Denes Ujlaky Movies

In 1956, there was an uprising of Hungarians against their Russian overlords, which the Russians briefly allowed to flower and then ruthlessly suppressed. One suspects that the country's rulers knew about the uprising in advance and permitted it to continue so as to be able to identify who was most actively involved. In this film, it is 1958, and five very different men are waiting in their prison cells to be taken out and executed. Their dreams, fantasies and recollection relieve what might otherwise seem to be an unnecessarily repetitive situation. The internationally known French star Matthieu Carrière plays one of the condemned men. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Life's small maelstroms invade a family and those in their apartment building in this off-color comedy by Gyorgy Szomjas. After a young and lugubrious husband (Janos Ban) becomes exasperated with his boss, he decides to quit work and look for something more interesting. He finds it in a gorgeous new neighbor (Renata Szatler) who makes him forget his married state. The unemployed husband starts up his own service as a wall driller for people who need to hang up heavy pictures and other objects. It is while working in that capacity that he gets to know his lovely neighbor in the biblical sense of the term. Meanwhile, prostitution is springing up as a means for new mothers home on leave to add to the family coffers. In general, the architecturally dull housing block has some pretty wild characters living behind its cement block walls. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This 1983 TV adaptation of Gaston Leroux's 1908 novel Phantom of the Opera was the fourth film version of the vintage chiller--and the one with perhaps the highest rate of digression from the original novel. This version is set in Budapest (where it was filmed) rather than Paris, obliging scripter Sherman Yellen to change all the character names. Protagonist Maximillian Schell is an orchestra leader whose singer wife Jane Seymour commits suicide after receiving a devastatingly bad review. Assaulting the critic, Schell is burned with acid, and scurries away to the catacombs beneath the Budapest opera house. Years later, he has become the never-seen Phantom of the Opera, and from his shadowy "home" he is coaching an aspiring young singer--who is the living image of his late wife (Jane Seymour essays both roles). Not so much a remake as a revision, this 1983 Phantom of the Opera is perhaps the most obscure of all the versions, overshadowed by the 1990 two-part TV adaptation starring Michael Caine, as well as the smash Broadway musical. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi