Long unavailable anywhere, this is a very welcome release of Karoly Makk’s Cannes’ jury prize-winning film of 1971 in a beautiful print.
Set during a time of state repression, the love in the film takes place in a core of absence. Janos has been taken and imprisoned; his wife Luca eases his bedridden mother’s last days by making believe that he is in America, heading for golden success with a film he is making. She fabricates the letters telling his news and then listens impassively while his mother reads her the details.
Lovingly filmed in black and white, the film’s concentration on textures and details – of clocks and postcards, photographs and fabrics, often shown as brief flashes of memories, is reminiscent of someone like Svankmajer or Borowczyk. When this is added to the conviction with which the women play their relationship out, their teasing dialogue capturing well the mixture of affection and resentment that typifies such situations, then you have a very special film. At one point Luca rubs and then tenderly holds her mother-in-law’s hands. It is a touch that neither prefers, but linked by the absence of Janos, it is what they have. This is love composed of fortitude and forbearance, restraint and fear, nobility in the face of injustice; the belief that you may meet again, the acceptance that you may not.
The last third of the film concentrates on Janos’s life – his dreams, his hopes and his fears. It is a profound section of film. At times it has the delicacy of a pictorial essay; a collaboration between John Berger and Jean Mohr perhaps. Put this on; you’ll be inextricably hooked before the credits have finished.
Set in 1953, a young woman whose husband has been arrested by the secret police, eases the last months of his bedridden mother by telling her that her son is in America overseeing the premiere of his film. Beautifully filmed, this is a rich experience that draws you in from the credits. Winner of the Jury prize at the Cannes Festival in 1971 and also one of Derek Malcolm's 100 best films.
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