Ruthless Times

A group of plate-layers are packing the stone-bed under the rail with their pickaxes. They swing their picks in a coordinated, rhythmic way, thereby creating a sequence of rings, when they hit the stones or the rail, which sounds almost as music. When a train passes by, they stand silent beside the rail for a while, and then start the rhythmic beats again.

A grey-haired man walks through the fields. Fatigued, but with the same tenacity he roams the roads, the pathways, the tracks every day, medical bag in hand. Everyone awaits him: desperate or in hope, to the dying or to the woman in labour. He is the local GP. In fact, he is film director Imre Gyöngyössy’s father, the protagonist of one of his first short films. The personal narration based on the director’s poem is made complete by the pictures of Sándor Sára and István Gaál who were also active at Balázs Béla Studio at that time.

A group of seven friends of different ages and interests meet regularly at Eva's. They have coffee, talk and listen to music. At one of the gatherings, Eva finds a secret agent's badge, "Lookout 123", in the hallway. The accidentally dropped ID card can only belong to one of the members of the party. From that moment on, the film is a continuous chain of private investigations, suspicions, betrayals, deceptions, the fabrication of hypotheses, the chess game of thinking through all the motives that are supposed to be relevant.

In the summer of 1944, a Hungarian soldier commits a murder to earn a short leave from the front, but instead of returning, he chooses to desert. He flees into the desolate Carpathian Mountains with his elderly grandmother, searching for a hidden cave where his parents are rumored to be hiding from the war. Convinced that the world is ending, the pair struggles through the brutal, wintry landscape in a desperate attempt to find sanctuary and outrun the consequences of his actions.

The Christmas of 1944. The Pásztor family (father, mother, four daughters and a grandchild), are spending the holidays at their country farm. Péter, mothers apple of the eye, soon arrives, and has no objections when his soldiers uniform is made to disappear during the night. The Soviet army, arriving in the footsteps of the fleeing Hungarian army, is commandeering. At night, the soldiers turn up at the house where young women are abiding.

Summer of 1956. In the small town in the Hungarian country-side, during the time the chief of police spends in a course in Budapest, Rigó Dezső is the boss with full powers. He is fighting tooth and nail to help the local football-team stay in the second national selection. During one of the matches, he beats the referee to death.

The opera-film, as opposed to Gluck's Vienna version, is a recollection of the ancient tragic Greek myth. Orpheus, who is able to defeat Hades with the power of art, is unable to conquer his own human defects. Amor is sympathetic to Orpheus' sufferings as he mourns his dead beloved, and lets him know the message sent by the Gods, namely that he may take her home from the underworld if he is capable of not looking at her.

Huszárik's graduation film was another short entitled Groteszk (Grotesque) in 1963 about a strange train voyage of an artist carrying his own picture.

The first signs of autumn are seen in a landscape along a river. Some villagers are stacking a bed of stone blocks on the river-bank to avoid more eroding. Others are occupied by ploughing, fishing or repairing. A small steamboat passes by. In the engine room a stoker is shovelling coal into the oven. Further down the river a small town is passed by the water. A rowing-team is training for coming races. Some biologists are looking at microbes from the water through a microscope. A group of workers are painting a new barge and push it into the river. When a small boy sees a racing boat, he leaves his sand-castle and runs along the river.

Mihály, a retired foundryman has brought up his sons in a very disciplined and strict way, and as a result they have become a doctor, an engineer, and a teacher. However, his half orphan grandson, Misi, has been spoilt, and become skilled in nothing else really but riding his motorbike and going to parties. He has been involved in shady businesses a number of times already. Having experienced so many difficulties, privation and hardship in his own life and now seeing Misi's irresponsible lifestyle, the old man's bitterness is growing day by day.

Man and his environment.

This film constructs an anguished hymn to peace using pieces of movie newscasts, photographs, and monuments about those who have fallen in the Great War.

A group of students cope with the disappearance of their friend.

Based on the stories of Hungarian writer Gyula Krúdy, this film is a lush and sensuous depiction of the life, loves and memories of serial seducer Szindbád. As the protagonist looks back on his life, past and present, imagination and reality flow inseparably into one another.

When young Tako's father dies in Hungary in 1945, Tako is left with scant memories of him. Nurtured by his mother, the boy fantasizes about the man his father was, imagining him a hero. Grown into a man himself, Tako falls for a Jewish refugee, Anni. Burdened by her own heritage as a Jew, Anni sparks in Tako a desire to find out what his father was really like, and he delves into the role his father played in World War II.

An aspiring film student is denied a scholarship to the state-funded university when his father is thrown in jail. The man had stopped a train in order to facilitate the union between two old friends. The son then takes a job as a land surveyor and meets a Greek man who works towards the collective benefits of the peasants. The man is killed in a peasant uprising prompted by a bureaucratic boondoggle. The surveyor looks after the man's widow as his emerging political and social awareness leads him take a stand against government injustice. Another incident, in which gypsies are rounded up by state hygiene workers, further galvanizes the man's beliefs. He photographs the incident, and his work allows him to be accepted into the school from which he was previously denied admission.