A new book on Hungarian cinema is onlyto be welcomed, particularly as it is some years since previous accounts appeared (notably Jean-Pierre Jeancolas’ Miklos, Istvan, Zoltan et les Autres (1989), Graham Petrie’s History Must Answer to Man (1978), and István Nemeskürty’s Word and Image: History of the Hungarian Cinema (published in English in 1974). Coming some seven years after the changes, Bryan Burns’ book was an opportunity to update, re-assess, and go beyond many of the truisms and clichés which have often blighted writing about Hungarian, and East European cinema in general. Unfortunately, it is an opportunity missed. For although Burns has produced a worthwhile addition to the existing stock of Hungarian film literature in English, it falls short of what is required of such a work.
First, ironic in a work that is structured around chronology, the historical dimension is often missing or very “thin”. The book itself is in three sections: 1. The Beginnings and the 1930s; 2. The Great Generation, 1956–72; and 3. Our Contemporaries, 1972–95. Each section has a historical overview of two or three pages, followed by summaries of the lives and films of individual directors. The overviews, however, are generally inadequate and only occasionally complemented by information in the subsequent directors’ sections. Crucial events are sometimes given such cursory mention that the reader gains the impression they had no implications for film. For example, the 1919 Republic of Councils is only briefly noted, with no mention of the 31 films which were completed during the four-and-a-half months of the Council (some of which, of course, had been started prior to it). Perhaps even more surprising, Admiral Horthy is never mentioned, nor is Trianon, though the consequences of the Treaty must have had some impact on the market for Hungarian-language films. All in all, the reader is left with very little sense of the connections between history and film.
Second, the concentration on directoral input leaves little space for consideration of other aspects of cinema and filmmaking. We are told, for example, that, “by 1912, a film culture had begun to grow in Hungary” (p.1), but there are precious few details of what this entailed (e.g., film reviews in Nyugat as early as 1908, regular film columns in Pester Lloyd and journals such as A Mozi and Mozgófénykép Híradó, 1905). Likewise, there is no mention of Sándor Korda’s regular film column in the Budapest daily Világ (probably the first ever). And the list could go on. But the most damning criticism of Burns’ myopia regarding Hungarian film culture is the perfunctory discussion of the work of Béla Balázs. Despite being easily available in English, there is no engagement with his major theoretical writings (in particular Theory of the Film) nor his struggles with Party officialdom on his return to Hungary in 1945. Balázs had 11 film projects turned down in the immediate post-war years while, paradoxically, being revered in other countries —he was a visiting lecturer at Prague University, the Sorbonne, and was asked to become the head of East German film production. Consideration of these and related developments would have perhaps shed some light on the complexities and contradictions of post-war film production in Hungary. Nor is such information that difficult to get hold of. There is an excellent English-language account of Balázs (Béla Balázs: the Man and the Artist, by Joseph Zsuffa) and Filmvilág has published some of Balázs’ correspondence, to name only two possible sources.
Generally, in fact, the research behind this work is often quite limited. Amazingly, there appear to be no Hungarian-language references at all, though the author does use Italian and French, as well as English-language material. In the sub-section on Zoltán Fábri, for example, no use is made of the interesting interview with István Szabó in Filmkultúra 65/73 or the obituary articles in Filmvilág (XXXVII, 11. Nov. 1994). Section 2 of the book includes 128 notes, of these over 60 are from one source only—the Hungarofilm Bulletin, an English-language bulletin (now defunct) issued on behalf of the Hungarian film industry. While the Bulletin is extremely useful, the preponderance of references to it suggests that either the author simply didn’t know about other sources or had neither the time nor commitment to find them. Either way, citing phrases from István Nemeskürty or Yvette Biró is no substitute for scholarly research and the importance of critically reviewing past assumptions. When Biró writes (and Burns repeats) that Hungarian movies are “a means of destroying myths”, the question needs to be asked what, exactly, is she talking about? Repetition simply creates another set of myths or, worse, yet more clichés.
The sub-sections on the individual directors are the strongest part of Burns’ work. Directors such as Félix Máriássy, Pál Sándor, and Judit Elek, many of whose films are either nowadays neglected or relatively unknown in the West and, alas, sometimes in Hungary, are treated in detail. Predictably, Miklós Jancsó and István Szabó receive the bulk of the limelight and Burns’ ideas about the former are particularly illuminating and interesting. The directoral accounts are, however, often marred by a rather gushy, impressionistic style of writing which owes more to the world of literature than of film. Burns rarely uses words or phrases such as “pan”, “tracking shot”, “wide angle”, “close up”—in short, the stock in trade of filmmaking terminology. Instead of any detailed discussion of filmmaking techniques and approaches, we are offered a literary and imprecise flow of adjectives. We are asked to admire the “delicate pointedness of András Kovács” (p. 71); István Gaál’s “gloomy evocation of the age” (p. 83); Sándor Sára’s “eye for striking, self-conscious compositions” (p. 144); etc., etc.
As so often happens, the publishers have illustrated the book with production stills. For a volume costing £27 (!) with less than 200 pages of text, it is surely not remiss to ask why we couldn’t have been provided with frame enlargements taken from the actual films.