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MovieMail's Review
A political parable played out on the Hungarian plain, the technical and conceptual virtuosity on display here is staggering. It's a great work from a true original, says Michael Brooke.
Miklós Jancsó's astonishing political parable may be his most perfectly realised film since his breakthrough with The Round-Up seven years earlier.
Set in 1890, it concerns a group of farm labourers who have decided to go on strike, and are confronted with the increasingly violent methods used by the authorities in attempting to suppress their potentially revolutionary activities. This is hardly an original subject (Eisenstein's Strike was made nearly fifty years earlier), but no-one else could have staged it like this. A richly-deserved winner of the Best Director award at Cannes, Jancsó pushed his technical and conceptual virtuosity to a level that was staggering even by his then well-established standards. There are just 28 shots, many lasting several minutes, with the camera constantly moving and cinematographer János Kende needing more assistants than usual just to keep the right part of the image in focus.
The various performers ('actors' seems inadequate) are as likely to express their views through songs and dances, to the point where the film almost seems like a full-blown musical at times - although the men's dances, arms around each other's shoulders, have a parallel message about brotherhood and the importance of banding together in solidarity. Dozens of people might be onscreen at any given moment (fully 1,500 in the most ambitious set-piece, in which rebellious peasants are imprisoned in what can only be described as a human stockade), with the action frequently happening across multiple planes - a bucolic gathering in the foreground might be offset by a growing military presence in the far distance, and there's a strong sense that we're merely glimpsing a small part of a much more complex and ongoing historical process.
Virtually the entire film is set outdoors, in the timeless Hungarian puszta so familiar from Jancsó's other films, and there's next to no attempt at realism: blood morphs into red rosettes, and swathes of soldiers are mown down by a single pistol-toting woman clad in a plain red shift. It's hardly surprising that Jancsó has had few imitators, but that's all the more reason to cherish one of the cinema's great originals.
Message of Stones – Hegyalja: The third film in Miklós Jancsó's renowned but rarely seen documentary series
Brand new anamorphic 16:9 digital transfer with restored image and sound, approved by the director
New and improved English subtitle translation
20-page booklet featuring an expansive new essay by author and film programmer Peter Hames.
Film Description
Red Psalm, which won director Miklos Jancso the Best Director Prize at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, is an astonishing film in which Jancso's technical and conceptual virtuosity are at their peak. Recounting the story of a peasant uprising in Hungary in the 1890s, the film examines the nature of revolt, and the issues of oppression, morality and violence. Shot using just 28 amazingly-choreographed long takes, Red Psalm is a virtuoso exercise of form and content and a formidable work of art.
