Hungarian cinema has often been forced to tread a precarious and difficult path. Through the failed 1919 Revolution to the defeat of the 1956 Uprising and its aftermath, Hungarian filmmakers and their audiences have had to contend with a multiplicity of problems. In the 1960s, however, Hungary entered a period of relative stability and increasing cultural relaxation, resulting in an astonishing growth of filmmaking. Innovative and groundbreaking directors such as Miklós Jancsó (Hungarian Rhapsody, The Red and the White), István Szabó (Mephisto, Sunshine) and Márta Mészaros (Little Vilma, The Last Diary) emerged and established the reputation of Hungarian films on a global scale. This is the first book to discuss all major aspects of the history of Hungarian cinema and its place in the development of Hungarian society. The book also focuses on filmmakers as diverse and significant as Zoltán Fábri (The Storm, Fourteen Lives Were Saved) and Béla Tarr (Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies) and includes coverage of under-explored areas of Hungarian cinema, including avant-garde filmmaking, animation, and representations of the Gypsy and Jewish minorities.

John Cunningham teaches Film Studies at Sheffield Hallam University and at the London Centre, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.

2003
224 pages
978-1–903364–79–6    £16.99 (pbk)
978-1–903364–80–2    £45.00 (hbk)


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Introduction


reviews
‘A British author has written a monograph on Hungarian film for those in the English-speaking world. This is an ambitious work, claiming to offer a complete history of the Hungarian cinema from its beginnings to the present day, or, as its subtitle has it, ‘from coffee house to multiplex’. Here coffee house signifies not only the meeting-place of choice for fin-de-siècle society, but also the venue where Edison’s great invention was first tried out, in the Millennial Year of 1896. But in fact it offers more than this, by situating its nominal theme, the Hungarian movie, in a broad and richly layered social, political and cultural context. What is more, it also interprets ‘movie’ in a broad sense, dealing not just with films and their makers but taking in production and distribution, and even issues of reception and film criticism.
The author, who taught at a variety of Hungarian universities for many years, originally planned a book on Zoltán Fábri, but his publisher in England pointed out that as Fábri was little known in the West he ought to widen the horizon. Traces of the original plan survive here in the more detailed reviews and analyses devoted to Fábri’s oeuvre, and this is very welcome indeed. Fábri is a classic of Hungarian cinema but an underrated one, often falsely pigeonholed as merely a master craftsman of the art. Film, as is well-known, is not a genre that easily stands the test of time: today’s blockbusters are tomorrow’s discards; young people today laugh their heads off at the screen gods and goddesses of the past; ‘masterpieces’ showered with Oscars turn out to be unwatchable; and even when the favourite films of our younger days are shown again, we wonder what we saw in them then… With the films of Fábri, however, it’s just the reverse. Only now, with our vision no longer clouded by uncritical respect for “art films” or the “auteur”, can we see that he is no minor classic, that he is in fact a giant who created enduring classics of the Hungarian cinema in films like Körhinta (Merry-Go-Round), Húsz óra (Twenty Hours), Isten hozta, órnagy úr (God bless you, Major), or Az ötödik pecsét (The Fifth Seal). If Cunningham’s book were to bring him greater recognition, this alone will have made it well worth the writing.
I have no compunction in praising Cunningham’s book in at least two other respects. A look at the book’s list of sources immediately reveals how little material in English he had at his disposal: some half-a-dozen works on social history, some of them translated from Hungarian, and the two excellent histories of Hungarian film by István Nemeskürty, the first from as long ago as 1968, but even the more recent one (1985) now in its twentieth year. There is a reliable source of more recent work on sociology and history, as well as of critical views, in the Budapest-published Hungarian Quarterly, while some of the articles in the periodical Filmkultúra can now be read in English on the internet. With such a dearth of English-language material, this book assumes special importance, as a work of reference for both the foreign scholar and the aficionado.
In fact, Cunningham’s book is so good that – with only minor, obvious changes – it would be worth publishing in Hungarian, as there is simply nothing on the market offering an up-to-date survey of Hungarian cinema for the general public. Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing here that will set the Danube on fire. Cunningham relies on data and debate that is common currency among Hungarians in the field, unearthed, collected and already published – but largely for a specialist readership. What Cunningham has produced is a highly readable, very enjoyable book for the general reader interested in Hungarian film and, indeed, Hungarian culture more generally. His writing is refreshingly free of the hair-raising jargon of academe, with not a quotation from Derrida or formula from Virilio in sight. His language is lively, wholesome, in a Sunday-supplement tone if you like, and by no means lacking in wit.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well Cunningham negotiates the reefs of our traditionally emotive, domestic cruxes and controversies, such as the Populist-Urbanist debate, the issues surrounding the four-and-a-half-month Bolshevik republic of 1919, or the Jewish question. We tend to see these issues at home in the black-and-white terms of the ends of the liberal or conservative spectrum, while Cunningham quite naturally adopts the perspective of an Anglo-Saxon liberal on, say, the Jewish question, and strongly empathises with the justice of our national grievances on the matter of Trianon. Such knowledge and judiciousness cannot be learnt from books; I sense behind it many a long discussion, an open and unprejudiced approach to the facts, and a great deal of common sense.
The volume discusses the (film-)historical periods in chronological order, but dispenses with the latter in three chapters. Quite rightly he brings together documentary, animation, and experimental cinema in one chapter. More strikingly, he also devotes separate chapters to minorities (Jews, Gypsies and others) and to football (Foci, Fradi and the ‘Golden Team’). It is not merely interesting but extremely instructive to see how others see us, what the outside world considers important or noteworthy about us here in Hungary. As regards the minorities angle, there is further proof here that “the eyes of the world are upon us”, while the chapter on football – which considers such great films as Két félidó a pokolban (Two Half-Times in Hell) and Régi idók focija (Football in the Good Old Days) – confirms the experience of every Hungarian tourist, that you can come across people in the unlikeliest places, from the Scottish Highlands to New Zealand, who may be a little hazy about where Hungary is on the map, but can reel off all the tongue-twister names of the Golden Team at the drop of a hat ... I found nothing in the book to criticise: we really have nothing to complain about here, as our nation and our culture are reflected in the most positive terms in the mirror that the author holds up to us. Of course, we must not blame the mirror if it’s the line of the jaw that’s askew. None the less I am sure that this attractive portrait owes much to the craftsmanship of John Cunningham.’
Hungarian Quarterly

‘ Throughout its long and complex history, Hungarian cinema has been – more than the cinema of most other countries – intimately intertwined with the nation’s political and social upheavals. From its beginning under the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, through World War I and the brief communist insurrection that followed, then under the right wing governments of the 1920s and 1930s, the uneasy alliance with and then occupation by Nazi Germany in World War II, followed in turn by the Stalinist repressions of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the 1956 revolution, the “goulash Communism” and relative relaxation of cultural policies of the 1960s and 1970s, the decline and finally end of communist rule, and the free market policies that replaced the state-subsidized system in the 1990s – throughout all this turmoil Hungarian films have reflected and often commented on the country’s changing realities.
John Cunningham states that his intention is to provide a historical overview of these events and their impact on the country’s film production, rather than, as with most previous books on the subject, concentrating on the work of those directors who have made the greatest international impact – Miklós Jancsó, István Szabó, and Márta Meszáros in particular. He succeeds well in this task and the book benefits hugely from his first-hand knowledge of Hungary from long-term residence and teaching in the country … Among the directors, the greatest attention is paid to Zoltán Fábri, a currently unjustly-neglected figure in Cunningham’s view, and he sees several of Fábri’s films as landmarks in the opening up of controversial or taboo subjects for discussion. At the same time, Cunningham warns against the tendency of “Western” critics, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, to judge Hungarian films primarily in terms of their real or imagined “oppositional” content rather than their aesthetic values, leading, in my opinion, to the overvaluation by French critics in particular of the pedestrian stylistics of the films of Péter Bacsó, about whom Cunningham is guardedly approving. He does, however, pay due consideration to those films rightly considered among the nation’s finest achievements: Pál Fejós’s Spring Shower (1932), István Szót’s People of the Mountains/People of the Alps (1942), Géza Radványi’s Somewhere in Europe (1948), Fábri’s Merry-Go-Round (1956), Jancsó’s The Round-Up (1965), Szabó’s Mephisto (1981), and Mészáro’s series of Diary films (1984 onwards), among others.
The nine chapters dealing primarily with the country’s film history end with a largely optimistic view of the future, after the traumas of the 1990s when the country’s filmmakers struggled to cope with the drastic reduction in state subsidies and the need to make films that were profitable and could compete in the global marketplace, along with the challenges of Hollywood, television and video, and the decline in cinema audiences overall. Directors such as Béla Tarr have achieved a cult following abroad and newer filmmakers seems to be making the painful but necessary adjustments to the current financial and aesthetic realities.
The book is clearly written and avoids fashionable jargon … it can confidently be recommended as both a valuable introduction to the topic and an intelligent and sensitive account of the country’s achievements.’
Graham Petrie, Slavic Review

‘ In this lively and highly readable volume, Cunningham employs historical rigour and colourful observation to bring to life the complex development of one of Europe’s most interesting film cultures.’
Andrew James Horton, Editor-in-Chief, Kinoeye

'An accessible and enjoyable introduction to Hungarian cinema. I would not hesitate to recommend it to students of Central and East European Cinema and to others in search of approachable materials for undergraduates.'
Catherine Portuges, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

‘Cunningham excels in covering the political aspects (censorship, market, nationalisation, distribution) and the technique of the early films. He is first-rate on the films of the 1930s and WWII, and on Russian and German influences of the later films (1940–60) … His valuable sociological observations on Jews and Gypsies should be widely read. The book includes impressive footnotes, a long bibliography, and an appendix on émigrés and exiles … Though the treatment is scholarly, Cunningham’s graceful style makes his opinionated book one to read rather than dip into. Highly recommended.’
CHOICE

'The first satisfactory, comprehensive study of Hungarian cinema since the fall of the Iron Curtain. This is the first book in English to discuss significant aspects of Hungarian cinema such as avant-garde, animation and football films. The work includes a pronunciation guide and generous appendix. It should fascinate general readers and prove useful in film scholarship and historical, literary and cultural studies.'
TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT

‘John Cunningham’s Hungarian Cinema: From Coffee House to Multiplex offers a scholarly, well-written account of what can now be seen as an important national cinema. It is an important contribution to familiarising English-speaking audiences with Hungarian film … Cunningham sets out to open Hungarian film to a popular foreign audience. His emphasis is on making Hungarian film, its history and its meanings widely accessible to English readers, and this book offers a wide array of themes and perspectives without ever being inaccessible. Cunningham refuses to follow the trend of much contemporary film theory … The themes he explores range from tracing the history of Hungarian film through different decades, to analysis of the prominence of football films in Hungary, and includes attention to genres such as documentary, animation and avant-garde film. The book is an introduction, an initiating guide to Hungarian film, but one which presents its topic in all its historical, political and social complexity. Cunningham masters the tightrope walk between introducing Hungarian cinema to newcomers and being highly informative for specialists already familiar with the topic. This book is also absolutely up-to-date, covering more then a century of Hungarian cinema … Hungarian Cinema not only presents film history but maps out the last 100 years of Hungary’s history and culture in some detail, offering a good starting point for anybody interested in this country’s history and politics and their links to its cultural production … Hungarian Cinema document’s Hungary’s cultural, intellectual and political development over the last 100 years. It offers a thorough insight into Hungary’s manifold and uneven culture, and it introduces some aspects of a nation and its culture soon to join Europe more or less united, if still beset by problems of national, cultural and political identity. But then again, as the Hungarian might say: “So, we are going to join Europe. Will someone tell me where the hell have we been for the last thousand years?" – reminding us that actually what we are reading and learning in this book has always been a part of European history and culture.’
www.popmatters.com

‘John Cunningham’s study is an attempt to map out the history of Hungarian film from its early days to the present. Cunningham does not ground his study within a particular theoretical framework. He discusses Hungarian cinema using the framework of national cinematography that has largely been neglected in Eastern European film, hoping to provide relevant background for future research in this field.
Cunningham opens his study discussing the birth of the industry and the establishment of film studios and cinema networks in the closing stages of the Austro-Hungarian era. He provides a detailed, perceptive insight into the early careers of Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtis), Sandor Korda (Alexander Korda) and others who carved groundbreaking paths in this significant Eastern European cinematography.
The author places the end of the era, the revolution and the introduction of sound film in historical and socio-political contexts. The break-up of the dual monarchy, the loss of territories inhabited by ethnic Hungarians and the establishment of the short lived Republic of Councils, all played major roles in shaping Hungarian cinema. Cunningham discusses the nationalisation of the film industry during the Councils’ rule, the period when the state policy towards art, education and film was influenced by the Commissariat of Public Education and its leading ideologues, theoreticians Georgy Luckacs and Bela Balazs. Most of the film directors, Kertesz and Korda amongst them, continued their work under radically different condition during the rule development of the Hungarian cinema.
The departure of the first generation of filmmakers left a massive gap in the Hungarian film industry; it was deprived of most of its major talent. Cunningham maps out the consequences of the interventionist policies and censorship in the film, art and culture, as part of the right wing agenda in the interwar period. The shrinking of the market and the nationalisation of the cinema network in the lost territories also caused the closing of a large number of film studios in the 1920s. The re-emergence of Hungarian film in the early 1930s was marked by the advent of sound film and popular, escapist narratives. Cunningham provides a detailed account of the effect of the restrictive anti-Semitic laws on the industry. He also draws attention to the strong allegiances with German film studios and the appearances of Hungarian films at the newly established Venice Film Festival in fascist Italy.
The author also places particular emphasis on the work of producer Adolphe Osso and director Istvan Szots, who foreshadowed the emergence of Italian Neorealism and voiced creative dissent in “the atmosphere of cultural sterilisation, repression and monochrome nationalism”. His short account of Pal Fejos’ work in the 1930s and his 1940s series of anthropological films emerge as an inspiring call for a retrospective of this fascinating filmmaker.
Cunningham’s outline of the brief phase of post-war pluralism is informative and discerning, as is his discussion of the Stalinist era in which the bureaucratic apparatus took absolute control of the Hungarian film industry. This era drew to an end in the mid-1950s, with the emergence of Karoly Makk and Zoltan Fabri, whose films marked the departure from the concepts of socialist realism. Cunningham provides an in-depth analysis of Fabri’s films, Fourteen Lives Were Saved, Merry-Go-Round and Professor Hannibal.
He extensively elaborates on the developments following the relatively short period of oppression of 1956: the restructuring of the studio system, the beginning of co-production with countries outside of the Eastern Bloc, and the resurgence of the new generation of Hungarian filmmakers in 1960s. Miklos Jancso, Istvan Szabo, Marta Meszaros, Peter Bacso and others, were influenced by the French New Wave, Fellini, Bergman and Antonioni. They were prepared to address the themes previously treated as taboo subjects and develop styles different from those in the 1950s. Special emphasis is placed on Szabo’s Father, Jancso’s My Way Home and Bacso’s The Witness, and films re-examining the dark periods of Hungarian history, Kovacs’ Cold Days and Jancso’s The Round-Up, The Red and the White, Silence and Cry and Confrontation.
The transitional period in Hungary was marked by uncertainty and experimentation. However, in spite of yet another transformation of the studio system, the gradual decline of attendances and the rise of video distribution, in the closing decades of Communism, the Hungarian film industry managed to produce films covering an impressive spectrum of topics. Cunningham highlights Szabo’s most successful period, his “Central European Trilogy” (Mephisto, Colonel Redl, Hanussen). He discusses Fabri’s bleak, yet strangely compelling portrayals of Hungarian rural life (Balint Fabian Meets God, Hungarians), Bacso’s satires, Jancso’s uneven course throughout the 1970s, and the arrival of the newcomers, Zoltan Huszarik, Andras Jeles, Peter Gothar, Judit Elek and Bella Tarr.
Cunningham provides a thorough overview of radical transformations of the film industry in the years following the collapse of the old regime. The social makeover prompted some filmmakers to respond with light comedies, testing the box-office appeal to audiences hardened by harsh conditions and the existential insecurity of a society in transition. A number of directors are examining the character of social, economic and cultural changes that beset Hungarian society. Tarr continues with his uncompromising style and disregard for market demands in Satan Tango and Werckmeister Harmonies, while the generation of Ference Tarok and Benedek Fliegauf heralds new voices in Hungarian film. In the meantime, studio facilities and technical personnel have benefited from increase in foreign co-production. The initial decline in the number of cinemas and attendances has been showing sign of improvement, as in the modest rise in admissions for Hungarian films.
In the closing section of his study, Cunningham discusses the representation of Jews, Gypsies and other minorities in Hungarian films, provides and informed summary of experimental filmmaking and animation, and offers a unique and entertaining overview of football films as special feature of Hungarian cinema. These sections are followed by an overview of Hungarian film Diaspora, Resources and a Filmography that may assist any scholar or enthusiast of Central and Eastern Cinema in search of relevant material.'
Boris Trbic, Metro

'Towards the end of this stimulating and timely book, John Cunningham asks how many countries, large or small, can boast such a rich period of filmmaking as Hungary since the 1960s. It's a fair enough observation but, despite festival attention, the number of Hungarian films to reach Western audiences especially in the last ten years has been small, and the number of English-language books on Hungarian cinema can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Cunningham is probably the only English-language writer on Hungarian cinema to have lived and worked in Hungary for any length of time, and this reveals itself in his careful approach to history and the socio-political background. He makes it clear, in fact, that his book is a history of the industry "and its place within a particular society and culture" and not a collection of directors' biographies. The task of writing the history of a national cinema in a little over 200 pages is not easy, but he tells the story with clarity and balance. There are enlightening accounts of the origins of the industry before the First World War, the period of the Republic of the Councils (when such unlikely candidates as Sandor Korda [Alexander Korda], Mihaly Kertesz [Michael Curtiz], and Bela Lugosi worked for the world's first nationalized industry), cinema under the Horthy regime, and production during the Second World War. By bringing into focus such events as the Treaty of Trianon (when Hungary lost approximately two thirds of the lands ruled before 1918, including Transylvania), social conditions in the 1930s, the growth of antiSemitism and the uneasy alliance with Nazi Germany, Cunningham introduces the wider perspective that has often been missing from earlier accounts. Continuing political crises-the postwar period leading to the Stalinist show trials, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and its suppression -provide distinct markers in a story that leads to the almost unique flowering of the 1960s -called here, I think for the first time, the Hungarian New Wave.
Unlike similar developments in neighboring Czechoslovakia, which were suppressed after the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968, Hungarian cinema continued on its innovative course, enjoying a period of relative stability with a range of opportunity for often substantive (if permitted) political criticism. Here, as Cunningham observes, it is less easy to discern overarching patterns. Although touching on formal issues -particularly in his accounts of Istvan Szots's Emberek a havason [People of the Mountains, 1942], Zoltan Fabri's Korhinta [Merry-Go-Round, 1956], and Jancso - many of his later discussions of individual films are, inevitably curtailed, although always perceptive.
Cunningham's concern to avoid a "canonical" approach in favor of a broader picture allows him to take on issues of film writing and theory. It is good, for instance, to find the work of Bela Balazs and Gyorgy Lukacs integrated into the story as well as an instructive account of the "liberal censorship" of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Cunningham concludes that the state's role as "cultural policeman" from the 1960s onward was relatively relaxed, providing for a unique mix of state support and artistic initiative. He also makes the important point that, despite the very real problems of recent years, there is no clear division between the cinema pre- and post 1989.
The final chapters cover the traditionally neglected areas of documentary and animation and also include an excellent survey of the role of Jewish culture in Hungary and a more general account of relations with the Roma community. There's also a useful account of the cinema post-1989, drawing attention to the continuing divide between art cinema and the growth of a more commercial cinema popular with domestic audiences.
This, then, is a welcome addition to the literature on Hungarian cinema, and will provide a firm foundation for courses in Hungarian and Central European cinema as well as providing a useful adjunct to historical and political studies. Perhaps, more important, it will interest the reader who knows little of the subject, and it is to be hoped that, unlike its predecessors, it may generate further studies.'
Peter Hames, Slavic and East European Journal

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