Silence and scream

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Movie
German title Silence and scream
Original title Csend és kiáltás
Country of production Hungary
original language Hungarian
Publishing year 1968
length 73 minutes
Rod
Director Miklós Jancsó
script Gyula Hernádi , Miklós Jancsó
camera János Kende
cut Zoltan Farkas
occupation

In his bulky feature film Stille und Schrei (1968), the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó tells the story of oppression and hopelessness in a barren aesthetic. The mysterious plot takes place on a farm in the Puszta . Strictly composed, long plan sequences with carefully choreographed movements of the actors in the room leave the images "often overwhelmingly static"appear. The camera follows people as they move between the interior of the farmhouse and the courtyard. Despite the spacious landscape, the film has the character of a chamber play. The dialogues are kept brief. For the viewer it is impossible to understand the exact relationship in which the figures stand to one another and what moves them; Jancsó hardly conveys their background. For vulnerable people, the power and the course of the world are as opaque as they are inescapable. The oppressed, in turn, become persecutors and kill people who are even weaker than they are; Jancsó describes these processes from a distance. It is rather unusual for his films that he has given women important roles here.

action

The event takes place in Hungary in 1919, when, after a short period of Communist rule, the equally authoritarian, conservative Miklós Horthy's regime persecuted the Red Army. The former communist fighter István is hiding in the remote farm of the farmer Károly, who is under surveillance by the local police commander Kémeri. He knows the fugitive from before and thwarts his exposure, but plays a cat-and-mouse game with him.

Kémeri appears repeatedly on the farm and allows himself to be humiliated a few times, both on the fighter and the farmer. The farmer's wife, Teréz, and her sister Anna gradually poison the farmer and grandmother by always adding a little poison to the water they serve. István leaves his cover and reports the murder intentions to the police commander. The latter orders István to be shot, but at the last minute decides to hand over a pistol to the fighter so that he can straighten himself. But István uses the weapon to shoot Kémeri.

criticism

In the film review, Frieda Grafe and Enno Patalas said that the film was about powerlessness: “The subject emerges entirely in the pictures. (...) it is not possible to hide on the plain. The space and the light of the landscape become evidence of the film. (...) The long, slow tracking shots circle people and expose them. With any visible movement they would give themselves away. The only thing they can hide behind is their silence. The viewer also feels obliged to read their gestures, the film willingly reveals no evidence of any process. It is itself: silence and scream. "The film-dienst only discussed the work in 1970. " The long and broad sequences are carried out without any optical loosening through the cut, and it is precisely this austerity and rigidity that often arouses a particularly dramatic intensity. On the other hand, however, this conscious artlessness leads to a certain new mannerism. ” Because silence and screaming were unsuccessful with the audience, Jancsó moved away from this style in the works filmed afterwards. The mental attitude influenced by existentialism is more interesting . Jean-Paul Sartre's formula “Man is what he makes himself” is fulfilled in a negative way in the two sisters and the commanding officer, and “positively in the only one who freely chooses his fate,” István. "And precisely because he chose an act that is ultimately pointless, Istvan here becomes the existentialist" hero "par excellence." Burns said in his 1996 book on Hungarian film history, although you hardly notice it on the surface of the work, whether it is passionate.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Reclams Filmführer, Philipp Reclam jr., Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-15-010389-4 , p. 147
  2. ^ A b Frieda Grafe, Enno Patalas: Hungarian Films 1963–1969 . In: Filmkritik , June 1969, pp. 370–371
  3. ^ A b c Bryan Burns: World cinema: Hungary. Flick Books, Wiltshire 1996, ISBN 0-948911-71-9 , pp. 62-63
  4. ^ John Cunnigham: Hungarian Cinema. From coffee house to multiplex . Wallflower Press, London 2004, ISBN 1-903364-80-9 , pp. 112-113
  5. ↑ a b film-dienst , No. 31/1970, drawn by "USE".