Countries & Movies: Hungary

 The best film of Hungarian cinema, according to FilmGourmand, is "Mephisto" by Istvan Szabo. It is believed that this film marked the beginning of the so-called "German trilogy" by Istvan Szabo, which also included the films "Oberst Redl (Colonel Redl)" and "Hanussen". 

The film’s literary basis was the novel "Mephisto" written in 1936 by Klaus Mann, the son of classic of German literature Thomas Mann. The prototype of the protagonist of the novel is considered a relative of Klaus Mann, the German actor Gustaf Grundgens. Those who watched the Fritz Lang movie "M" could see this actor. 

Man in hat - Gustaf Grundgens. Shot from "M".

At the same time, the ideological connection between Klaus Mann’s novel and Goethe’s immortal creation, Faust, is quite obvious. It is curious that if in the novel by Klaus Mann, and then in the film of Istvan Szabo, the prototype of Gustaf Grundgens represents Dr. Faust, then in his last film “Faust” in which Gustaf Grundgens plays plays Mephistopheles. Apparently, something diabolical was inherent in this actor, which is why he was drawn into the Nazi movement and exalted by it.

Another interesting point: the Hungarian film company Mafilm was helped in creating the film by two West German film companies: Manfred Durniok Filmproduktion and Hessischer Rundfunk. And this despite the fact that until 2000, Klaus Mann’s novel was banned in Germany. Russian film critic Yevgeny Nefyodov suggests that such a long ban on a book denouncing Nazism is explained not only by the respectful attitude of the German authorities to the request of Gustaf Grundgens' son, but also by the fact that “the events of the work remained unacceptably topical at that moment ... when the authorities began a broad campaign to, let's say, stop repentant tendencies in the country responsible for unleashing the World War II and other Nazi atrocities."

The film premiered in Hungary on February 11, 1981. Three months after the premiere in Hungary, Istvan Szabo's film  took part in the Cannes International Film Festival, where he was nominated for the highest award - Palme d'Or. The jury of the film festival, chaired by the French filmmaker Jacques Deray, gave preference to the film by the Polish director Andrzej Wajda "Czlowiek z zelaza (Man of Iron)".

However, in the competition for the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 1982, these films switched places: "Mephisto" received an Oscar, and "Man of Iron" was content with a nomination. And in the same 1982, Istvan Szabo's film received another prestigious prize - the Italian award David di Donatello as Best Foreign Film.

The perception of the film by Istvan Szabo, who represented socialist Hungary, was, to put it mildly, ambiguous by American film critics. The reviewer of The New York Times, the mouthpiece of the US Democratic Party, Janet Maslin, apparently offended by the film "Mephisto" and its author for exposing Nazism, even before the film was presented to the participants of the New York Film Festival, erupted in a review filled with very unflattering characteristics about the film, of type: "movie lacks an essential clarity", or "Mr. Szabo, who has set a number of characters and subplots in spin, has trouble keeping the material organized, and a number of later developments are unduly ambiguous", or "Mephisto" seems somewhat remote, without all the urgency of which Mr. Szabo has shown himself capable." By Janet Maslin Sept. 29, 1981 

But the guru of American film criticism Roger Ebert rated the film with four stars out of 4 possible and included it into his list of "The Great Movies". In his review of the film, he wrote: "Mephisto" does an uncanny job of creating its period, of showing us Hamburg and Berlin from the 1920s to the 1940s. I've never seen a movie that does a better job of showing the seductive Nazi practice of providing party members with theatrical costumes, titles and pageantry. In this movie not being a Nazi is like being at a black-tie ball in a brown corduroy suit. "

Viewers rated the film "Mephisto" highly enough. 65% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Based on this and the above success indicators, the rating of the film according to FilmGourmand was 8.896, making it the 189th place in the Golden Thousand.