Jancsó, Miklós

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Miklós Jancsó

Hungarian filmmaker Miklós Jancsó (born 1921) was a pioneer in what became known as his country's New Wave cinema of the 1960s. Drawing heavily upon his Central European nation's rich history and culture, Jancsó made a number of visually stunning epics during his peak years in the late 1960s, many of them set on the epic grassy plains that Hungarians revere as their heartland, Puszta. His 1967 account of Hungarian fighters during the 1918–1920 Russian civil war, The Red and the White, may be his best–known work outside Hungary. Guardian critic Derek Malcolm called it "a tour de force of a very special kind and a piece of cinema unlike anything else coming out of world cinema at the time."

Entered Film Industry

Jancsó was born in Vác, Hungary, on September 27, 1921. As a young man, he studied law at Kolozsvár University in Romania, earning his doctorate in 1944. Abandoning this career path for the arts, he went on to the Budapest Academy of Dramatic and Film Art, from which he graduated in 1950. He began his career as a director of the newsreels that were a movie–theater staple at the time, but by then Hungary was firmly entrenched within the Soviet sphere as a one–party Communist regime. Artistic innovation or experimentation could sometimes prove dangerous for creative types, and any form of expression was expected to hew to the standard political ideology, which promoted the more humanitarian ideals of the collective society over that of the more individualist spirit of free–market capitalism.

Jancsó stuck to making documentaries and short films early in his career. Titles to his credit, in translated form, include We Took Over the Cause of Peace, The Teachings of a Soviet Agricultural Deputation, and Comrades! Don't Put up with It. In 1957, he traveled to China and made four documentaries there. A year later, his first feature film, A harangok Römába mentek (The Bells Have Gone to Rome), was released. He followed it with several more, including 1959's Halhatatlanság (Immortality) and Oldás és kötés (Cantata), for which he also co–wrote the screenplay. "With his hypnotic, circling camera, the recurrent—some critics say obsessive—exploration of Hungary's past, and his evocative use of the broad plains of his countries' Puszta, Jancsó fashioned a highly individual cinema within the confines of a state operated film industry," asserted an essay in the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers.

Made Several Stunning Films

Critics consider Jancsó's 1964 film Igyjöttem (My Way Home) the start of his most intensely creative period. The story begins near the close of World War II, and features a Hungarian teenager traversing the countryside while attempting to return to his family. He is captured by Soviet Army troops, thanks to the German uniform he has donned to keep warm, and eventually makes his way out of the camp after befriending a Russian soldier. Only when he puts on a Russian uniform does his ordeal begin to end and he finds his way home. Jancsó followed this with Szegénylegények (The Round–up) in 1965, which was the first of his films to reach audiences outside of the Soviet bloc. Its story deals with the aftermath of Hungary's Kossuth rebellion in 1848, when nationalists attempted to throw off Austrian Hapsburg rule and establish a parliamentary government. The rebellion was brutally crushed, and Jancsó's film fictionalizes a round–up of peasants by Austrian military officers; the group is kept under close scrutiny in order to find out which ones had served as local leaders of the uprising. "There are informers everywhere, and neither side knows who or where they are," noted Malcolm. "All we know is that there will be no happy ending and that even the people we imagine to be heroes are flawed."

Jancsó's most admired film may be the 1967 classic Csillagosok, katonák (The Red and the White). The work was actually commissioned by Soviet cultural authorities as part of an Eastern European–wide commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution and the founding of the Soviet Union. A bloody civil war in Russia ensued, with foreign solders coming to the aid of the "reds," or Communists, while some Western governments provided aid to the newly dispossessed "White Russians" of the former aristocracy. Jancsó's film follows a brigade of Hungarians who join the battle near Russia's Volga River. "It is interesting considering the source of his commission that Jancsó refuses to choose to side with either the red or the whites but rather to present each as a mixture of compassion and understanding, barbarity and stupidity," asserted the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers essay. Malcolm also commended it, calling it a "portrait of pure mayhem. There are identifiable characters, but none of them are developed as either fascists or communists, and scarcely as human beings. They are merely pawns."

Jancsó made several more daring films in the late 1960s, including Csend és kiáltás (Silence and Cry), and Fényes szelek (The Confrontation), a 1969 project that ostensibly followed a group of Hungarian university students bitterly divided on political matters during a time of political crisis in the immediate post–World War II period. Yet the film had echoes of the student movement that was taking place at the time, even in Budapest. Another work from 1969 was Sirokkó (Winter Wind), a historical saga filmed in Yugoslavia that was a joint French–Hungarian production. Known for filming extremely long takes—a style of filmmaking that requires precise planning and faultless work from both cast and crew—Jancsó made this particular movie in just twelve shots. A subsequent film, 1972's Még kér a nép (Red Psalm), takes place on the Puszta and once again features a class struggle—in this case, a peasant uprising against landowners. It won him the Best Director Award at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

Active as Octogenarian

Jancsó went on to make dozens of other films, including a few in Italy that featured slightly more salacious scenes and themes. Few were ever seen in the West, save for the film–festival circuit. The passage of time did not slow his work habits: nearing the age of 80, he made an impressive trilogy that began with Pesten Nkem lámpást adott kezembe az Úr (Lord's Lantern in Budapest), a 1999 comedy that featured a pair of likable gravediggers, along with a heady mix of song, dance, and Hungarian cultural references. He continued the Kapa and Pepe saga in Anyád! A szúnyogok (Damn You! Mosquito) in which the pair become embroiled in a perplexing romantic triangle. "Non–Hungarians won't get a lot out of this seemingly improvised foolery, or out of the significant use of traditional and popular songs," wrote Variety's David Stratton. "But the freshness with which the venerable director handles this contemporary material certainly impresses."

The last in Jancsó's planned trilogy was Utolsó vacsora az Arabs Szürkénél (Last Supper at the Arabian Grey Horse), but the Kapa and Pepe duo proved so popular that he brought them back for two more films, including A Mohacsi Vesz (The Battle of Mohacs). Here, Pepe goes back in time to alter Hungarian history, specifically the outcome of a 1526 battle in which Hungary was truncated and Ottoman rule imposed. "Jancso cheekily turns history on its head for a satire on Hungarian illusions—still evoked by some modern–day nationalist pols—of the country becoming a world–class player," noted Derek Elley in a Variety critique. Though Jancsó's later works seem a drastic shift from his daring 1960s period, Malcolm commended his contribution to the cinema of Eastern Europe during a trying era, when innovation could ruin one's career. The best of Jancsó's works, the Guardian critic asserted, "bitterly analysed the history of his persecuted country and commented, too, on the nature of violence in more general terms. No one has tried quite the same thing in the same way, and that is his most formidable legacy."