The New Wave

Hungarian Film & Television

Course 1 · Chapter 4 · The Hungarian New Wave

In the 1960s a new generation of Hungarian directors made films that were admired at festivals across Europe. They worked in the state system, with state money, in a time of gradual relaxation, and they used allegory, long takes and personal stories to say things that could not be said directly. This chapter looks at Miklós Jancsó, István Szabó, Márta Mészáros and Károly Makk, and at what "New Wave" does and does not mean for them. Names and dates are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

A New Generation

The setting

After the reprisals that followed 1956, cultural policy relaxed from the early 1960s under János Kádár (Chapter 3; check). Younger directors trained at the film academy in Budapest and gained their first chances through the studio system and the Béla Balázs Studio, founded in 1959 for young filmmakers (check).

The influences

They knew the French New Wave, Italian neorealism and Soviet and Polish cinema, and were part of a wider Central European movement (check). Their films mixed personal memory, history and political allegory.

The label

"Hungarian New Wave" is a critics' label for the 1960s and early 1970s (check the span), and not a manifesto of one group. The directors differed widely in style and outlook.

Four Directors

Director and films (check each)Note
Miklós Jancsó (1921 to 2014)Szegénylegények (The Round-Up, 1966) is set in the aftermath of the 1848 revolution and shows the psychology of an oppressive system through wide landscapes and very long takes. Még kér a nép (Red Psalm, 1972) won him the Best Director prize at Cannes (check).
István Szabó (born 1938)Began with personal films such as Apa (Father, 1966), about a boy who invents a heroic story about his dead father. Mephisto (1981), about an actor who compromises with the Nazis, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Márta Mészáros (born 1931)One of the few women directing features in the region. Örökbefogadás (Adoption, 1975) won the Golden Bear at Berlin and shows an older woman's wish for a child (check).
Károly Makk (1925 to 2017)Szerelem (Love, 1971), about a woman waiting for her imprisoned son while her family hides the truth from the bedridden mother-in-law, is among the best-known Hungarian films of the period (check).
  • Others. Names often added include András Kovács, Judit Elek, Pál Gábor and Sándor Sára (check).
  • Women directors. Mészáros and Elek are often cited as part of a Central European tradition of women's cinema, though they worked in a male-dominated system (check).

Jancsó's Style

The long take as method Jancsó's films of the 1960s and 1970s are built from very long takes in which the camera moves among groups of people on open plains, with figures walking in patterns across the frame and power shifting between them. The method gives the films a ritual quality and avoids the editing patterns of conventional storytelling (check how many takes are in individual films). Critics read them as studies of how power works, and as comments on the period of the 1950s without naming it. Reading them as pure allegory risks flattening them, and the directors themselves were cautious about explaining their meaning (check).

Working With the Censors

  • The system. Scripts were approved and finished films reviewed by officials, who could demand changes, delay releases or limit distribution (check the process).
  • Strategies. Historical settings, parable and ambiguity let directors address contemporary themes without direct statement, and audiences learned to read between the lines (compare Hungarian Literature 7).
  • Co-productions. Jancsó's The Red and the White (1967) was a Hungarian-Soviet co-production, which shows that the same system supported as well as limited his work (check).
  • Individual records. It later emerged that some prominent figures had reported to the state security service in earlier years. In 2006 Szabó acknowledged informing in his youth after 1956 (check the details), which shows why each person's record must be judged on evidence and not on legend.
A British comparison The British "New Wave" of the late 1950s and early 1960s, with films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, was also a movement of younger directors using real settings. It was driven by social realism and the market, while its Hungarian counterpart used allegory and worked under state control (check).
Check the details Titles, dates and awards are from general knowledge and vary between sources, and the English titles differ from the Hungarian ones. Verify against film databases, festival records and archive material, and handle questions about individuals' conduct under the old system with documentary evidence.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Describe the conditions that made the Hungarian New Wave possible and explain why "New Wave" is a loose label.

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Exercise 2

Explain how Jancsó's long takes help his films to study power, using The Round-Up as your example.

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Exercise 3

Compare two of the four directors in terms of style and subject, and say how each dealt with the limits of the system.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Period: 1960s to early 1970s (check)
  • Directors: Jancsó, Szabó, Mészáros, Makk
  • Method: allegory, history, personal memory, long takes
  • Awards: Cannes, Berlin, the Oscar for Mephisto (check)
  • The caution: judge individuals on documents, not legend