Jancsó’s Hungarian films of the 1970s continued the extreme stylisation that had featured in his work of the previous decade but moved further away from naturalism and realism. Peter Hames undertakes a detailed analysis of three of them.
For British cinephiles of the 1960s and 70s, London’s Academy Cinemas in Oxford Street were a key port of call. Alongside a regular diet of Bergman, Fellini, and Antonioni, Academy Three always seemed to be running a film by Miklós Jancsó. As an occasional visitor from the provinces, it was there that I saw Igy jöttem (My Way Home, 1964), Szegénylegények (The Round Upaka The Hopeless Ones, 1965), Fényes szelek (The Confrontation, 1968), Égi Bárány (Agnus Dei, 1970) and Még kér a nép (Red Psalm aka The People Still Ask, 1971). When the Academy Cinemas closed in 1986, it marked the end of English access to the works of Jancsó. Of course, Georg Höllering, who ran the cinema from 1944 until his death in 1980, had directed the important Hungarian film Hortobágy (1936) (as well as the English production of T S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in the 50s). Film-makers need their champions.
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