Shimmering winds

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Movie
German title Shimmering winds
Original title Fényes szelek
Country of production Hungary
original language Hungarian
Publishing year 1969
length 80 minutes
Rod
Director Miklós Jancsó
script Gyula Hernádi ,
Miklós Jancsó
production József Bajusz
Ottó Föld
music Paul Arma
camera Tamás Somló
cut Zoltan Farkas
occupation

Shimmering Winds (also The Confrontation ) was the first color film by the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó in 1969 .

action

In 1947, shortly after the founding of the Hungarian People's Republic, a group of students from the newly established, communist-inspired People's College reached a church-run grammar school. They sing, dance and bathe happily and declare their intention to convince the Catholic high school students of the merits of their ideology through debates. The police, who have arrest warrants against some high school students, are always present in the background.

The high school students feel cornered and the majority do not want to get involved in discussions. The colleagues are divided about how to proceed. Their leader Laci wants to persuade them, but Jutka applies for his removal because he does not seem energetic enough to her. She takes his position and guides the group to use coercion to carry out the revolution. Discs are thrown in and books burned. The somewhat older representatives from the Central Council of the People's College appear, do not agree with Laci's removal and reinstate him in his traditional post. The film ends with Jutka gathering a smaller group of supporters.

To the work

The background is partly autobiographical: Jancsó attended the Volkskollegium as a teenager. The story arc is extremely thin and the film has an open ending. The predominant events are the numerous, often circular, dances performed by the colleagues, accompanied by folk and partisan songs. The film consists of only 31 shots, structured in plan sequences . The Pannonhalma Territorial Abbey was used as the filming location ; because the responsible bishop did not issue a filming permit for the monastery, Jancsó moved to the episcopal residence town and made his recordings there. For Jancsó's work at the time, Shimmering Winds had an unusually large number of dialogues. The exuberant colleagues debate questions that were more typical of the student revolt of 1968 in Western Europe than of the Hungary of 1947. The director reinforces the relevance of the current situation by the boys and girls wearing not contemporary clothing, but fashion from the late 1960s, colorful and diverse, jeans and mini skirts. In contrast, the high school students can all be recognized by the same dark gray school uniform. In this film, according to Burns [1996], Jancsó does not deal with a particular revolution, but with the nature of revolution and reaction in general, and questions the role of leaders. “At the ironically chosen site of an abbey that embodies the beauty and certainty of a bygone era, Jancsó takes a vivid picture of the pitfalls and joys of revolutionary zeal. But he refuses to approve or condemn him. ” Ulrich Gregor also noted an ambivalence between enthusiasm and violence, although the film distances itself from the latter.

Shimmering Winds was recorded mixed in Hungary . The film-dienst saw placeholders in the characters: Jancsó “probably wanted to create a parable about the tactics of terror, and if it was perhaps also about the questions of the human under terror, the people themselves remain only carriers and Spokesman for moral or political ideologies. ”Jancsó avoids a spiritual argument, replacing it with dance and song. "(...) if the poet's word 'Wherever you sing, let yourself down' contain even a grain of truth, there could hardly be a more homely place on earth than the People's Republic of Hungary." Frieda Grafe and Enno Patalas expressed themselves in the 1969 Rejecting film review. The references to the present “remain as ineffective as they are striking, they drive out what they are based on, reality and do not create their own. The revolutionary chants, the dances, the red flags remain empty gestures, representational theater. ”Reversing these arguments, the film historian Burns judged in 1996 that Jancsó's first color film consisted largely of“ tableaus of enchanting beauty ”. The masterful use of color, music and movement gives scenes a heightened quality that, with their dreary declamations, would otherwise be too remote or too cold.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b film-dienst No. 33/1970: Shimmering winds
  2. ↑ a b Ulrich Gregor: Geschichte des FIlms 4. From 1960. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-499-16294-6 , p. 366
  3. ↑ a b c Frieda Grafe, Enno Patalas: Hungarian Films 1963–1969 . In: Filmkritik , June 1969, p. 372
  4. ^ A b c Bryan Burns: World cinema: Hungary. Flick Books, Wiltshire 1996, ISBN 0-948911-71-9 , pp. 63-64
  5. ^ John Cunnigham: Hungarian Cinema. From coffee house to multiplex . Wallflower Press, London 2004, ISBN 1-903364-80-9 , p. 113