Somewhere in Europe

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Movie
German title Somewhere in Europe
Original title Valahol Európában
Country of production Hungary
original language Hungarian
Publishing year 1947
length 100, 105 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Géza from Radványi
script Béla Balázs
Félix Máriássy
Judit Fejér
Géza from Radványi
production Géza by Radványi for Mafirt-Radványi, Budapest
music Dénes Buday
camera Barnabás Hegyi
cut Félix Máriássy
occupation

Somewhere in Europe is a Hungarian fictional film from 1947, which has won many awards and has been critically acclaimed for its humanistic message of international peace and understanding, with which the director Géza von Radványi gained international renown.

action

Eastern Europe, in the first months after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The cities have been destroyed, the landscapes devastated. Ragged and drained people, gray inside and out, determine the picture. Only the children who have become homeless and orphaned are worse off, because they have lost all the protection that once guaranteed them their care and upbringing: their parents. They often no longer own a home, nor do they have decent clothing. But there is one thing they lack most of all: food, but also care, human warmth and love. And so these adolescents roam the area like wild, hungry wolves, plundering and robbing and, if need be, even murdering, always looking for something that will ensure their survival the next day. This is the starting point of Somewhere in Europe .

Several of these stray children have formed a gang in this story in order to find something to eat and a safe and rainproof place to stay in the rubble of the first months after the war. It's a tough, animalistic struggle for survival, with no rules, except that you act according to Darwin's law: only the strongest survive. These images of a supposed, external peace are contrasted by retrospective original recordings from the time of the Second World War that are cut into them: fighter planes, marching soldiers, trampling boots. In the end, there is even a murder of a completely innocent truck driver. One day the neglected, polluted youngsters reach a ruined castle on their hike through the country. This seems like an ideal place to find shelter. A very old man, an intellectual musician, has found refuge in this once magnificent mansion. Initially, as usual, the children regard him as prey, a prisoner, and treat him in the hope of being able to get something out of him. The young people tie him up, and one of them even puts a rope around the old man's neck. Before it can come to the extreme, the elder and leader of the youth gang appears and slaps and rules the boy who just wanted to untie the old man for fun.

After the fascist barbarism, this musician, the conductor, composer and pianist Peter Simon, seems like the ideal socialist concept of the future man: a humanist with a clear mind. The old man takes care of the homeless and completely re-conditions the boys and girls, who seem to have forgotten every civilizational norm. He gives them affection and warmth, trust and culture. When he intends the Marseillaise on the piano , it is more than just a piece of music for entertainment, rather the musician conveys his message that from now on the values ​​of the French Revolution of freedom, equality and brotherhood may also apply in this country. Peter Simon also shapes the children's political development. In view of his fatherly goodness they soon begin to recognize him as their (spiritual-moral) leader. The film insinuates that its humanistic educational message is also deeply socialist; the opponent, however, is the ancien régime, which at the time of the shooting still embodied the old (= unsocialist) remnants of the transition period from the Horthy system to socialism, and the police forces who look for the stray children like bloodhounds. Three of the children are finally caught by the police and mistreated during interrogation. The other boys leave the castle temporarily to free their gang members. Back in the ruins, the old walls are being fortified and made storm-proof. It comes to a fight with the state power in which little Kuksi is seriously injured. So that a doctor can take care of him, the rest of the gang consent to surrender to state power. Despite all of this, Kuksi succumbs to his injuries and the gang is brought to justice. The judge, however, states in his judgment that it was not the children who were guilty, but the adults who were responsible for the prevailing circumstances. They are acquitted, and the boys and girls return to the castle ruins, which have become a new home for them and an opportunity for a better life.

Production notes

Somewhere in Europe , for many years Hungary's most important cinema production of the early post-war period, was made over several months in 1946 and 1947 and premiered on New Year's Day of the following year. In Austria, the strip started on November 19, 1948. From September 14, 1951, you could finally see somewhere in Europe in Germany. For a long time, German rental companies had shown no interest in the dark and highly dramatic material. It was not until the small Flensburg Nordmark rental company was ready to publish Somewhere in Europe . The film was then mostly shown in night screenings in selected cinemas. The first German television broadcast of the strip took place on May 20, 1957 on ARD .

Historical background and history of origin

This film is causally based on experiences that Géza von Radványi had himself made in 1945. During the conquest of Budapest, Red Army soldiers dragged him out of his hiding place in a cellar hole and during his deportations drove him back and forth on a six-week hunger march through occupied and destroyed Hungary. He was let go about 500 kilometers from Budapest. On the way back, he joined a stray gang of children and experienced first-hand their needs, which were determined by hunger and misery. It was stolen and even murdered. “You didn't even think of it, certainly nothing bad. They were angels or devils, whatever you want ”.

Arrived in Budapest, Radványi sat down with the writer Béla Balázs, who had returned from Soviet exile, and two other young authors and wrote the story about a group of neglected, starving and - according to the title - wandering around somewhere in Europe. He then visited the children's reserves that have now been established across the country and in 1946 engaged 27 film children for the upcoming production.

Reception and response

Somewhere in Europe , heavily influenced by the Italian film neorealism of a Roberto Rossellini and a Vittorio de Sica , was planned as part of a humanistic film trilogy. In 1949, the Italian production “Women without a Name” followed as the second part , with which Radványi “once again called for humanity and reconciliation”, and in 1951 “Promised Lands” was to be the third and last part (to be shot in Germany and Argentina, among others) consequences. However, that did not happen. This year Radványi was only involved in the script for the German short documentary film “Europa ruft uns”, which spread a message of reconciliation between nations.

Somewhere in Europe , despite the Cold War era , it was shown equally in East and West: in gala performances in the Paris Grand Opera and the UN headquarters in Flushing Meadows, as well as in Budapest and Moscow, like Der Spiegel in its edition of November 14, 1951 wrote. As a result of the enormous artistic and commercial success - the cost was roughly estimated at around $ 100,000 while the film grossed well over a million US dollars - around 14,000 articles about Radványi including interviews with the director were published, according to "Spiegel". After Somewhere in Europe had also run in Japan through UN protection , the Hungarian was invited to Tokyo to shoot a similar story about the Japanese children among the war victims. However, this film project was never implemented. "For the Japanese, Radvanyi was supposed to film the return of the surviving, partly crippled, partly orphaned children to the ruined city that was released again."

At the Locarno International Film Festival in 1948, the production was nominated for the categories “Best Film” and “Best Director”.

Looking back, the director explained his professional approach to this issue to the time :

“Basically, I've remained the eternal reporter, my job is to present what I observe and see. I believe in the future of the next generation and that's why my films always focus on the child. People are not bad, just too lazy to be good. (...) I don't believe in fixed styles. Every subject requires its own style in which it must be executed. For me that means taking a close look at the world, enlarging its picture and showing the most important things. You have to stay as close to the truth as humanly possible. "

In 2000, the Hungarian filmmakers and film critics voted Somewhere in Europe among the best twelve films in Hungarian cinema history.

Reviews

The film generated tremendous media coverage worldwide. The international critics reacted enthusiastically to this first major Hungarian post-war film. Below is a small selection:

"Somewhere in Europe" this troop of homeless, neglected children and adolescents can be vagabond; somewhere on the Danube, the masterful director Geza von Radvany makes them visible, active and suffering. (...) No film without a break, certainly not. Much of the outer frame is questionable and unclear. Nothing less than a documentary, even more romantic. And yet gripping at the root of the evil, the accused evil, that children have to suffer in our fragmented world, that a world is questionable that cannot protect the innocent. No swipe to the right or left (it's a film from Hungary from 1946), a compassionate heart only reveals itself, just a phone call, always looking for helpful opportunities, not forgetting the human element. The accused, Hitler's Germany, is hinted at in shadow; Today, Cyrillic letters could certainly and with the same justification be written on the moving wagons over the office - the injustice has not been eradicated since then, it is old and it is terribly new. But that is why the call to mercy, to the vigilance of the heart, which this film alone sends out, is withheld from a large audience - that seems all too narrow-minded. "

- Die Neue Zeitung , December 19, 1950

“The story that is going on comes together seamlessly from the smoking ruins of the war, from a number of figures staggering across the country road and climbing out of bomb craters with an uncanny inevitability. No scriptwriter with »psychology« and similar finesse has put together a »scenario«, rather it is as if a camera had humanized itself »in those days« and had simply walked along with these hungry figures and raging wolves in the form of children and adolescents, somewhere , into nowhere, at random. (...) Radvanyi made this film because a horde of juvenile vagabonds picked him up on the wayside and saved him instead of robbing him, the fever sufferer. He has cast it with "real" children and everyday people and only a few actors who are fully integrated into the ensemble. His "little hero" is the son of his cleaning woman. This is how we succeeded: Probably the most successful film of the present, at least the one that has received the most international awards and that even the UN has found worthy of its protectorate, in a - as one hears with astonishment - unanimous decision. "

- Stader Tageblatt , June 21, 1951

Reclam's film guide said: “The film is convincing in all the parts that show the world of children and that are limited to a sober reporting style. The beginning is particularly impressive when the children crawl out of a silent assembly of destroyed houses, cellar holes and the rubble of an extermination transport and come together. Their 'lack of past' is one of the art media of film. The adult world is less convincing. The figure of the composer, for example, is drawn allegorically all too naively, and life in the castle symbolizes a very romantic concept of freedom. "

“Géza Radványi staged, almost in a documentary style, with images that are shaped by Italian neorealism, without any fuss or embellishment, of how a group of children and young people tries to cope with the overwhelming problems. He makes it clear that it is possible to bring out an apparently lost childhood and describes how solidarity arises under extreme need. The visual implementation is never a means of achieving an effect. The initial stages of misery are transformed and serve the main message of the film: hope. This is particularly evident in the figure of the musician Simon, who has played a major role in changing the children. "

In the lexicon of international films it is written: “Partly in a sober realistic style, partly with emotion and pacifist pathos, this touching document from the immediate post-war period shows the situation of a lost generation. In addition, there is hope in this historical situation that European unification will bring East and West together. "

Bucher's encyclopedia of film sums it up: “After the war-related collapse of the film industry, Radványi's film brought Hungarian cinema back the international prestige it needed. His portrait of a band of robbery and begging orphans who seek refuge in a castle inhabited by a conductor raises the question of the possible quality of life of the post-war generation (...) The film, on whose screenplay Béla Balázs, who returned from exile, was involved, shows neorealistic ideas Influences from which the semi-lyrical, semi-realistic style that characterizes Hungarian film developed in the 1950s. "

In Radványi's biography, the large personal dictionary of films reads: “In 1945 Radvanyi met the film theorist Béla Balázs, who had returned to Hungary from exile, and who encouraged him to make a film about the youth of Europe who had become homeless as a result of the war and were mentally and emotionally wild to turn. The work, "Somewhere in Europe", turned into a socially critical, sensitive and almost documentary image of the mood and time that was shaped by Italian neorealism - despite an undeniable sentimentality, it is also a testament to deeply felt humanism. For many years "Somewhere in Europe" was considered one of the most important post-war films in Hungary. "

In 6000 films 1945/58 it was stated: “Shattering contemporary document of the distressed years after the Second World War - mirrored in a horde of children who ravage and plunder“ somewhere in Europe ”- with a hopeful, reconciling conclusion. Cinematically well formed! "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Der Spiegel 46/1951, p. 27.
  2. ↑ ibid.
  3. ↑ Radvanyi biography in "Das Großes Personenlexikon des Films", Volume 6, p. 386.
  4. ↑ cf. a report in the Hamburger Abendblatt dated February 28, 1951.
  5. ^ "Europe does not answer" in: Der Spiegel 46/1951, from November 14, 1951.
  6. ^ Die Zeit, October 25, 1951 edition.
  7. ↑ Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 579. Stuttgart 1973.
  8. ^ Hans Strobel in: Kinder Jugend Film Korrespondenz
  9. ↑ Somewhere in Europe. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 8, 2015 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  10. ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Verlag CJ Bucher, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 822.
  11. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6: N - R. Mary Nolan - Meg Ryan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 386.
  12. ↑ 6000 films, critical notes from the cinema years 1945/58. Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism. P. 217, 4th edition Düsseldorf 1980.

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