Istvan Szabo

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Szabó is one of the most notable Hungarian filmmakers and one who has been best known outside the Hungarian-speaking world since the late 1960s. István Szabó's films are based on the tradition of the European auteurism that represent many aspects of the political and psychological conflicts of Central Europe's recent history often inspired by his own personal biography. He made his debut as a student in 1959, creating a short film at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, and his first feature film was released in 1964.

He achieved his greatest international success with Mephisto (1981) for which he was awarded an Oscar in the best foreign language film category. Since then, most of Szabó's films have been international co-productions made in a variety of languages. His films are shot in European locations. However, he continues to make films in Hungarian, and even in his international co-productions he prefers to choose Hungary for filming locations, relying on Hungarian talents in the making. In 2006, Szabó stirred controversy when a weekly Hungarian magazine called Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature in English) published an article about that he had been an informant to the communist regime's secret service.

Life

Born to Mária Szabó (née Vita) and István Szabó who was a doctor, in Budapest. The father's side of his family had a long tradition of choosing a career in medicine. His family is of Jewish origin that converted to catholicism. Even so, the Arrow Cross Party still considered them Jews before the end of WW II. Regent Miklós Horthy declared that Hungary had quit the war, seeking an armistice with belligerent countries. As a result, the Arrow Cross Party rose to power with the support of the Nazi Germany, and his family had to split up and take refuge to escape persecution. Szabó made it through the war, hiding in an orphanage, but his father died of diphtheria shortly after the German defeat. Later on, his films draw heavily on these memories of his childhood.

In 2006, Szabó stirred controversy when a weekly Hungarian magazine called Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature in English) published an article revealing he had been an informant for the communist regime's secret service. Between 1957 and 1961, he submitted forty-eight reports on seventy-two people. Most of the time, he made reports about classmates and teachers at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. According to historian István Deák, just a tip-off Szabó had made, had a negative influence on someone, when an individual was denied a passport.

After the article had been published, over one hundred prominent intellectuals, including some of those whom Szabó had made reports about, signed a supporting letter to stand up for him. Szabó's initial rection to the article was that his cooperation with the communist secret service was coerced and might be regarded as an act of bravery since he intended to save the life of his former classmate Pál Gábor. A 2010 publication asserted that "whether this is true or not is impossible to prove as not much has remained of Szabó's file and as revelations about the murky past of prominent figures such as Sazbó have become mired in controversy."

In a 2001 interview, Szabó revealed that he believes in God, but considers the subject personal and does not like to talk about it.

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Career

Szabó aspired to be a doctor like his father as an infant. Nevertheless, by the age of 16, he began to filmmaking under the influence of Béla Balázs' book. He was one of 11 applicants out of 800 applicants accepted to the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, where he studied under Félix Máriássy. Judit Elek, Zsolt Kóvács, János Rózsa, Pál Gábor, Imre Györgyössy, Ferenc Kardos, and Zoltán Huszárik were among his classmates. Szabó made several short films during this period, most notably his thesis film, Koncert (1963). At the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the film received a prize. He was apprenticed to CEO of Hunnia Film Studio, János Herskó, beginning with an opportunity for him to produce his first feature film at the age of 25 rather than spending ten years as an assistant director as would have expected.

István Szabó began his work in Hungary at the time when the "new wave" in Hungarian cinema was gaining traction [at a time when the phenomenon was widespread in film industry all over Western and Eastern Europe]. The new wave in Eastern Europe began against a backdrop of political liberalization, decentralization of film companies, and the emergence of film as a valuable export product for Western European markets. As a result, the films became more experimental, politically defunct, and, in the case of Szabó, psychologically probing than the previous generation's films. Thanks to the Kádár government's reforms, the Hungarian filmmakers in particular saw a significant rise in freedom of expression.

The Age of Illusions (1964), Szabó's first feature film, is partly autobiographical film about how Szabó's generation had trouble starting a career. It focuses on how they were first introduced to the job market as teenagers, although they later had to overcome the challenges that older generation had faced for them, which also set the tone for developing intimate relationships amongst themselves. Szabó's artistic synchrony with Truffaut and the French New Wave is shown by the appearance of a poster for François Truffaut's The 400 Blows in the background of a scene. The film received the Silver Sail Award for Best First Work at the Locarno International Film Festival as well as a Special Jury Prize for Best Director at the Budapest Film Festival.

Father (1966) is a coming-of-age tale that shows Szabó's increasing fascination with history and his childhood memories. The story chronicles events from the Arrow Cross party's authorship to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, revolving around the orientation disorder and self-awareness of a generation that had to grow up without a father figure in wartime. The main character replaces the image of his missing father figure with fantasy images that keep changing with time. These events took place during a time in his life where he was still young. Finally, he is able to face his own situation as a university student and learns that rather than an idealized father figure, he must rely on his own strength rather than on an idealized father figure. The film won the Grand Prix at Locarno and the Special Jury Prize, and established Szabó as the country's most influential Hungarian filmmaker of his time, as well as a film historian. According to a group of Hungarian film critics, Father appeared on a list of the best Hungarian films in 2000.

Lovefilm (1970) focuses on a young man's relationship with his childhood sweetheart, told through flashbacks that include the Arrow Cross dictatorship and 1956, which were released in an experimental, fragmented form. In 25 Fireman Street (1973), which began as a short film, Dream About a House (1971), this experimental tendency in Szabó's films reached its apotheosis. 25 Fireman Street takes place in Budapest, Hungary, during which the inhabitants of a single apartment building are plagued by nightmares of torture and tragedy spanning thirty years, including both World Wars, the Arrow Cross dictatorship, the Communist takeover, and 1956. Although the film received the top prize at Locarno, Szabó was dissatisfied with the film's lack of success at the box office and at film festivals. He attributed the film's complicated setup to the film's complexities, so he decided to make his next film a simpler form.

Szabó's earlier, intricate narrative plots, characterized by flashbacks and hopes, were replaced by a more linear one in Budapest Tales (1976). He switched from a literal representation of history to an allegorical one at the same time. The film follows a diverse group of people who came together on the outskirts of an unidentified city at the end of an unidentified war to restore a broken tram and ride it into the city. The film was interpreted by critics as representing Hungarian history more broadly than human responses to war and reconstruction in general.

András Bálint appeared in four full-length films based on Szabó himself. Although Bálint appeared in Budapest Tales, this was Szabó's first feature film that did not have a lot of autobiographical data. He did not make another autobiographical film until meeting Venus, eighteen years ago.

At the box office and festivals, Budapest Tales was even less popular than 25 Fireman Street. According to author David Paul, this could explain why Szabó changed gears even more in his forthcoming film, Confidence (1980), in which historical events are represented clearly and are not limited to neither memory nor allegory. The film explores a man and a woman who are forced to share a room as they hide from the Arrow Cross ahead of the Second World War. It received a Best Director Award at the Berlin Film Festival for Szabó, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 53rd Academy Awards.

Szabó's next three films marked a new development in his career, ranging from Hungarian scripts written by Szabó alone and starring Bálint to German co-productions starring Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer to international co-productions in German, written by Szabó in collaboration with others, and featuring Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer. Brandauer appears in a sequence of roles based on historical figures who, as depicted in the films, compromised their morals in order to move forward in a context of authoritarian political power. Brandauer plays an actor and theater director in Nazi Germany in Mephisto, based on Mann's former brother-in-law Gustaf Gründgens' book. The film received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival, raising Szabó's international recognition.

In Colonel Redl, Brandauer portrays Alfred Redl, the Austro-Hungarian Empire's counter-intelligence chief who was blackmailed into spying for the Russians in order to conceal his homosexuality from being revealed. The film received top awards in Germany and the United Kingdom, but it sparked a controversy in Austria, where several periodicals have accused the film of bringing the country's image into disrepute. Brandauer portrays true life clairvoyant performer Erik Jan Hanussen, whose rising fame brings him closer—and risky—intuitive contact with the Nazis.

Szabó's Brandauer trilogy was the first of his Brandauer series, filming in a variety of languages and European locations. He has continued to film in Hungary, but also in his international co-productions, he often films in Hungary and uses Hungarian talent.

Meeting Venus (1991), the first of many English-language films directed by Szabó (and his first comedy), was based on his experience directing Tannhäuser at the Paris Opera in 1984. Niels Arestrup plays a Hungarian singing the opera at an imaginary pan-European opera company and confronting a slew of difficulties that represent Europe's unipolarization. The multinational characters were all named with translations of "Taylor," which is the word for "Szabó," according to an inside joke.

Szabó revisited strictly Hungarian politics with Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe (1992), this time focusing on a contemporary rather than historical, cultural problem. The film follows two young, female teachers of Russians struggling with obsolescence after the Communist government's demise, as well as a variety of forms of sexual assault in the new Hungary. At the Berlin Film Festival, the film received the top prize.

Sunshine (1999), a three-hour historical epic and an English-language co-production, was seen by many commentators as Szabó's most innovative film and, with Mephisto, his most important. In several of Szabó's earlier films, produced during the socialist period in which talk of the country's Jews was more restricted. Szabó emphasized this aspect of Hungarian history, which he himself had encountered as a child under the Arrow Cross dictatorship in Sunshine, for the first time. Ralph Fiennes lives with three generations in the Sonnenschein family as they journey through twentieth-century Jewish history, from the late Austro-Hungarian Empire through the Holocaust to the 1956 Revolution.

Several characters are based on true people, including the Zwack family and their burgeoning liquor business, Attila Petschauer, the Olympic fencer, and Israeli police official Ernö Szücs. The film received European Film Awards for Best Screenwriter, Best Actor, and Best Cinematographer. Rotten Tomatoes, a review company, gave it a score of 74%.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was the subject of a particularly positive review, with A. O. Scott of the New York Times expressing a more mixed view, saying that "the movie has accumulated sufficient power and momentum to shake the memory of its earlier awkwardness." It displays such compassion for its characters and views its subject matter with such intelligence that it's easy to forget the clumsy editing, the haphazard insertion of black-and-white newsreels, and the hyperventilating sexual ardor that seems to be a Sors family curse.

Szabó returned to Mephisto's geographic region, which he had explored in Taking Sides (2001). Stellan Skarsgrd talks about his life as a German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Harvey Keitel, a US Army prosecutor, informs Furtwängler about his Nazi service. Several awards were given to the film at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina, including Best Director.

Annette Bening, a British actress starring Julia (2004), is based on a W. Somerset Maugham novel. Bening received a Golden Globe Award for her efforts.

At the 27th Moscow International Film Festival in 2005, Szabó was given the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Rokonok (2006) was a Hungarian production based on Zsigmond Móricz's 1932 book on political corruption. Sándor Csányi is a newly elected attorney general whose relatives (rokonok) have come out of the woodwork seeking for favors. It was part of the 28th Moscow International Film Festival.

The Door (2012), an English language translation based on a Magda Szabó book, explores the friendship between an affluent novelist (Martina Gedeck) and her poor, mysterious maid (Helen Mirren). It opened the 13th Tbilisi International Film Festival and claimed the Michael Curtiz Audience Award at the Hungarian Film Festival in Los Angeles.

András Bálint, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Péter Andorai, and Ildikó Bánsági, film director Lajos Koltai; film editor Péter Dobai and Andrea Vészits are among Szabó's regular collaborators.

Several interconnected themes run in Szabó's films, the most popular being the connection between the personal and the political or historical. His first three feature films address emerging of age topics, but political/historical events frame these debates and permanently undermine the characters' attempts to lead their personal lives. "Our mother once told me, We had a wonderful childhood and our youth were beautiful, but our life was shattered by politics and history," Szabó said in an interview in 2008. "The key events of mid-20th century Hungarian and Central European history—Nazism, the Second World War, and, more accurately, Budapest—the Arrow Cross dictatorship and the Holocaust, the Communist takeover, and the 1956 Revolution.' Szabó's father has often referred to this topic as a search for protection.

Individuals make moral compromises in order to function in immoral political cultures, which is a similar topic. "I don't think that life is possible without making compromises," Szabó said in an interview about Taking Sides. The question is only one of boundaries: how far will go. If one crosses the line, the deal is a bad, even lethal one, as Istvan Deak points out, and it could be attributed to Szabó's close association with the Communist secret police.

The arts, most often theater, but also music and film itself, are all closely related topics. Artists are drawn into dramas about politics, role-playing, and identity in several of Szab's films, most prominently in Mephisto.

Szabó's early films, which were featured in Lovefilm and 25 Fireman Street, were heavily inspired by the French New Wave's inception of flashbacks, dream sequences, and unconventional narrative structures based on these methods.

Insofar as he tends to invest particular items and places with symbolic meaning, Szabó emphasizes iconography in his films. In several of his films, tram cars play a key role, and one of them appears in Budapest Tales. In several of his films, including scenes of the Danube and buildings Szabó lived in as a child, Budapest played a key role.

Acting also plays a significant role in Szabó's films, as he emphasizes emotional complexity in his central characters. He used the same lead actors over and over in his first two films—first András Bálint and then Klaus Maria Brandauer—but then Klaus Maria Brandauer. He often uses long close-up shots to emphasize emotion on his characters' faces.

Szabó has worked in a variety of other roles in film, including writing and directing television shows, short films, and documentaries, as well as acting as assistant director, screenwriter, and actor in films directed by others. He appeared in 1969 as a member of the Moscow International Film Festival's 6th generation jury.

Szabó has produced numerous operas, including Tannhäuser in Paris, Boris Godunov in Leipzig, Il Trovatore in Vienna, and Three Sisters in Budapest, including Tannhäuser. He has worked at film schools in Budapest, London, Berlin, and Vienna. He was one of the founding members of the European Film Academy and, in 1992, the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts was founded.

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