Tamas Major Movies

This award-winning film by Ferenc Andras is a commentary on the nature of the older and younger generation in Hungary during the mid-'80s. Reb (Gyorgy Cserhalmi) stole his friend Makai's (Karoly Eperjes) passport in 1968 and took off for the U.S. Seventeen years later, he comes back to Hungary with a teen-age daughter in tow and starts in with his usual underhanded, sly schemes for making money. Makai is at first happy to see him, but that soon fades. Reb's ex-wife Mari (Mari Kiss) feels the same. Meanwhile, Makai's son is called up for the draft, and that leads Makai to make a poor decision about how to help him avoid military service. In contrast to Reb, Makai, and the younger set, the elders who experienced all the horrors of war seem like paragons of both wisdom and stability. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The second film in the trilogy made by director Istvan Szabo and actor Klaus Maria Brandauer -- hammocked between Mephisto and Hanussen -- Colonel Redl continues Mephisto's fascination with a man overwhelmed by history. In that film, Brandauer played an actor who tried to ignore the rise of the Third Reich, and here he's an ambitious military officer in pre-World War I Austria whose career path is set early on. In military school, he's forced to inform on a student who's the source of a practical joke; though he beats himself up for being a Judas, he soon realizes that to rise in the ranks he must overcome his peasant background and hide his homosexuality by ingratiating himself with his superiors. In time, he becomes Chief of Military Intelligence for the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Though he professes to hate politics and politicians, Redl also can't avoid them. When the leader for whom Redl is supposedly spying among the officer corps, draws up a list of who can't be exposed for traitorous activities (including Austrian nobles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Croatians, and even the usual scapegoats, Jews -- the aftershocks of the Dreyfuss affair are still rumbling), he tells Redl that he must find a double of himself, a Ukrainian. Now certain that he will be exposed, Redl surrenders to fate, quoting to his wife from Montaigne: "It's no sin to be involved. It's a sin to remain involved." Brandauer is a wonder as the self-loathing Redl, and Szabo's camera picks up every nuance on his expressive face. The film eschews music except for several party scenes, and the absence of a score is most effective in the final shots of Redl's fellow officers awaiting his fate. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

In this fast-paced satire, Ferenc Deak (Andras Kern) is a successful Hungarian writer persecuted by the police for reasons that are absurd, and his life goes downhill from there. While Deak is celebrating his most recent award (the Ovidon Prize for literature -- Ovidon is a contraceptive), the police crash his party and take him away to a tribunal where the charges of a murder committed in 1949 are brought against him. It does no good to note that he was born in 1950 -- the sins of the father, says the state, are not only visited on the son, but the son is a viable surrogate for the father's punishment as well. Social satire and spoofs of Hungarian behavior follow in quick succession as Deak's chances for escaping his unjust fate decrease with every passing minute. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Based on Klaus Mann's novel, Mephisto details the rise of a Faustian character who figuratively sells his soul in exchange for greatness. Hendrik Hofgen (Klaus Maria Brandauer, offering an electric performance) is the star of a state-funded theater department who tires of his job. Like his friends, he pays lip service to socialist ideals fashionable for artists of his time -- that is, until the Nazis rise to power. He then sees an opportunity to achieve his objective of fame: he will perform propaganda plays and thereby use the Nazis as a vehicle to spread his name across the country -- only too late does he realize his mistake. This well-adapted version of the book featured the first teaming of Brandauer with director Istvan Szabo; they would later reunite to make Colonel Redl and Hanussen. Brandauer first gained attention in the U.S. after the film's release and would be cast as the villain in Never Say Never Again as a result. ~ Jeremy Beday, Rovi

Director Geza Radvanyi returns to his native Hungary to finally film this WW II story of espionage and resistance activities that he had intended to do years earlier. The unlikely venue for the subversive, underground support needed to smuggle Jews, communists, and army deserters out of a Nazi-ruled Hungary, is a circus. The circus is run by a dedicated, brave woman who has also taken on the task of safely introducing German and Hungarian spies into Yugoslavia. The real activities of the circus are found out in Yugoslavia, but the woman and her workers are protected for awhile from any reprisals. As the end approaches, the circus seems to be in danger once again, this time from another sector of the Yugoslavian population. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A lonely older divorcee muses about her life and the hardships she has endured while fending off the romantic attentions of a callow youth of 19, who doesn't even know who Mussolini was. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Little deviations from the norm madden bureaucrats. In this Hungarian satire, bureaucrats who track these deviations in the general population are more than usually suspicious of individuals who, for instance, grow beards. When one of these deviants is a fellow bureaucrat, their indignation knows no bounds. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The subject of this bleak German historical film is the deterioration of the life of a man who failed to adapt to the changes in Austria after the World War I. Trotta (Andras Balint) is a minor nobleman, who, along with his peers, cheers the advent of the war. The war causes many financial reverses for his family, and his marriage becomes chaotic; his wife leaves him to live with a woman, though she comes back to his bed from time to time. As conditions worsen, he is forced to rent rooms in what had been his family's mansion. His wife, who had returned to live with him during a pregnancy, leaves again, and he contemplates suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Frigyes Karinthy (Zoltan Latinovits) is a Hungarian Jewish writer who begins to hear the sound of an oncoming train in this head. When the sounds reoccur, he goes in for a series of medical tests that reveal a brain tumor. He travels to Stockholm where he undergoes surgery with a local anesthetic. The operation scene provides a surrealistic dream sequence where a circus clown puts together a complicated machine. The writer then sees himself as an aristocratic judge who comments on his own writing and has flashbacks of his childhood. As he recovers, he spends the next two years completing the novel that is the basis for this film. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Andras Kovacs, a leading light of the new Hungarian cinema, brought his "docudrama" technique to his 1966 film Cold Days. The story deals with the systematic slaughter of Jews and Serbians by Hungarian fascists during World War II. Kovacs is not quite a revisionist historian, but he does cast doubt on the "official" interpretations of this horrible human-rights violation. Nor is the audience allowed to slip into complacency: it comes as a shock to discover that many of the characters whom we're rooting for turn out to be the villains! Both written and directed by Kovacs, Cold Days was originally released as Hideg Napok. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This feature from director Tamas Fejer is an attempt to satirize the bureaucracy of filmmaking in Hungary. When a failing writer gets an idea for a screenplay about an ex-con, he takes it to a producer. It is accepted and is intended to be shot as an artistic feature. Soon, the script passes through the hands of other writers, a production committee and several bureaucrats. The final product is a far cry from what the writer had originally intended. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi