Gyula Hernadi Movies

After their success in Nekem Lampast Adott Kezembe Az Ur Pesten and Anyad! A Szunyogok, Zoltan Musci and Peter Scherer make their third appearance together as dancing grave diggers Kapa and Pepe in this idiosyncratic musical comedy. As Kapa and Pepe pass their time in Heroes' Square in Budapest, they find themselves confronted by members of a number of political and social groups, including a gang of Hungarian wiseguys, a handful of right-wing extremists, and a faction of leftist radicals. But no matter how hard they try, Kapa and Pepe can't seem to fit in with any of them, finding their dancing works best on its own. Utolso Vacsora Az Arabs Szurkenel was directed by veteran filmmaker Miklos Jansco, who was 80 years old when the film was released. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Experimental filmmaker and elder statesman Miklós Jancsó's surreal allegory about the present stands out with its twisted humor -- a cemetery is the film's starting point and leitmotif. The protagonists, Kapa and Pepe, are two gravediggers who sit on a little bench in the cemetery and while away the time fooling around with the world (including Jancsó and screenwriter Gyula Hernadi, who appear as themselves). The gravediggers are at the same time hoodlums, bankers, lawyers, nouveau riche, bankrupt entrepreneurs and terrorists. One thing is certain; they are indestructible. They are like the director and the screenwriter, who get shot because their names are on a list, but little do they care. In the meanwhile, the audience is greatly entertained with a lot of humor. Instead of a story, there are several episodes, and life, death, success and failure, philosophy, humor and satire are all mixed in these seemingly disconnected episodes. What connects them is the locale; they all take place in Budapest, where anything can happen. Nekem Lampast Adott Kezembe az ur Pesten earned the Gene Moskowitz foreign critics award at the 30th Annual Hungarian Film Week festival in 1999 and it was also screened as part of the International Forum of New Cinema section of the 49th Berlin Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi

Zoltai (Andras Balint) is a Hungarian professor who returns home after a visit to the United States. Following a television interview, he commits suicide and leaves a note for his longtime friend Dr. Bardocz (Gyorgy Cserhalmi).The doctor and Zoltai's colleague Komindi (Jozsef Madaras) join the police in investigating what drove the man to suicide in this surrealistic drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

In this provocative Hungarian melodrama, a clothing designer becomes obsessed with learning the truth about a young French woman. The designer is convinced that this young girl is the daughter she gave up for adoption many years before. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Hungarian Rhapsody (Magyar Rapszodia) is the first chapter of director Miklos Jancso's two-part dramatized history of Hungary, from the turn of the century, to World War II. The story is told from the vantage point of Gyorgy Cserhalmi, the son of a wealthy landowner. During World War I, Cserhalmi is instrumental in quelling an army mutiny. Upon realizing that he has been responsible for the deaths of several peasant conscripts, Cserhalmi vows to be a "man of the people" when hostilities cease. He joins a communist cell, but finds he is woefully out of place. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Cserhalmi's political viewpoint is governed almost exclusively by his vacillating emotions. The film is enhanced with a "Russian Roulette" leitmotif, not unlike the fatalistic throughline of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. Director Jancso followed Hungarian Rhapsody with Allegro Barbaro; both films were originally released in tandem, then redistributed as separate features. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Janos (Jan Nowicki) is a factory foreman, who is smitten by the beauty of Juli (Lili Monori) and begins a romance with her. Incredibly jealous from the outset, he becomes quite abusive when he discovers she has a child, whom her parents are raising. Nonetheless, he presses her to marry him, and she consistently refuses. Later, he discovers that the father of her child is a friend of his, and he heaps her with abuse in the presence of his wealthy parents. Even though he has made her pregnant once again, she still refuses to marry her, despite his pleas and threats. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Most movies are composed of many small snippets of film which are spliced together, connected by "wipes," and "dissolves" and any number of other clever techniques which move the eye (and the story) from one piece of film to the next without being too obtrusive. Renowned Hungarian director Miklos Jancso has instead shot this film recounting the classical story of Electra's revenge in about nine long "takes." This is a technical feat of some magnitude; it is all the more remarkable because he makes it seem perfectly natural to the story, which is told in an allegorical and highly symbolic fashion, mixing primitive Greek settings with modern ones. In it, the woman Electra seeks vengeance for the murder of her father. Due to the highly abstract form of storytelling used, this film might best be appreciated by those who have studied or have knowledge of the original Greek myth on which it is based. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Red Psalm, or Még kér a nép (literally: "The People Still Ask") is one of the great Hungarian film director Miklos Jancso's best-known films. It recounts quite poetically the story of a peasant uprising on an estate in Hungary in the 1890s. It examines the nature of revolt, and the issues of morality and violence. This film uses symbolic imagery and language involving the color red to great effect and was filmed in a virtuoso manner, using only 28 shots. Reviewers reported that Jancso's storytelling technique most closely resembled that used in ballet. The pacifistic peasants, who seek some basic rights, are in a standoff with local authorities and later, the army. Everyone takes a break in the confrontation in order to celebrate a festival. Afterwards, the peasants resume their strike and meet with a tragic end. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This highly symbolic and enigmatic political drama by Hungarian director Miklos Jancso was produced by a consortium from Italy, France and West Germany. This film is considered to be an homage to Antonioni as it uses his favorite leading actress (Monica Vitti) and his cameraman Carlo di Palma. This film was made during a time when Jancso was not allowed to make films in his native Hungary. In the middle of the crowd, while covering an Italian political protest by leftists, The Journalist (Monica Vitti), a pacifist, finds herself surrounded by a quite different group of people who jostle her, remove her recording equipment from her and set her car on fire. She complains to the police about this. However, when the police bring one of the young men before her for her to identify him, she says he is not one of her attackers. This leads to her having a romantic relationship with the young man. The group, and the young man, are young Italian neo-fascists, and the young man has been given the job of assassinating a leftist. He is too gentle to do this, and his group kills him right before The Journalist's eyes. She goes to the police again, but they begin to believe that she is insane, even when she is forced to kill her boyfriend's assailants right there in the police station. She is formally declared mad, and is taken off. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This feature follows the student unrest that gripped Hungary in the wake of the 1947 socialist revolution. Scores of students are now able to attend college. Students march in an organized parade and push police into the water. They try to convince students at a parochial school to join them. Dialogue ensues, a student starts to sing old folk songs, and the young police chief counters with folk dancers. When students from the religious school are arrested, the situation verges on violence. Discussions of revolution and reform dominate the dialogue between the two factions who are equally concerned with local and world events. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Miklos Jancso has said, "To show things in bright colors is devastating." In Csillagosok, Katonak, he examines Hungarians fighting in the Red Army in 1918 during the bloody civil war in Russia. Utilizing horizontal compositions of vast landscapes and lateral tracking shots in a widescreen frame to depict the spaces between two great armies massed against each other, he makes no value judgments for a war in which guilt is shared by both sides in the conflict. The film details a Hungarian unit supporting the Red Army against the counter-revolutionary White army on the banks of the Volga. Jancso adds distinct touches like a White army officer casually tweaking his nose before ordering a mass execution and a doomed romance between a Magyar and a Polish nurse. Through all the confused violence and conflicting emotions, a stoical head nurse must tend to both Red and White army wounded. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi