The Exodus

Hungarian Film & Television

Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Early Cinema & the Hollywood Exodus

Cinema reached Budapest within months of its invention, and within a generation Hungarian directors, producers and actors were working in Berlin, Vienna, London and Hollywood. This chapter follows the first screenings of 1896, the small silent industry at home, the political upheaval of 1919 that sent many filmmakers abroad, and the careers of the best-known émigrés. It also separates what is documented from the anecdotes that cluster around "the Hungarians in Hollywood". Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The First Screenings and the Silent Years

1896

Moving pictures were shown in Budapest in 1896, the year of the Millennium celebrations, soon after the first public screenings in Paris (check the date and the venue). Cinemas spread through the city in the following years.

A small industry

Hungarian-made films appeared from the early 1900s, and the number of productions grew during the First World War (check). Producers copied successful foreign genres and used stage actors and writers.

The talent pool

Budapest had a rich café, theatre and press culture, and many film people came from it: journalists, dramatists, actors and designers. This background is often cited to explain why so many Hungarians later succeeded in film abroad (check; the explanation is plausible but not proven).

1919 and the Departures

  • Nationalisation. The short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 nationalised the film industry, and the regime lasted only a few months before it fell in the summer of 1919 (check).
  • Reprisals and emigration. After the fall, the conservative government under Admiral Horthy took power. Many people connected to the earlier regime or to the left, and many Jewish professionals facing growing antisemitism, left the country (check; the causes differed from person to person).
  • Where they went. Vienna and Berlin first, with their large film industries, and later London and Hollywood (check).
  • At home. A reduced Hungarian film industry continued, and film production grew again in the 1930s (check).

Five Careers

Name and career (check each)Note
Michael Curtiz (born Kertész Mihály, 1886 to 1962)Directed in Budapest and Vienna, then at Warner Brothers in Hollywood from the mid-1920s. Credits include Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Casablanca (1942), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.
Alexander Korda (born Kellner Sándor, 1893 to 1956)Worked in Budapest, Vienna, Berlin and Hollywood, then founded London Films in 1932. The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) was a major British success, and he was knighted in 1942.
Bela Lugosi (1882 to 1956)A stage actor in Hungary who left after 1919, and became famous as the star of Dracula (1931).
William Fox (born Fried Vilmos, 1879 to 1952)Born in Hungary and taken to the United States as a baby, he founded the Fox Film Corporation (check the details).
Adolph Zukor (1873 to 1976)Born in Hungary, he emigrated as a teenager and built Paramount Pictures (check the details).

Others often named include the actor Peter Lorre (born in what is now Slovakia, check), the producer Joe Pasternak and the animator George Pal. Lists differ, and who counts as "Hungarian" depends on birthplace, language and citizenship.

Who counts as Hungarian? Fox and Zukor emigrated as children or teenagers and built their careers in the United States, long before the 1919 departures. Curtiz and Korda left as adults after working in Hungary. Others were born in lands that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary but are now in other countries. A claim such as "Hungarians built Hollywood" is true in outline, but it mixes different groups, periods and motives (check the individual cases).

A Famous Joke

  • The line. A saying often attributed to Korda or his circle runs, in various versions, that it is not enough to be Hungarian: you must also have talent (check; no reliable source is known to me).
  • Why it lasts. It captures the mix of pride and humour around the émigré networks, who helped one another to find work.
  • How to treat it. As an anecdote and not as evidence. The helping networks are documented in memoirs, but the quotation itself should be marked "attributed".
A British comparison Korda's London Films is the closest parallel, since a Hungarian producer shaped a chapter of British cinema (check). British actors and directors who moved to Hollywood in the same decades, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, give a similar picture of a smaller industry exporting talent to a larger one.
Check the details Names, birth dates, spellings and film credits are from general knowledge and differ in sources, and the English and Hungarian forms of names vary. Verify against biographies and film databases, and be careful with anecdotes and with the label "Hungarian".

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why 1919 is seen as a turning point for Hungarian film, and say why the reasons for leaving varied from person to person.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Choose two of the five careers and compare how and where each built their success.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Assess the claim "Hungarians built Hollywood" using the six-question habit of marking evidence: what is documented, what is claimed and what is unknown.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • 1896: first Budapest screenings (check)
  • 1919: nationalisation, fall of the regime, departures (check)
  • Émigrés: Curtiz, Korda, Lugosi, Fox, Zukor (check)
  • The question: who counts as Hungarian?
  • The caution: anecdotes are not evidence