in Transylvania. After graduating, Jancsó served in World War II
and was briefly a prisoner of war. He registered with the legal Bar but avoided a legal career.
After the war, Jancsó enrolled in the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest
. He received his Diploma in Film Directing in 1950. Around this time Jancsó began working on newsreel footage and reported on such subjects as May Day celebrations, agricultural harvests and state visits from Soviet overseers.
in 1955 to the official Chinese state visit in 1957. Although these films do not reflect Jancsó's aesthetic development, they gave the director the opportunity to master the technical side of film-making while also enabling him to travel around Stalinist Hungary and see firsthand what was happening there.
In 1958, he completed his first full-length feature film, The Bells Have Gone to Rome, which starred Miklós Gábor
. In the film a group of Hungarian schoolboys are pressured to join the army by Nazi Germans and fight against the Russians on the eastern front. As the schoolboys begin to learn about and understand the Nazi regime, they reject the Germans offer. Jancsó now dismisses this early work.
Jancsó then returned to documentary filmmaking, including a collaboration with his wife Márta Mészáros
. In 1959 he met Hungarian author Gyula Hernádi
, who collaborated on Jancsó's films until his death in 2005.
(Oldás és kötés) in 1962. The film starred Zoltán Latinovits
and Andor Ajtay
, and was written by Jancsó from a short story by József Lengyel. In the film Latinovits plays a young doctor with more humble roots who grows tired of his more intellectual life and career as a surgeon in Budapest. He decided to revisit his place of birth: his father's farm in the Hungarian plains and is affected by the connection to nature that he had forgotten in the city. He meets his former teacher, who reminds him of long forgotten childhood memories. In the end Latinovits learns to appreciate both his easy life in the city and the country life of his youth that made it all possible. The film received mixed reviews from film critics in Hungry, but won a prize from the Hungarian Critics Circle.
Jancsó's next film was My Way Home (Így jöttem), released in 1964. It was his first collaboration withscreenwriter Gyula Hernádi
and starred András Kozák and Sergei Nikonenko. In the film Kozák plays Jozak, a teenaged deserter of Hungary'sNazi-run army at the end of World War II. He is twice captured by the Russian army, where he is put in charge of watching over a flock of sheep. There he befriends a young Russian soldier (Nikonenko), who is dying of a stomach wound. The two friends, who cannot communicate through language, begin to act like young boys and innocently play games together, forgetting their roles of captor and prisoner. The Russian soldier finally dies of his wound and Jozak again begins his journey home, wearing his dead friend's Russian army uniform to stay warm.
While My Way Home had received modest international attention, his next feature in 1965, The Round-Up
(Szegénylegények), was a huge hit domestically and internationally and is often considered a significant work of world cinema. The film was again written by Hernádi and starred János Görbe
, Zoltán Latinovits
, Tibor Molnár
, Gábor Agárdy and András Kozák.
The Round-Up takes place shortly after a failed Hungarian uprising against Austrian rule in 1848 and the attempts by the authorities to weed out those who took part in the rebellion. The brutal, dictatorial methods depicted in the film were read as an allegory for the clampdown that happened following Hungary's failed 1956 uprising against Russian-imposed Communism. The film was shot in widescreen in black and white by regular Jancsó collaborator Tamás Somló. Although it is Jancsó most famous film, The Round-Up does not exhibit many of his trademark elements to the degree to which he would later develop them: thus, the takes are comparatively short and although the camera movements are carefully choreographed they do not exhibit the elaborate fluid style that would become distinctive in later films. The film does, though, use Jancsó's favorite setting, the Hungarian puszta (plain), shot in characteristically oppressive sunlight.
The Round-Up premiered at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival
and was a huge international success. Hungarian film critic Zoltan Fabri called it "perhaps the best Hungarian film ever made." Film critic Derek Malcolm
included The Round-Up in his list of the 100 greatest films ever made. In Hungary, the film was seen by over a million people (in a country with a population of 10 million).
Jancsó's next work The Red and the White
(Csillagosok, katonák, 1967) was a Russian-Hungarian co-production to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the October 1917 revolution in Russia. Jancsó, though, set the action two years later during the Russian Civil War and, rather than producing a celebration of the Communist's military struggle to control Russia, he made an anti-heroic film depicting the senselessness and brutality of armed combat. In the film, the Russian White army is depicted as being just as savage and murderous as the Soviet Red army. The Red and the White was eventually banned in the Soviet Union and not shown for decades. The film starred József Madaras
, Tibor Molnár
and András Kozák and was written by Jancsó.
Along with The Confrontation
, The Red and the White would have premiered at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival
, but the festival was canceled due to the events of May 1968 in France. Internationally this film was Jancsó's biggest success, and received critical acclaim in Western Europe and the United States. It won the Best Foreign Film award from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics
. Along with Red Psalm (1971) it is featured in the book "1001 Films You Must See Before You Die".
Jancsó the made Silence and Cry (Csend és kiáltás) in 1968. The film stars András Kozák as young revolutionary who goes into hiding in the country after the failed 1919 Hungarian Revolution. Kozák ishidden by a sympathetic farmer who is suspected by and constantly humiliated by the White Army. The farmer's wife is attracted to Kozák and begins to poison her husband. Kozák's morality compel him to turn the farmer's wife into the White Army. This was the first film that Jancsó shot with cinematographer János Kende and was co-written by Gyula Hernádi and Jancsó.
Also in 1968, Jancsó shot his first work in color, The Confrontation
(Fényes szelek, 1969). It also was the first film to introduce song and dance as an essential part of the film, elements that would become increasingly important in his work of the 1970s and his recent Pepe and Kapa films. The film stars Andrea Drahota, Kati Kovács
and Lajos Balázsovits
.
The film revolves around real events that took place when Hungry attempted to renovate its education system after the Communists came to power in 1947. In the film revolutionary students from one of the communist People's Colleges start a campaign to win over students from an older Catholic college. The campaign begins with songs and slogans, but eventually turns to violence and book burning.
Jancsó ended the decade with Sirokkó (Winter Wind) in 1969. The film starred Jacques Charrier
, Marina Vlady
, Ewa Swann, József Madaras
, István Bujtor
, György Bánffy and Philippe March. Jancsó and Hernádi wrote the script in collaboration with Francis Girod
and Jacques Rouffio
. The film depicts a group of Croat ancharcists in the 1930s who plot to assasinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.
(Még kér a nép, 1971), which won Jancsó the Best Director award at Cannes in 1972. Like The Round-Up, Red Psalm focuses on a doomed uprising.
In the latter part of the 1970s, Jancsó started work on the ambitious Vitam et sanguinem trilogy, but only the first two films, Hungarian Rhapsody
(Magyar rapszódia, 1978) and Allegro Barbaro
(1978) were made as critical reaction was muted. At the time, the films were the most expensive to have been produced in Hungary. During the 1970s, Jancsó divided his time between Italy and Hungary and made a number of films in Italy, the best known of which is Private Vices, Public Virtues (Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù, 1975), an interpretation of the Mayerling affair
. His Italian films, though, have been critically derided. Unlike Jancsó's 1980s films, there has been no general critical reassessment of his Italian works and they remain the most obscure part of his filmography.
The Tyrant's Heart (A zsarnok szíve, avagy Boccaccio Magyarországon, 1981) can be considered a transitional film between the famous historical works of the 1960s and '70s and Jancsó's later, more ironic and self-aware films. While it still has a historical setting (a 15th-century palace in Hungary), the film's ontological inquiry groups it more easily with the director's later period. The film deliberately undercuts the audience's ability to construct a notion of reality in the plot, which contradicts itself and includes many post-modern interventions to raise questions about its own manipulative nature.
His 1985 film Dawn
(A hajnal) was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival
.
Later in the decade, Jancsó dispensed with the historical rural settings of the Hungarian puszta
and shifted to contemporary urban Budapest. Thus Season of Monsters (Szörnyek évadja, 1986) became the first Jancsó film with scenes in of contemporary Budapest since Cantata 23 years earlier. Although this film is set in a contemporary environment, very little of it is set in the city and much of it still on the puszta. While some new visual tropes were introduced (including a fascination with television screens that show clips of later or earlier action in the film), others, such as candles and naked women, were preserved. In later films of the decade Jancsó continued to use the surrealistic-parodistic style he developed in "Season". These films - at last - are set in an urban environment.
Although some critics reacted positively (Season of Monsters, for example, won an honorable mention at Venice for creating "a new picture language"), critical reaction generally to these films was very harsh indeed, with some critics labeling them as self-parody. More recently, critics have been kinder to these dense and often deliberately obtuse films, with some considering his 1980s work to be his most compelling, but a full rehabilitation has been hindered by the fact that these works are very rarely screened.
(Nekem lámpást adott kezembe az Úr Pesten, 1999), which proved to a be a surprising come-back for the director. The film largely (but not entirely) dispenses with long takes and choreographed camera movements, and for this Jancsó started working with a new director-of-photography Ferenc Grunwalsky (who is also a director in his own right). The loose plot follows two gravediggers Pepe and Kapa as they try to make sense of the shifting realities of post-Communist Budapest. Despite mocking young Hungarians for their shallowness, the film proved a minor hit with them, helped by the performances by some of Hungary's top music acts in the film.
In the late 1990s, Jancsó's career revived with a series of improvised low-budget films that were witty and self-deprecating. As well as doing relatively well at the Hungarian box office for art house fare, these films have been popular with a new generation of younger viewers. The success of The Lord's Lantern in Budapest
has led to a succession of Pepe and Kapa films (six so far, the last in 2006 at the age of 85). Although all of these films are rooted in the present, recent ones have also seen Jancsó return to his earlier love of historical themes, including depictions of the Holocaust and Hungary's devastating defeat to the Ottomans in 1526, usually in the context of criticizing Hungarians for not understanding the meaning of their own history. These films are highly popular among young cinephiles, mainly for the post-modernist, contemporary approach to filmmaking, the black, absurd humor and the appearance of several popular alternative and/or underground bands and persons. Jancsó has also cemented his reputation by making appearances in a number of films. As well as appearing as himself in the Pepe and Kapa films, he has also had guest roles in works by young, up-and-coming Hungarian directors.
In addition to feature films, Jancsó has made a number of shorts and documentaries throughout his career and from 1971 into the 1980s also directed work for the theater. Miklós Jancsó has been honorary scholar at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest since 1988, and was an affiliate at Harvard between 1990 and 1992.
.
in 1958. In 1968 Jancsó met Italian journalist and script authoress Giovanna Gagliardo
in Budapest. They moved to Rome
, where he worked for nearly a decade, with occasional, short periods in Budapest. In 1980 he separated from Gagliardo and married film editor Zsuzsa Csákány in 1981. They had a son, Dávid, in 1982.
in Cannes
1972. In 1973 he was awarded the prestigious Kossuth Prize in Hungary. He received awards for his life work in 1979 and 1990, at Cannes and Venice respectively.
Jancsó achieved international prominence from the mid-1960s onwards, with works including The Round Up (Szegénylegények, 1965), The Red and the White
The Red and the White (film)
The Red and the White is a 1967 film directed by Miklós Jancsó and dealing with the Russian Civil War. The original Hungarian title, Csillagosok, katonák, can be translated as "Stars on their Caps" , which, as with a number of Jancsó film titles, is a quote from a song...
(Csillagosok, katonák, 1967) and Red Psalm
Red Psalm
Red Psalm is a 1972 film by Miklós Jancsó. The film's Hungarian title translated as And the People Still Ask, a quote from a poem by the Hungarian nationalist poet Sándor Petőfi.-Plot:Red Psalm centers around a small peasants' revolt in 1890...
(Még kér a nép, 1971).
Jancsó's films are characterized by visual stylization, elegantly choreographed shots, long takes, historical periods, rural settings, and a lack of psychoanalyzing. A frequent theme of his films is the abuse of power. His works are often allegorical commentaries on Hungary under Communism and the Soviet occupation, although some critics prefer to stress the universal dimensions of Jancsó's explorations. Towards the end of the 1960s and especially into the 1970s, Jancsó's work became increasingly stylized and overtly symbolic.
Early Life
Miklós Jancsó was born to Sandor Jancsó, a HungarianHungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and Angela Poparad, a Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
. After graduation he studied law in Pécs
Pécs
Pécs is the fifth largest city of Hungary, located on the slopes of the Mecsek mountains in the south-west of the country, close to its border with Croatia. It is the administrative and economical centre of Baranya county...
, receiving his degree in Kolozsvár (Cluj
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
) in 1944. He also took courses in art history and ethnography, which he continued to study in Transylvania. After graduating, Jancsó served in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and was briefly a prisoner of war. He registered with the legal Bar but avoided a legal career.
After the war, Jancsó enrolled in the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
. He received his Diploma in Film Directing in 1950. Around this time Jancsó began working on newsreel footage and reported on such subjects as May Day celebrations, agricultural harvests and state visits from Soviet overseers.
1950s
Jancsó first started directing films in 1954 by making documentary newsreels. Between 1954 and 1958 Jancsó made newsreel shorts whose subjects ranged from a portrait of Hungarian writer Zsigmond MoriczZsigmond Móricz
Zsigmond Móricz was a major Hungarian novelist and Social Realist. He was among the earliest significant literary figures writing in Hungarian.- Early life and education :...
in 1955 to the official Chinese state visit in 1957. Although these films do not reflect Jancsó's aesthetic development, they gave the director the opportunity to master the technical side of film-making while also enabling him to travel around Stalinist Hungary and see firsthand what was happening there.
In 1958, he completed his first full-length feature film, The Bells Have Gone to Rome, which starred Miklós Gábor
Miklós Gábor
Miklós Gábor was a Hungarian actor, most remembered for his roles in films Valahol Európában and Mágnás Miska. He was husband to Éva Ruttkai, and later Éva Vass.-Life:...
. In the film a group of Hungarian schoolboys are pressured to join the army by Nazi Germans and fight against the Russians on the eastern front. As the schoolboys begin to learn about and understand the Nazi regime, they reject the Germans offer. Jancsó now dismisses this early work.
Jancsó then returned to documentary filmmaking, including a collaboration with his wife Márta Mészáros
Márta Mészáros
Márta Mészáros is a Hungarian film director. She worked as an English Teachersmeaning? filmmaker in the 1960s, but in the following decade began making films drawing on the oppression of both state and gender...
. In 1959 he met Hungarian author Gyula Hernádi
Gyula Hernádi
Gyula Hernádi was an Hungarian writer and screenwriter. He wrote for 36 films between 1965 and 2005, mostly for director Miklós Jancsó...
, who collaborated on Jancsó's films until his death in 2005.
1960s
After contributing to the film Három csillag with Zoltán Várkonyi and Károly Wiedermann in 1960, Jancsó's next feature film was CantataCantata (film)
Cantata is a 1963 Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó and starring Zoltán Latinovits, Andor Ajtay and Gyula Bodrogi. A young doctor with peasant roots realises he has become gradually estranged from his own class and background after he returns to visit his hometown...
(Oldás és kötés) in 1962. The film starred Zoltán Latinovits
Zoltán Latinovits
Zoltán Latinovits was a Hungarian actor, arguably the most significant one of the twentieth century.-Early life:...
and Andor Ajtay
Andor Ajtay
-Selected filmography:* Two Girls on the Street * Orient Express * Two Wishes * Cantata * Imposztorok -External links:...
, and was written by Jancsó from a short story by József Lengyel. In the film Latinovits plays a young doctor with more humble roots who grows tired of his more intellectual life and career as a surgeon in Budapest. He decided to revisit his place of birth: his father's farm in the Hungarian plains and is affected by the connection to nature that he had forgotten in the city. He meets his former teacher, who reminds him of long forgotten childhood memories. In the end Latinovits learns to appreciate both his easy life in the city and the country life of his youth that made it all possible. The film received mixed reviews from film critics in Hungry, but won a prize from the Hungarian Critics Circle.
Jancsó's next film was My Way Home (Így jöttem), released in 1964. It was his first collaboration withscreenwriter Gyula Hernádi
Gyula Hernádi
Gyula Hernádi was an Hungarian writer and screenwriter. He wrote for 36 films between 1965 and 2005, mostly for director Miklós Jancsó...
and starred András Kozák and Sergei Nikonenko. In the film Kozák plays Jozak, a teenaged deserter of Hungary'sNazi-run army at the end of World War II. He is twice captured by the Russian army, where he is put in charge of watching over a flock of sheep. There he befriends a young Russian soldier (Nikonenko), who is dying of a stomach wound. The two friends, who cannot communicate through language, begin to act like young boys and innocently play games together, forgetting their roles of captor and prisoner. The Russian soldier finally dies of his wound and Jozak again begins his journey home, wearing his dead friend's Russian army uniform to stay warm.
While My Way Home had received modest international attention, his next feature in 1965, The Round-Up
The Round-Up (1965 film)
The Round-Up is a 1965 Hungarian film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was well-received in its home country, and was its director's first film to receive international acclaim.-Plot:...
(Szegénylegények), was a huge hit domestically and internationally and is often considered a significant work of world cinema. The film was again written by Hernádi and starred János Görbe
János Görbe
János Görbe :hu:Görbe János was a prominent Hungarian actor of film and theater...
, Zoltán Latinovits
Zoltán Latinovits
Zoltán Latinovits was a Hungarian actor, arguably the most significant one of the twentieth century.-Early life:...
, Tibor Molnár
Tibor Molnár
Tibor Molnár was a Hungarian film actor. He appeared in 96 films between 1948 and 1982.-Selected filmography:* Two Confessions * Two Half Times in Hell * The Round-Up...
, Gábor Agárdy and András Kozák.
The Round-Up takes place shortly after a failed Hungarian uprising against Austrian rule in 1848 and the attempts by the authorities to weed out those who took part in the rebellion. The brutal, dictatorial methods depicted in the film were read as an allegory for the clampdown that happened following Hungary's failed 1956 uprising against Russian-imposed Communism. The film was shot in widescreen in black and white by regular Jancsó collaborator Tamás Somló. Although it is Jancsó most famous film, The Round-Up does not exhibit many of his trademark elements to the degree to which he would later develop them: thus, the takes are comparatively short and although the camera movements are carefully choreographed they do not exhibit the elaborate fluid style that would become distinctive in later films. The film does, though, use Jancsó's favorite setting, the Hungarian puszta (plain), shot in characteristically oppressive sunlight.
The Round-Up premiered at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival
1966 Cannes Film Festival
The 19th Cannes Film Festival was held on May 5-20, 1966. To honour the festival's 20th anniversary, a special prize was given.-Jury:*Sophia Loren *Marcel Achard *Vinicius de Moraes *Tetsuro Furukaki...
and was a huge international success. Hungarian film critic Zoltan Fabri called it "perhaps the best Hungarian film ever made." Film critic Derek Malcolm
Derek Malcolm
Derek Malcolm is a British film critic and historian.Malcolm was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. He worked for several decades as a film critic for The Guardian, having previously been an amateur jockey and the paper's first horse racing correspondent. In 1977, he was a member of...
included The Round-Up in his list of the 100 greatest films ever made. In Hungary, the film was seen by over a million people (in a country with a population of 10 million).
Jancsó's next work The Red and the White
The Red and the White (film)
The Red and the White is a 1967 film directed by Miklós Jancsó and dealing with the Russian Civil War. The original Hungarian title, Csillagosok, katonák, can be translated as "Stars on their Caps" , which, as with a number of Jancsó film titles, is a quote from a song...
(Csillagosok, katonák, 1967) was a Russian-Hungarian co-production to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the October 1917 revolution in Russia. Jancsó, though, set the action two years later during the Russian Civil War and, rather than producing a celebration of the Communist's military struggle to control Russia, he made an anti-heroic film depicting the senselessness and brutality of armed combat. In the film, the Russian White army is depicted as being just as savage and murderous as the Soviet Red army. The Red and the White was eventually banned in the Soviet Union and not shown for decades. The film starred József Madaras
József Madaras
József Madaras was a Hungarian film actor. He appeared in 85 films between 1958 and 2006.-Selected filmography:* The Round-Up * The Red and the White * The Confrontation...
, Tibor Molnár
Tibor Molnár
Tibor Molnár was a Hungarian film actor. He appeared in 96 films between 1948 and 1982.-Selected filmography:* Two Confessions * Two Half Times in Hell * The Round-Up...
and András Kozák and was written by Jancsó.
Along with The Confrontation
The Confrontation (film)
The Confrontation is a 1969 Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.-Cast:* Andrea Drahota as Jutka Lantos...
, The Red and the White would have premiered at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival
1968 Cannes Film Festival
The 21st Cannes Film Festival was held on May 10 - 24, 1968, before being cancelled due to the turmoil of May 1968 in France.Peter Lennon's documentary Rocky Road To Dublin was to be the final film screened at the festival...
, but the festival was canceled due to the events of May 1968 in France. Internationally this film was Jancsó's biggest success, and received critical acclaim in Western Europe and the United States. It won the Best Foreign Film award from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics
French Syndicate of Cinema Critics
The French Syndicate of Cinema Critics has awarded 4 prizes - the Prix Méliès annually since 1946 to the best French film of the year. The Prix Léon Moussinac, awarded to the Best Foreign Film category was added in 1967...
. Along with Red Psalm (1971) it is featured in the book "1001 Films You Must See Before You Die".
Jancsó the made Silence and Cry (Csend és kiáltás) in 1968. The film stars András Kozák as young revolutionary who goes into hiding in the country after the failed 1919 Hungarian Revolution. Kozák ishidden by a sympathetic farmer who is suspected by and constantly humiliated by the White Army. The farmer's wife is attracted to Kozák and begins to poison her husband. Kozák's morality compel him to turn the farmer's wife into the White Army. This was the first film that Jancsó shot with cinematographer János Kende and was co-written by Gyula Hernádi and Jancsó.
Also in 1968, Jancsó shot his first work in color, The Confrontation
The Confrontation (film)
The Confrontation is a 1969 Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.-Cast:* Andrea Drahota as Jutka Lantos...
(Fényes szelek, 1969). It also was the first film to introduce song and dance as an essential part of the film, elements that would become increasingly important in his work of the 1970s and his recent Pepe and Kapa films. The film stars Andrea Drahota, Kati Kovács
Kati Kovács
Kati Kovács is a Hungarian singer and actress.She became first famous nationally in 1965 when she won the seminal TV talent show in Hungary “Who Knows What?”...
and Lajos Balázsovits
Lajos Balázsovits
Lajos Balázsovits is a Hungarian film actor. He appeared in 60 films between 1968 and 2006.-Selected filmography:* The Upthrown Stone * The Confrontation * Milarepa * Electra, My Love...
.
The film revolves around real events that took place when Hungry attempted to renovate its education system after the Communists came to power in 1947. In the film revolutionary students from one of the communist People's Colleges start a campaign to win over students from an older Catholic college. The campaign begins with songs and slogans, but eventually turns to violence and book burning.
Jancsó ended the decade with Sirokkó (Winter Wind) in 1969. The film starred Jacques Charrier
Jacques Charrier
Jacques Charrier is a French actor. He was married to Brigitte Bardot from 1959 to 1962.-Selected filmography:- External links :...
, Marina Vlady
Marina Vlady
Marina Vlady is a French actress.She won the Best Actress Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for The Conjugal Bed. From 1955 to 1959 she was married to actor/director Robert Hossein...
, Ewa Swann, József Madaras
József Madaras
József Madaras was a Hungarian film actor. He appeared in 85 films between 1958 and 2006.-Selected filmography:* The Round-Up * The Red and the White * The Confrontation...
, István Bujtor
István Bujtor
István Bujtor , born István Frenreisz, was a Hungarian actor, director, producer and screenplay writer- Biography :...
, György Bánffy and Philippe March. Jancsó and Hernádi wrote the script in collaboration with Francis Girod
Francis Girod
Francis Girod was a French film director, actor and screenwriter. He directed 20 films between 1974 and 2006. His film L'enfance de l'art was entered into the 1988 Cannes Film Festival...
and Jacques Rouffio
Jacques Rouffio
Jacques Rouffio is a French film director and screenwriter. His 1986 film My Brother-in-law Killed My Sister was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival.-Filmography as director:...
. The film depicts a group of Croat ancharcists in the 1930s who plot to assasinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.
1970s
In the late 1960s, Jancsó's films veered more towards symbolism, the takes became longer and the visual choreography became more elaborate. This found full fruition in the 1970s, when he took these elements to extremes. With regards shot-length, for example, Elektreia (Szerelmem, Elektra, 1974) consists of just 12 shots in a film lasting 70 minutes. This highly stylized approach (in contrast to the more realist approach of the 1960s) received widest acclaim with Red PsalmRed Psalm
Red Psalm is a 1972 film by Miklós Jancsó. The film's Hungarian title translated as And the People Still Ask, a quote from a poem by the Hungarian nationalist poet Sándor Petőfi.-Plot:Red Psalm centers around a small peasants' revolt in 1890...
(Még kér a nép, 1971), which won Jancsó the Best Director award at Cannes in 1972. Like The Round-Up, Red Psalm focuses on a doomed uprising.
In the latter part of the 1970s, Jancsó started work on the ambitious Vitam et sanguinem trilogy, but only the first two films, Hungarian Rhapsody
Hungarian Rhapsody (film)
Hungarian Rhapsody is a 1979 Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was entered into the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* György Cserhalmi as Zsadányi István* Lajos Balázsovits as Zsadányi Gábor* Gábor Koncz as Szeles-Tóth...
(Magyar rapszódia, 1978) and Allegro Barbaro
Allegro barbaro
Allegro barbaro, BB 63 , composed in 1911, is one of Béla Bartók's most famous and frequently performed solo piano pieces. The composition is typical of Bartók's style, utilizing folk elements...
(1978) were made as critical reaction was muted. At the time, the films were the most expensive to have been produced in Hungary. During the 1970s, Jancsó divided his time between Italy and Hungary and made a number of films in Italy, the best known of which is Private Vices, Public Virtues (Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù, 1975), an interpretation of the Mayerling affair
Mayerling Incident
The Mayerling Incident refers to the series of events leading to the apparent murder-suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera. Rudolf was the only son of Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria and Empress Elisabeth, and heir to the throne of the combined...
. His Italian films, though, have been critically derided. Unlike Jancsó's 1980s films, there has been no general critical reassessment of his Italian works and they remain the most obscure part of his filmography.
1980s
Jancsó's 1980s films were not successful and at the time some critics accused Jancsó of simply rehashing visual and thematic elements from his previous films. However, more recently these works have been re-evaluated and some critics consider this period to contain Jancsó's most important works.The Tyrant's Heart (A zsarnok szíve, avagy Boccaccio Magyarországon, 1981) can be considered a transitional film between the famous historical works of the 1960s and '70s and Jancsó's later, more ironic and self-aware films. While it still has a historical setting (a 15th-century palace in Hungary), the film's ontological inquiry groups it more easily with the director's later period. The film deliberately undercuts the audience's ability to construct a notion of reality in the plot, which contradicts itself and includes many post-modern interventions to raise questions about its own manipulative nature.
His 1985 film Dawn
Dawn (1985 film)
Dawn is a 1985 French-Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival.-Cast:* Serge Avedikian* Paul Blain* Christine Boisson as Llana* Philippe Léotard as Gad...
(A hajnal) was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival
36th Berlin International Film Festival
-Jury:* Gina Lollobrigida * Rudi Fehr* Lindsay Anderson* August Coppola* Werner Grassmann* Otar Iosseliani* Norbert Kückelmann* Francoise Maupin* Rosaura Revueltas* Naoki Togawa* Jerzy Toeplitz-Films in competition:...
.
Later in the decade, Jancsó dispensed with the historical rural settings of the Hungarian puszta
Puszta
Puszta is a steppe biome on the Great Hungarian Plain around the River Tisza in the eastern part of Hungary as well as on the western part of Hungary and in the Austrian Burgenland. The Hungarian puszta is an enclave of the Eurasian Steppe....
and shifted to contemporary urban Budapest. Thus Season of Monsters (Szörnyek évadja, 1986) became the first Jancsó film with scenes in of contemporary Budapest since Cantata 23 years earlier. Although this film is set in a contemporary environment, very little of it is set in the city and much of it still on the puszta. While some new visual tropes were introduced (including a fascination with television screens that show clips of later or earlier action in the film), others, such as candles and naked women, were preserved. In later films of the decade Jancsó continued to use the surrealistic-parodistic style he developed in "Season". These films - at last - are set in an urban environment.
Although some critics reacted positively (Season of Monsters, for example, won an honorable mention at Venice for creating "a new picture language"), critical reaction generally to these films was very harsh indeed, with some critics labeling them as self-parody. More recently, critics have been kinder to these dense and often deliberately obtuse films, with some considering his 1980s work to be his most compelling, but a full rehabilitation has been hindered by the fact that these works are very rarely screened.
1990s and 2000s
In the early 1990s, Jancsó made two films that thematically can be grouped with the works from the 1980s, God Walks Backwards (Isten hátrafelé megy, 1990) and Blue Danube Waltz (Kék Duna keringő, 1991). Although they continue the work of the previous decade, they are also reactions to the Hungary's new post-Communist reality and explore the inherent power struggles. After a long break from making full-length features, Jancsó returned with The Lord's Lantern in BudapestThe Lord's Lantern in Budapest
The Lord's Lantern in Budapest is a 1999 Hungarian film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was Hungary's official Best Foreign Language Film submission at the 72nd Academy Awards, but did not manage to receive a nomination.-Cast:*Zoltán Mucsi ... Kapa...
(Nekem lámpást adott kezembe az Úr Pesten, 1999), which proved to a be a surprising come-back for the director. The film largely (but not entirely) dispenses with long takes and choreographed camera movements, and for this Jancsó started working with a new director-of-photography Ferenc Grunwalsky (who is also a director in his own right). The loose plot follows two gravediggers Pepe and Kapa as they try to make sense of the shifting realities of post-Communist Budapest. Despite mocking young Hungarians for their shallowness, the film proved a minor hit with them, helped by the performances by some of Hungary's top music acts in the film.
In the late 1990s, Jancsó's career revived with a series of improvised low-budget films that were witty and self-deprecating. As well as doing relatively well at the Hungarian box office for art house fare, these films have been popular with a new generation of younger viewers. The success of The Lord's Lantern in Budapest
The Lord's Lantern in Budapest
The Lord's Lantern in Budapest is a 1999 Hungarian film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was Hungary's official Best Foreign Language Film submission at the 72nd Academy Awards, but did not manage to receive a nomination.-Cast:*Zoltán Mucsi ... Kapa...
has led to a succession of Pepe and Kapa films (six so far, the last in 2006 at the age of 85). Although all of these films are rooted in the present, recent ones have also seen Jancsó return to his earlier love of historical themes, including depictions of the Holocaust and Hungary's devastating defeat to the Ottomans in 1526, usually in the context of criticizing Hungarians for not understanding the meaning of their own history. These films are highly popular among young cinephiles, mainly for the post-modernist, contemporary approach to filmmaking, the black, absurd humor and the appearance of several popular alternative and/or underground bands and persons. Jancsó has also cemented his reputation by making appearances in a number of films. As well as appearing as himself in the Pepe and Kapa films, he has also had guest roles in works by young, up-and-coming Hungarian directors.
In addition to feature films, Jancsó has made a number of shorts and documentaries throughout his career and from 1971 into the 1980s also directed work for the theater. Miklós Jancsó has been honorary scholar at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest since 1988, and was an affiliate at Harvard between 1990 and 1992.
Politics
During the Communist era Jancsó was often criticized for being formalist, nationalist and generally against the Socialist ideology. From the 1990s onwards Jancsó became known for loudly supporting Hungarian liberal party SZDSZ. Many of his claims, like his wry dismissal of Hungary and its history made him a somewhat controversial figure. He also campaigns for the legalization of cannabisCannabis
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
.
Personal Life
He married Katalin Wowesznyi in 1949; their two children are Nyika (Miklós Jancsó Jr., b.1952) and Babus (Katalin Jancsó, b.1955). After divorcing Wowesznyi, he married film director Márta MészárosMárta Mészáros
Márta Mészáros is a Hungarian film director. She worked as an English Teachersmeaning? filmmaker in the 1960s, but in the following decade began making films drawing on the oppression of both state and gender...
in 1958. In 1968 Jancsó met Italian journalist and script authoress Giovanna Gagliardo
Giovanna Gagliardo
Giovanna Gagliardo is an Italian film director and screenwriter. Her 1982 film Via degli specchi was entered into the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* The Assassin...
in Budapest. They moved to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, where he worked for nearly a decade, with occasional, short periods in Budapest. In 1980 he separated from Gagliardo and married film editor Zsuzsa Csákány in 1981. They had a son, Dávid, in 1982.
Awards
He was awarded Best Director for Red PsalmRed Psalm
Red Psalm is a 1972 film by Miklós Jancsó. The film's Hungarian title translated as And the People Still Ask, a quote from a poem by the Hungarian nationalist poet Sándor Petőfi.-Plot:Red Psalm centers around a small peasants' revolt in 1890...
in Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
1972. In 1973 he was awarded the prestigious Kossuth Prize in Hungary. He received awards for his life work in 1979 and 1990, at Cannes and Venice respectively.
Features
- 1958 The Bells Have Gone to Rome
- 1962 CantataCantata (film)Cantata is a 1963 Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó and starring Zoltán Latinovits, Andor Ajtay and Gyula Bodrogi. A young doctor with peasant roots realises he has become gradually estranged from his own class and background after he returns to visit his hometown...
- 1964 My Way Home
- 1965 The Round-UpThe Round-Up (1965 film)The Round-Up is a 1965 Hungarian film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was well-received in its home country, and was its director's first film to receive international acclaim.-Plot:...
- 1967 The Red and the WhiteThe Red and the White (film)The Red and the White is a 1967 film directed by Miklós Jancsó and dealing with the Russian Civil War. The original Hungarian title, Csillagosok, katonák, can be translated as "Stars on their Caps" , which, as with a number of Jancsó film titles, is a quote from a song...
- 1968 Silence and Cry
- 1969 Decameron '69
- 1969 The ConfrontationThe Confrontation (film)The Confrontation is a 1969 Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.-Cast:* Andrea Drahota as Jutka Lantos...
- 1969 Sirokkó
- 1970 Égi bárány
- 1970 La pacifista
- 1971 La tecnica e il rito (TV)
- 1972 Red PsalmRed PsalmRed Psalm is a 1972 film by Miklós Jancsó. The film's Hungarian title translated as And the People Still Ask, a quote from a poem by the Hungarian nationalist poet Sándor Petőfi.-Plot:Red Psalm centers around a small peasants' revolt in 1890...
- 1974 Roma rivuole Cesare (TV)
- 1975 Electra, My Love
- 1976 Private Vices, Public Virtues
- 1978 Hungarian RhapsodyHungarian Rhapsody (film)Hungarian Rhapsody is a 1979 Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was entered into the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* György Cserhalmi as Zsadányi István* Lajos Balázsovits as Zsadányi Gábor* Gábor Koncz as Szeles-Tóth...
- 1979 Allegro barbaro
- 1981 The Tyrant's Heart
- 1984 Faustus doktor boldogságos pokoljárása (TV mini-series)
- 1984 Omega, Omega, Omega (TV movie)
- 1986 DawnDawn (1985 film)Dawn is a 1985 French-Hungarian drama film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival.-Cast:* Serge Avedikian* Paul Blain* Christine Boisson as Llana* Philippe Léotard as Gad...
- 1987 Season of Monsters
- 1989 Jesus Christ's Horoscope
- 1991 God Walks Backwards
- 1992 Blue Danube Waltz
- 1999 The Lord's Lantern in BudapestThe Lord's Lantern in BudapestThe Lord's Lantern in Budapest is a 1999 Hungarian film directed by Miklós Jancsó. It was Hungary's official Best Foreign Language Film submission at the 72nd Academy Awards, but did not manage to receive a nomination.-Cast:*Zoltán Mucsi ... Kapa...
- 2000 Anyád! A szúnyogok
- 2001 Last Supper at the Arabian Gray Horse
- 2002 Wake Up, Mate, Don't You Sleep
- 2004 A mohácsi vész
- 2006 Ede megevé ebédem
- 2010 So Much for Justice!
Documentaries and Shorts
- 1960 Three Stars
- 1965 Jelenlét (short)
- 1966 Közelröl: a vér (short)
- 1968 Vörös május
- 1970 Füst
- 1977 Laboratorio teatrale di Luca Ronconi (TV documentary)
- 1978 Második jelenlét (documentary short)
- 1984 Muzsika (TV movie)
- 1986 Harmadik jelenlét (documentary short)
- 1997 Hösök tere - régi búnk és... I (short)
- 1994 A Kövek üzenete - Máramaros (documentary)
- 1994 Message of Stone - Budapest (documentary)
- 1996 Szeressük egymást, gyerekek! (segment "Anagy agyhalal/The Great Brain Death")
- 1997 Hösök tere - régi búnk és... II (short)
- 1997 Játssz, Félix, játssz! (documentary)
- 1997 Hösök tere - régi búnk és... I (short)
- 1998 Sír a madár
- 2004 Európából Európába (documentary short) (segment 3)
Newsreel documentaries
- 1950 Kezünkbe vettük a béke ügyét
- 1951 A szovjet mezögazdasági küldöttek tanításai
- 1952 A 8. szabad május 1
- 1953 Közös után
- 1953 Arat az orosházi Dózsa
- 1954 Ösz Badacsonyban
- 1954 Galga mentén
- 1954 Emberek! Ne engedjétek!
- 1954 Éltetö Tisza-víz
- 1954 Egy kiállítás képei
- 1955 Varsói világifjúsági talákozó I-III
- 1955 Emlékezz, ifjúság!
- 1955 Egy délután Koppánymonostorban
- 1955 Angyalföldi fiatalok
- 1956 Móricz Zsigmond 1879-1942
- 1957 Színfoltok Kínából
- 1957 Peking palotái
- 1957 Kína vendégei voltunk
- 1957 Dél-Kína tájain
- 1957 A város peremén
- 1958 Derkovits Gyula 1894-1934
- 1959 Izotópok a gyógyászatban
- 1959 Halhatatlanság
- 1960 Az eladás müvészete
- 1961 Indiántörténet
- 1961 Az idö kereke
- 1961 Alkonyok és hajnalok
- 1963 Hej, te eleven fa...
External links
- Jancsó's biography at Hungary.hu
- http://www.kakanien.ac.at/weblogs/kineast/1119203530
- http://www.jancso.film.hu/index.ivy