Although his first films offered sympathetic explorations of the human characters, his later works became increasingly concerned with the use of imagery for its own sake. Many of Jancsó’s films examine the terrible aftermath of war. In 1963, he earned international acclaim for his medical drama Oldás és kötés/Cantata (1963). The film is one of the few in Jancsó’s repertoire that does not reflect his signature style. Jancsó began filming numerous newsreels and documentary shorts until 1958, when he made his feature debut with A Harangok Rómába Mentek/The Bells Have Gone to Rome (1958). He spent several years in Transylvania doing ethnographic research before enrolling in Budapest’s Academy of Dramatic and Film Art, where he graduated in 1950. The director tends to place actors in geometric patterns that mirror the landscapes around them.īorn in Vac, Hungary, Jancsó studied ethnography and art history while earning his law degree in 1944. Imagery is more important than dialogue, which is used sparingly to encourage audiences to contemplate Jancsó’s underlying messages. These films best reflect Jancsó’s tendency toward abstraction and contain a distinctive combination of revolutionary viewpoints and highly structured, formal cinematic style. It swirls joyfully, it can be intense and grim, and it has its quiet lyrical patches too a ladybird flies into the air and the heroine has her dreams.Ī key figure in the development of the new Hungarian cinema, filmmaker Jancsó Miklós earned international recognition for his films Szegénylegények/The Round-Up (1965), Csillagosok Katonák/The Red and the White (1967), and Csend és Kiáltás/Silence and Cry (1968). There’s some social comment over the preferability of collectives to greedy individualism but this is a film that doesn’t bog down in politics. He knows what he wants, and he will not be put off by social conventions and some oppressive patriarch….He will make his own destiny, and there’s a slight physical resemblance to Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, even his eyebrows are tough as he stands before us in close-up. So the course of true love is far from smooth, things are looking bleak indeed, the heroine is sliding into the slough of despond, but her true sweetheart is made of stern stuff. Never mind that the not so likeable fiancé has already tried it on with our heroine, taking physical rights for granted and been rebuffed. His mind is set on financial betterment, and her engagement to a more appropriate business-minded fellow “land marries land”. But her stern father does not approve of such cavortings at all. Suggestions welcome.Ī young woman is enjoying the exhilarating freedom of flying through the air on rides at the fair with her impish jolly friends and a young man she’s taken a liking to.