Györgyi Szalai's professional career as a film director, screenwriter and art director is inextricably intertwined with the work of her constant collaborator, István Dárday. Therefore, the professional profile of both of them will be the same in this documentary, with minimal additions. As Györgyi Szalai put it. István Dárday was the first violinist in our orchestra." (2016)
To Die in Peace (1970) and To Keep the Home (1971)
Györgyi Szalai had already appeared in two of István Dárday's college exam films, To Die in Peace (1970) and For the Sake of Housekeeping (1971). Decades later, we can understand what the professionals were thinking about.
Dying Calmly explores the relationship between a teenage girl and her parents, not only in its time, but also with a still rare openness and human depth (István Wisinger's excellent reporting also deserves a mention).It is a rare feat how the filmmakers ask questions about everything, even the most sensitive topics, confront each character with the other's opinions and memories, reveal contradictions and distortions - and all the while, they do not lose the human connection with the characters. Contrary to the judgement of the time, the Dárdays respect the individuality of each character, are curious about everyone, and look behind every stereotype. The dramatic climax of the film is the best example of this. From the outset, we get the feeling that the filmmakers are on the side of the teenage girl and young people in general, and the strict mother gradually comes to be seen in an increasingly negative light, especially when she realises that she is not indiscriminate in the means she uses to achieve her principles. Yet, at the last minute, the drama of her life is revealed, and we learn of her thwarted dream. We will not approve of what he has done, but we will understand it better.
The role of the confrontations in the authentication of the film should also be highlighted. If a character is talking about someone, the person is usually there to listen, if not to someone else, they react with their facial expression. And the filmmakers already use replay as a technical device: in this film, they use a tape recorder to confront the characters, and later (for example in the Education series and elsewhere) they use film and video for this purpose.
Ending the Middle East examines the situation of young people at the level of social consciousness. Here, a montage takes place throughout: the images are juxtaposed in a dispassionate way, with the state and party slogans of the school celebration, the church with Christian ideas, and finally the market (here: the farewell), where sacred ideals become commodities and where the young girl is confronted as a worker with the way "work ennobles".
Both films appeal to the viewer, as was demonstrated a few years later in the "social distribution" campaign, with countless screenings in a wide variety of media.
Short films
The next big step in the career of the Dárday-Szalai duo is the Education series. A five-member team is formed, directors of a similar age and with a similar mindset team up for an unprecedented undertaking. The end product: a series of five films about a family of teachers.
The team is István Dárday, László Mihályfy, Györgyi Szalai, Pál Vilt and László Vitézy. The portrait of the family becomes a comprehensive picture of the state of education in Hungary through the depth of its presentation. Here, for the first time, the tactics that László Vitézy described in retrospect as "we made a film against the communists with the communists' money" are used. It was typical of the way the party state operated that campaigns were organised on an important issue, starting or ending with a party decision. The Education series was linked to such a campaign, from which it derived its legitimacy - indispensable in a dictatorship - to become independent of officialdom and a self-contained work of art. Since the five-part film was an unmanageable colossus for the film distribution of the time, the filmmakers also saw it as their task to create specific forms of distribution, including film controversies - hence 'social distribution'.
In terms of the development of documentary filmmaking in Hungary, the Education series is set at a time when 16 mm (lighter and cheaper) technology was already in common use. This technique became crucial to the Education series for two reasons. Firstly, it enabled synchronous sound recording to keep the camera close to the viewer. On the other hand, it made it possible to record several minutes of un. "long takes". The long take is more than a technical development. As the minutes tick by during the recording(!), the people being filmed pay less and less attention to the camera, often almost forgetting its presence, because they have to concentrate on the situation they are in. So the long exposure, when used in a "sharp" situation, allows a more authentic representation than before. This is what happened in several sequences in the Education series.
Tamás Deme writes: "the Education series is worth recalling from the distance of a quarter of a decade and a half because it was the start of a unique experiment in Hungarian public education. Here I can recall my personal experiences, since I myself participated in this experiment as a researcher. The essence of 'social distribution' is that a documentary film about a particular social group is shown to viewers from the same social group in such a way that the place of screening is also the workplace of the target audience (in this case a school), with its leaders (headmaster, party secretary). After the screening, almost everyone stayed for the audience meeting, which was enriched with the director, where the moderator who animated the discussion recorded the audience's comments on a tape recorder (in order to protect the speakers). Not incidentally, these documentaries were problem-solvers, fact-finders, conflict-resolvers. I witnessed some moving scenes. The cathartic scenes were shocking not on film but in the reality of life.
The conclusion can be quietly stated: these soul-searching films were clearly also a precursor for social change. To use the jargon of the former comrades - they were loosening works. So true. They loosened up the tightly controlled workplace bodies. They were seditious? Maybe. But gently. Not shouting, not stealing, but "just" holding up a mirror."
Reward trip (1974)
Following the success of the short films and the Education series, the Dárday-Szalai duo opened up the possibility of making feature films. The Budapest Film Studio (headed by István Nemeskürty) accepted their unusual feature film project, Jutalomutazás (1974). The venture was risky in more ways than one. They were first-time filmmakers, working with an amateur cast and using expensive 35 mm colour equipment, while key scenes were shot with two cameras. But the results justified the risk.
But there was one situation that the film industry routine could not handle: having two filmmakers on a film, one with a college degree, one not quite, and one female, one male. In the case of Reward Journey, there were multiple compromises. On the one hand, Györgyi Szalai was listed first as the writer of the film, István Dárday second. On the other hand, at the end of the film, István Dárday alone was credited as director, although this was mitigated by the fact that György Szalai was again named as "the director's collaborator" immediately after the two assistant directors. The controversial practice continued with Filmregény (1977). At the beginning of the film we read: 'The Budapest Feature Film Studio presents / István Dárday / Györgyi Szalai / film by Györgyi Szalai'. At the end of the film, however, it reads "written / Györgyi Szalai / directed / István Dárday." An unholy situation was created, which sometimes still causes confusion to this day. The writer of these lines (András Szekfü) takes the professional and human view that Dárday and Szalai developed such a close and multi-faceted creative collaboration in the early years that the traditional film production roles (director, scriptwriter, collaborator) are not meaningful in the case of their joint feature films. The vast majority of their films must be considered as a joint film by equal partners. Dárday and Szalai themselves have confirmed this position: when one of them received an art prize, they gave half of the prize to the other. This is what István Dárday did with half of the 2012 Kossuth Prize and Györgyi Szalai with half of the 2013 Merited Artist Award.
Why does Reward Journey work better than many other documentaries? It's because the actors are not "acting out" a story, but are given the task of reacting to a situation in their own way during the filming. The filmmakers have repeatedly said in interviews that this method has a technical trick in addition to the careful selection of the actors. The actors should not be shown the whole script. And they should not be told exactly what the other character or characters in the scene will do or say. Each actor must be prepared separately. The scene cannot be rehearsed, the scene "happens" in front of the camera. If the shot does not work, the same scene cannot be shot again, but something different, something new has to be invented.
The Reward Journey was therefore very carefully prepared at the script level, its dramaturgy was preconceived, even if it was occasionally modified during the shooting. The "civil" content of the scenes was built on this carefully planned dramaturgical framework, enriched by it, and authenticated by it in terms of gestures and language.
The Nature of the Individual Case (1975)
As mentioned above, the Reward Journey has been a resounding success at home and abroad. However, not everyone was happy about the success. Especially in the party-state youth movement, the validity of the film was denied, saying: but this was just an isolated case... These voices prompted György Szalai to make a one-and-a-half-hour documentary film featuring the characters of the original case (who are portrayed by other civilians in the feature film Reward Journey). Andrea Pócsik writes about the film: 'Györgyi Szalai... followed the events with her camera: she curiously asked the real characters of the story about the reception of the film. ... The interviewees give different interpretations of the film and its reviews. In one of the most exciting scenes, the protagonist (in the film, Tibor Balogh) and his family respond to a letter from a distressed viewer. It is a dramatic moment, as the socialist worker-conscious letter-writer tries to prove the protagonist's unworthiness, questioning the boy's suitability for a task and role for which he has been appointed from above. In this way, the documentary further refines and nuances the premise of The Reward Journey by juxtaposing overlapping, overlapping or even confronting opinions."
Film novel (1977)
The Film Novel (1977) seems to have been made in the same way as The Reward Journey, but it was a bold step forward in terms of content. "The basic question of István Dárday and Györgyi Szalai's work, Filmregény ... is to explore the internal, small-world and social restraining forces of social mobility. To this extent, it is a harsh and comprehensive look at "where are we today?". His camera follows the journey of three brothers, their fate condensed into a few years, but the Chekhovian allusion ... also refers to small tragedies, which, however, also lead the viewer to more distant, horizon-related questions. Because the film points to unresolvable knots. All three girls are lost somewhere, their lives are misguided or threatened with derailment, even though no terrible events occur in any of their lives. But in this restraint, in its avoidance of melodrama, the film nevertheless points to the real danger: the first few years of socialisation, of entering life, are full of adventure and danger, not because of youthful flight and recklessness, but because almost every step has to be tried out - and the risk of failure. It is this deeper layer behind the girls' lives that emerges again and again, and makes this 'novel' so tense."
Partnership Film Studio
In the second half of the seventies, several filmmakers simultaneously turned to the controversial but promising genre of fiction documentary (Judit Elek, István Dárday - Györgyi Szalai, Pál Schiffer, Judit Ember, Imre Gyöngyössy - Barna Kabay, Béla Tarr, Lívia Gyarmathy).
Most of their films barely fit into the framework of traditional film production, and many of them were not made there, but at the Béla Balázs Studio or in co-production with it. The need to have a studio for non-standard films on an equal footing with the four feature film studios became increasingly urgent. This need brought together filmmakers of very different backgrounds, styles and even world views, who - and István Dárday played a leading role in this - fought for the creation of the Társulás Filmstudio, which operated between 1981 and 1985. In terms of its legal status, it was therefore part of a state-owned company, working with state money.)
Györgyi Szalai, however, was given the opportunity to direct a feature film before the Association was established. Dárday became the scriptwriter for the film "Dédelgetgetget kedvenceink" (1981). In an interview from the same period, Györgyi Szalai says. It was a game that broke the ice.
What kind of work is Györgyi Szalai referring to here? So far, she has worked with several other filmmakers besides the films with Dárday. Let's just mention their joint film with László Vitézy, The Reveal (1979) or Peacetime (1980), which Vitézy directed and Szalai wrote the screenplay for.
Szalai's interview continues, "The film didn't have a specific storyline, but we have long been concerned about the fate of a child. We have a collective house in the countryside, an old water mill. One summer I sat outside under the tree and typed. Suddenly I was surrounded by a group of children - it turned out they had never seen a typewriter in their lives. Then they came into the house, where on one wall there was a map with the name of the village - Pápasalamon - circled on it. They looked at the map and one of them said: see, I told you that the capital of Pápasalamon is Budapest. It made me wonder: how is it that these children are watching TV, but somehow no real information is able to filter through to them. The counterpoint was the child of a family in Pest - our friends - and how much attention they pay to him, how consciously and intelligently they bring him up. Somehow, the story of the film, or more precisely the skeleton of the film, grew out of that: the relationship between a 14-year-old girl from Pest on holiday in the countryside and a local boy of the same age."
The founders of the Társulás Filmstudio are István Dárday, Pál Erdőss, Lívia Gyarmathy, Imre Gyöngyössy, Barna Kabay, László Mihályfy, Györgyi Szalai, Béla Tarr, László Vitézy, Pál Zolnay, János Xantus. But also Gábor Bódy, György Fehér, Gyula Gulyás and János Gulyás, András Jeles made films here.
The list of names shows that the Dárday's have succeeded in creating a community of creators in which the common need was the renewal of the content and/or form of genres (almost any film genre!). A group of social scientists organised themselves around the Association. When Dárday and Szalai were filming Transformations, István Schlett took over the management of the studio. They were joined by Mihály Bihari, Zoltán Bíró, Csaba Gombár, Zsolt Papp, Mihály Pohárnok and others. During its short existence, the Association has enriched Hungarian cinema with significant values. The Dog in the Night Song by Bódy, Dream Brigade by Jeles, Don't Pale! Panelkapcsolat by Béla Tarr and Autumn Almanac, to name but a few.
Transformation (1984)
Dárday and Szalai made their film "Transformation" (1984) in the Association. The film's conflict was similar to the problems of the Young Writers' Circle of Attila József - perhaps the cause of the problems with the cultural policy leadership. The Metamorphosis received a mixed critical reception. Its composition and the exciting contrasts between the generations living together were appreciated. They appreciated the vitality that filtered into the enclosed space. At the same time, the film was criticised for its excessive length, for feeling disjointed and for a loosening of form. From a film-historical perspective, it was probably a question of the two filmmakers' conception of the world and of art beginning to change, and the film therefore represents a transition between the film novel and the even more radical Documentator.
Although in 1985-86 the crisis of the party-state was already palpable, no one expected the system to collapse. And the system had the power to strike at the Partnership Studio and to close it down. In their memoirs, Dárday and Szalai always point out that the dissolution of the Society was greeted with great satisfaction by the power elite of the film industry. The difficulties that the Society's creators encountered in continuing their work are illustrated, for example, by the calvary of Béla Tarr's Satan's Tango, which took years to complete. But the headline of the next big Dárday-Szalai documentary is also instructive.
The Documentary (1988)
At the beginning of the documentary (1988), the viewer is informed by the following caption: "Made / at Hunnia Film Studio Company / in collaboration / with the Ministry of Culture, / Mokép / and the / Moving Image Innovation Association /". So it wasn't made by Hunnia, it was just made by them. So it wasn't made by MIT, only in collaboration with them. And then there was also the collaboration of Mokép, the national film distributor, and the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture. It must have been a difficult birth. Despite all the difficulties, the new phase of Dárday-Szalai's oeuvre was a breakthrough film, which won the Fipresci, the international film critics' prize, at the 1989 Berlinale.
This film is truly awash with documents of the times. At the end of the main title, there is a long list of news clips and documents. The film itself seems to "document" a struggle, as a private conflict is overlaid with the (mainly cinematic) documents of the world and, through them, the great conflicts of humanity. Prominent among these is the (then) recent Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion, which dominates the film as a cosmic signal. Even those unconvinced by this juxtaposition of private life and public tragedy (there have been critics) were impressed by the film's sweeping momentum and visual attractions.
M.I.T.: Moving Image Innovation Partnership
The change of regime left Dárday and Szalai in a precarious position: the Companionship Studio had been dissolved by the party-state cultural leadership a few years before, but with great difficulty they managed to maintain some kind of group-like continuity under the different names of Mozgókép Innováció. At the same time, the change of regime also pulled the rug out from under the four feature film studios that had been the sole dominant ones until then, and they were transformed, dissolved, reorganised, disappeared - completely new set-ups were created, each actor looking for its place in the new market economy and in the sphere of influence of the Hungarian Moving Image Foundation (later Public Foundation). The situation of Dárday and Szalai was complicated by the fact that it was during the turmoil of the regime change that they succeeded in realising an old dream: in 1989 they acquired the Kinizsi Cinema in Budapest and ran it under the name M.I.T. VIDEÓ- UND MOZIKLUB (M.I.T.: Moving Image Innovation Association). From 1991, it operated under the name Blue Box as a film-centric but not exclusively screening cultural club. After ten and a half years of difficulties (mainly financial), the Blue Box had to close in the autumn of 1999.
East of West, or the discreet charm of the media (1993)
In 1993, Dárday and Szalai produce a film satire entitled East of the West, or the Discreet Charm of the Media. They do not present their personal experiences of life in the (new) world of the media, yet the whole film is marked by a bitterness over what they have experienced, which, according to the laws of satire, sometimes turns into laughter, sometimes into shock akin to weeping. This film is also about a kind of reward trip: only here, they want to hand over a reward, so they lug a giant TV set across the country. The film's brilliant metaphor is that the TV set has no off switch, it pours out images and sounds unstoppably. It would be hard to find a more apt symbol of the captive relationship between man and television. Some critics, however, have criticised the film's length, saying that the basic idea has been overlong. It is worth noting that the main roles are not played by civilians, but by avant-garde personalities in their own way, János Regős and András Szőke, who are on the borderline between the film and entertainment industries. Would the filmmakers have given up their faith in the material that could be mobilised by civilian actors? Hardly. But it follows from the very essence of satire that there the characters cannot live their lives, there are roles to be played.
Reflections (1998)
Reflections (1998) is the next major undertaking of the filmmakers. The two locations of the film are symbolic: Venice and New York. Venice appears as the quintessence of European culture, while New York is - implicitly - America, the victorious new world. The Reflections is the most strongly stylized film of its creators to date. Most of the scenes are seen in undulating images, as if reflected in water, though not upside down. The undulation is a powerful stylistic device: it highlights the classic beauty of the scenes, but also disrupts them several times a minute, ultimately revealing the fundamental instability of the world. When we see an exceptionally still (not undulating) image, we are already suspicious: well, is it calm? But the wind, the undulating wind of history, always starts up again.
"There is only one story, only one dramaturgy that begins, happens and ends," says one of the supporting characters in Reflections, and this statement, made in a conversation in the hospital, could be taken to apply to the whole film. István Dárday and Györgyi Szalai try to present universal content in the story of one man. Compared to their two previous films, Documentator, a documentary about regime change, and From West to East..., a media critique that is brought to life in a picaresque story, Reflections is an unusually ambitious undertaking. In pursuit of general contexts, it explores questions that have almost disappeared from contemporary cinema, which is in the throes of mosaic truths and ironic games. Moreover, he finds an unusual form for this elevated choice of subject: he infuses fiction with philosophy and documentary with vision, presenting the viewer with a serious challenge at first sight if he wants to find his bearings in the world of film." - writes Balázs Varga about Reflections.
The Emigrant - Everything is different (2006)
The outstanding feature film venture of the 2000s (so far) is The Emigrant - Everything is different (2006), about the old age and death of Sándor Márai.There is something inevitable in Dárday and Szalai's approach to the life's work of the great outsider, the unrelenting critic of national socialism and the communist system, the writer of many civil confessions. We know from interviews that they would have liked to include Márai with a civilian character, but the size and nature of the task did not allow it. Fortunately, we can say, since Ferenc Bács and Katalin Gyöngyössy, who plays the wife, are the film's assets. To quote Tamás Deme again, "The Emigrant, which presents the last months of Márai's life, is... a key film. Its symbolism makes it possible to understand the feeling of Hungarian life after 1956 and the tragedy of emigration. It says more about the victims of Hungarian history than dozens of studies. Its acid-pepper is not only the bitter historical facts, but also the physical and emotional emotions and authentic life events presented with great empathy. How a rage of incomprehension is born out of reverie. What does an intellectual with a soul to do when he has to pick up the helpless body of his companion lying on the ground. What does one sum up when one is far beyond the past of an unsummarizable life and is about to wrap oneself in non-being. The subtitle of The Emigrant says a lot: 'everything is different'. That is the motto of the Dardays."
Not a multitude, but a soul
If the films of the 2000s by Dárday-Szalai were to be grouped under a single term, it would be "national pilgrimage". The national pilgrimage is a civic initiative, which is the subject of the film Not a Multitude, but a Soul. But in all their films, the filmmakers have recently been travelling the country as national pilgrims, showing abandoned villages coming back to life, protesting against the closure of small post offices, which could lead to the death of villages, and showing more of the works of Imre Makovecz, whom they love, in Hungary and in the Hungarian regions of neighbouring countries. In fact, in her film The Church Builder (2014), Györgyi Szalai uses computer animation to breathe life into Imre Makovecz's monumental church design and virtually 'builds' it. The viewer can look down from above, walk around the church, which was not built in reality, and even enter the nave.
In all of Szalai's and Dárday's films lately, the nation is moved, the people they portray always want something and do something about it. If we put this decade and a half in the context of the half-century of the filmmakers' oeuvre, it may seem a loss that the irony, even the loving irony, that characterised their early documentaries has virtually disappeared from their portrayal. However, the viewer is compensated by seeing kind and serious people in beautiful Hungarian landscapes that are a joy to behold in themselves. And, fortunately for us, the double oeuvre is far from over!
[2016]