Explanation of the term REVOLUTIONIZER.
In context of today’s lectures it will be someone who put some advantage, one who speed up development of the society. Someone do it consciously, deliberately, and someone incidentally, haphazardly. Probably the second one has more chance to succeed, then the first one.
Hamvas Béla (1897-1968), writer, historian, essayist, and one of the most significant rebel of the 20th Century.
Some of his thoughts on literature and arts, and ideas about human society can help in intention to explain the crisis and false cults of modern times.
Literature was the leading criticizer of life, since the beginning of the 19. Century. For the last two hundred years literature have been just another service of marketing and prosperity of highly ranked individuals.
From it's early days, film is the fastest way to reach human’s heart! – as someone used to said.
So, in intent to deal with Hamvas’ opinion – we can get a film as the strong critic of everyday life of modern society, and don’t forget that Miloš Kundera, at the Congres of Czechoslovakian writers in 1971 said that modern cinema had very important role in national literature.
Character of East European Cinema during 60's and 70's will be analyzed in two aspects: stories and styles.
Great film on post-war reconciliation is PASAŽERKA “The Passenger” by Andrzey Munk (1961). A German woman on a ship coming back to Europe notices another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she has been an SS commander in Auschwitz during the War, but she has actually saved a young woman's life. And then starts her horrifying story from the past.
COLD DAYS by Kovacs Andras (1968), based on the novel written by Cseres Tibor. Repentance and remorse of imprisoned Hungarian officers at the aftermath of the three-day killings in Novi Sad in winter 1942.
Very complex story flows parallel in present and past time, the style is simple, and dominant color is white. The walls of the prison are white, faces of imprisoned soldiers are pale, and the river banks where victims were executed are covered by snow. Very theatrical atmosphere, and lot of close-ups, realistic style, without any music..
In Czechoslovakia Jiri Menzl shot CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS (1966), based on Bohumil Hrabal's novel and year earlier Kadar and Klos made THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (1965). Stories of both films were setled in occupied Czechoslovakia. Both movies won an Oscar in the best forreing language feature category, but another movie is more interesting for us here.
THE JOKE (1969) Jaromil Jireš’s brilliant adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel tells the fragmentary tale of a man expelled from the Communist Party because of a political joke. After “rehabilitation” in the mines and a stint in prison, he hatches a revenge plot against the former friend who betrayed him.
... and in the joke he wrote: "Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!"
In Yugoslavia Aleksandar Saša Petrović finished his film THREE (1965), based on stories written by ex-partisan fighter Antonije Isaković. Miloš is a warrior who faces three death cases. 1st time at the railway station in the Serbian province, 2nd time after he escapes German’s raid, and his commrade did not. 3rd time when he is on a winning side in the War, and need to bring the important decission over the faith of accused young woman.
Unveiling the FORMULA: Complex story + simple style!
Jancso Miklos
In the brutal Civil War which took place, Hungarian volunteers supported the ‘Red’ revolutionaries in a war of attrition against the ‘White’ counter-revolutionaries who were seeking to restore the old Czarist order.
Leftist are shown as a motley, ill-equiped and loosely organized gathering of brave civilians and army deserters, while the Right are always represented by officers, elegant in their frogged uniforms, and indulging their autocratic whims between bouts of killing.
Parajanov
Made in 1964 after a decade spent laboring in socialist realism, Paradjanov's lysergic fever-dream of a movie is a tragic love story set in the Carpathian mountains of the Ukraine. His symbol-laded films, and especially his 1968 masterpiece The Color of Pomegranates, are a designer's gift: a parade of meticulously composed, gorgeously hued graphic images.
ELEMENTS OF NEW FILM
• To increase the latitude for individual and collective artistic expression and to free film from dogmatism and bureaucratic control.
• To promote stylistic experimentation in film form and film language
• To involve film in the expression of contemporary themes, including the right to critique the darker, ironic, alienated, and gloomier side of human, societal, and political existence, and
• To do all of these things within the context and premises of a Marxist-socialist state.
KNIFE IN THE WATER by Roman Polanski. When a young hitchhiker joins a couple on a weekend yacht trip, psychological warfare breaks out as the two men compete for the woman’s attention. A storm forces the small crew below deck, and tension builds to a violent climax.
LOVES OF A BLONDE by Miloš Forman. A factory manager in rural Czechoslovakia bargains with the army to send men to the area, to boost the morale of his young female workers. The army sends reservists, mostly married middle-aged men - and the local beauty Andula, spurns those bold enough to try to win her, for the jazz pianist, newly come from Prague to perform. He seduces her and impresses her, telling her "most women are round, like guitars but you are a guitar by Picasso". Staying the night with him causes a lecture on a young woman's honor at her hostel so she throws over her other suitors and makes her way to Prague to find the young man. His protective Mamma and weary Pappa are not pleased when she arrives on the doorstep with her suitcase.
Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator by Dušan Makavejev. After many adventures, young female switchboard operator Izabela starts a love relationship with a serious young man Meho Bušatlija. But while he's away on business, she gets lonely and succumbs to her colleague's passes. When the boyfriend returns, he gets into fight with his pregnant girl that ends up tragically. Makavejev made brilliant mixture of documentary shots with fiction, where he used parts of lectures about criminal acts, disinfection, cooking, etc.
LOVE (Szerelem) by Makk Karoly, based on Dery Tibor short story (1971).
The wife of a political prisoner tends to her mother-in-law and keeps from the old woman the truth about her son, whom she believes is in New York making a film.
Style of the movie is astonishing in it’s dynamic, with plenty short shots, a lot of them as old photographs. This is powerful way to express reminiscence from the life of old lady.
Witness by Bacso Peter
Everybody knows Pelikan Jozsef, the dike keeper who accidentally burnt his own house because of hard thinking on the enigma: "Suspicious things are those that are not suspicious."
NEW FILM AND REAL REALITY
In its initial development, new film was practically synonymous with personal films, films that claimed the right to subjective interpretation of the lives of individuals and society, the right to open metaphors, leaving room for viewers to think and feel for themselves.
Who’s Singin' Over There? By Slobodan Šijan. On April 5, 1941, a date Serbs will recognize, men on a country road board Krstic’s bus for Belgrade: two Gypsies who occasionally sing about misery, an aging war vet, a Nazi sympathizer, a dapper singer, a consumptive, and a man with a shotgun. Krstic is a world-weary cynic, out for a buck; the driver is his son, the simple, cheerful Misko. En route they pick up a priest and young newlyweds going to the seaside. Along the way, mis-adventure strikes: a flat tire, a rickety bridge, a farmer who’s plowed the road, a funeral, two feuding families, an army detail, and a lost wallet slow the bus and expose rifts among the travelers. On April 6, amid rumors of war, they reach Belgrade…
Narcisus and Psyche was the largest-scale Hungarian production of its era. This epic based on Sándor Weöres's poetic work Psyché is visual journey in which the spectator finds images of surprising originality and beauty.
Body Gabor says that he has tried to make Narcissus and Psyche a myth, a myth of antagonism born of European culture, according to which men and women can only find their physical and intellectual liberty at the expense of others.
“And in spite of 35 years of socialism, my generation is still living in this antagonism."
BLIND CHANCE by Krzystof Kieslowsky. Twenty-something Witek is desperately trying to catch a train leaving the station. Employing a narrative style later aped by Tom Tykwer in Run Lola Run, the three changing outcomes of his chase begin three different stories of his life: oppositionist, activist in a socialist organisation, and physician shunning politics.
CUTTING IT SHORT by Jiri Menzel. The film is an evocation of the childhood memories of Bohumil Hrabal in his provincial town of Nymburk, dominated by the local brewery. The main actors of the film, uncle Pepin and Maryška, are based on real family members of Hrabal: Maryška on his mother and uncle Pepin on his real uncle, who came to stay two weeks in the town but remained for four years. His spontaneous stories influenced a lot Hrabal's literary work.
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