Miklós Jancsó

Miklós Jancsó, the Hungarian film director and screenwriter’s, body of

work includes films like The Round-Up (1965), The Red and the White (1967)

and Red Psalm (1971), which enshrined his place as an art cinema auteur.

The signature choreographed long takes of Jancsó define his visual style

and cinema. In his films, the choreographed camera relentlessly tries to

roam around, lurking everywhere and changing perspective, now and

then. Miklós Jancsó, career spans over 33 feature films, 19 documentary

films and 28 newsreels. Starting with documentary newsreels, Jancsó was

already a successful theatre director in post-war Hungary before

transitioning to cinema in the mid-1960s. His primary concerns have

always been the abuse of power and authority. Such concerns have been

exhibited in the expanse of his films, with his characters often rebelling

against a totalitarian regime. In his films, Jancsó comes across as a

socialist and, more importantly, a humanist filmmaker. His films being

commentaries on the Hungry of the 1960s remained a tool for socio-

political debate. Also, his films were rooted in Hungarian history yet

burrowed with universal concerns.

Jancsó made his first feature film, The Bells Have Gone to Rome, in the year

1958. He made his second feature film, Cantata, in the year 1962. These

early films of Jancsó only received moderate reception. However, post-

Cantata, he made films in quick successions, amongst which, the film

Round-Up (1965) brought him international fame. His next film, The Red

and The White, based on Russia's civil war in 1920, was released in 1967.
Followed by this, he made films like Silence and Cry (1968) and

Confrontation (1969), being political commentaries on the aftermath of the

Republic of Council in 1999 and the student movement in Hungary during

1948-49, respectively. One common feature of Jancsó films remains that

each of his films elucidates on important Hungarian history events.

Furthermore, across his films, Gyula Hernadi remains his scriptwriter,

András Kozák the hero, the vast expanse of Hungarian plains puszta

remains constant, and so does the long-take camera technique.

Therefore, it may be assumed that Jancsó was not in the quest of creating

something anew and instead reinforced repetition. Instead, he asked the

same questions, presented the same word, and contemplated the same

issues of power and abuse in all his films. The Hungarian puszta remains

the representation of the world created by Jancsó. The horizontal plane is

pitied against the vertical structure of the human figures, the contrast

representing the closed world of Jancsó cinema. In this world, the binary

of the oppressor and the oppressed is always in collision. The

downtrodden section is the victim, the poor, many including petty

criminals, and the oppressors are often faceless individuals with dark

uniforms, representing the class rather than any individual. In Jancsó

cinematic world, the oppressed accepts his fate and becomes a

collaborator in the tragedy inflicted upon him. In this world, he is

powerless. Therefore, he must adhere to the game's rules and die without

any glorification of his death. The above explanation defines the

execution, commonly featured in several Miklós Jancsó films such as

Round-Up and, The Red and The White. As Bordwell notes, “the situations

are intrinsically charged with dramatic voltage – guards confronting

prisoners, commanders randomly pulling captives for execution – but

Jancsó short-circuits the emotional effect” (Bordwell 2005: 156).

In Jancsó films, the cinematic form comes to prominence. As already

stated, long-choreographed camera movements became his signature

style. His camera movements are often disturbing, perplexing, and

confusing. The dialectical approach sets apart Jancsó cinema. For

example, in the film, The Red and the White, Jancsó camera will follow

someone, but only briefly before the character dies, and the camera

leaves them, altering its focus somewhere else. Jancsó ensures that the

spectator does not identify with his characters and instead maintains

enough distance and constantly changes focus so that such desires of the

spectator never come to fruition. Therefore, Jancsó narrative deviates

from commonplace narrative structures where the narrative avoids an

‘emotional involvement’. As stated by Brian Burns, “‘Jancsó’s is a cinema of

looking, rather than of feeling … Jancsó resolutely avoids emotive

involvement” (Burns 1996: 55); he also observes that “a Jancsó film is not

normally a story in the accepted sense of the word; its narrative is elusive

and diffracted, a matter not of action in time but of activity in space”

(Burns 1996: 57). In his films, the camera choreography takes precedence,

and narrative engagement remains only at the edges—the camera

allowing the action to unfold, revealing the chaos and the bizarre. The

narrative remains elementary, simply documenting the social

circumstances, primarily the forms of oppression. To sum up, Miklós

Jancsó remains one of the most important Hungarian filmmakers. His

cinema reveals that form is content as with all great works of art and vice

versa.
References:
Bordwell, David (2005) Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Burns, Bryan (1996) World Cinema 5: Hungary. Trowbridge: Flicks Books

Dr Ipsita Barat
Head, Mass Communication & Videography Department
Faculty, Film Studies Department
St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous) , Kolkata