For most people, when asked about their dearest childhood memory, images of a holiday, an excursion, carefree play with friends come to mind; the taste and scent of a mother’s or grandmother’s cooking are recalled… From her childhood and youth, Klára Tóth most fondly remembers the hours she spent with her sister, Erzsi. During the summer holidays, day after day, they climbed up into the large tree standing in the garden of their house and immersed themselves for long hours in their favourite books. At such times, the world around them ceased to exist… This small episode is key to understanding her being, for anyone who knows her is aware that for her, culture is an essential condition of life, one of the primary sources of happiness.
She obtained her degree at the Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Humanities, in Hungarian language and népművelés (cultural mediation). During her studies in népművelés, her outlook was profoundly shaped by Lajos Németh, László Vekerdi, Rudolf Andorka, and, not least, by the film aesthetics courses of Yvette Bíró and Jenő Király. By the 1970s, the grip of censorship had begun to loosen, and the most important works of the French New Wave and British Free Cinema reached the film clubs – which she attended regularly – exerting a strong influence on Hungarian filmmaking as well. By the end of her university years, the path she was to follow had crystallised clearly before her: film, and writing.
Her first publications appeared while she was still a university student, primarily film-historical studies and critiques. Since then, her writings – varied in both subject matter and genre (journalism, criticism, essay) – have been published continuously in the most prestigious periodicals (Filmkultúra, Filmvilág, Magyar Szemle, ÉS, Népszabadság, Magyar Nemzet, Nők Lapja, etc.), and, at least in the years following the political transition, it can be said that they were carried by virtually any newspaper regardless of political affiliation.
A recurring motif in her writings ever since has been her despair over the expansion of low-quality mass culture, and her insistence on restoring standards and values. “I see that […] reviews of cinematic trash appear in the columns to the same extent as those of serious works, and out of well-understood material interest a large part of the intelligentsia promotes the omnipotence of mass culture without any pangs of conscience,” she declared at the 2005 Magyar Filmszemle, on the occasion of the publication of her second independent volume.
Her favourite poet is Attila József; in her arguments she often turns to the poet’s timeless ideas and readily quotes his beautiful, weighty lines. (Even in her very first independent volume, the portrait film about the Russian film director Elem Klimov, she refers to him: “It’s a good thing there are iambs, and something to hold on to,” wrote Attila József. “But what is a film director to hold on to?”)
One of the key words in Klára Tóth’s writings is freedom. Even during the years of dictatorship she obsessively sought out those small islands where – if nothing more – the illusion of freedom could be created. This was perhaps one of the bonds that brought her together with her later husband, for István Dárday likewise explored the possibilities of freedom in every sphere of life. Together with her collaborators – in opposition to the state film studio – this is why she helped to establish the Társulás Stúdió (Association Studio), and with friends they jointly purchased a watermill, in order to create a more advanced version of the Western communes known in Hungary mostly by hearsay. A kind of magical space where one could live and create within a circle of friends, free of all constraints. Even if this venture later proved to be a dead end, a series of outstanding works has survived as the legacy of the years spent at the “mill”.
Under the Spell of Film
She writes about the power and consciousness-shaping impact of the cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, among other places in her critique Virágok a mocsárban (Flowers in the Marsh). “My childhood, and later my youth in the 1960s and 1970s, passed as if in front of a cinema screen. We watched, spellbound and enchanted, the films of Bergman, Fellini, Wajda, Tarkovsky, Jancsó, Kósa, Sára, Huszárik, and the documentarists. And when we were not in the cinema, we talked about films in clubs and at universities. East European film and history – this was, for example, the title of Yvette Bíró’s seminar at the Budapest Faculty of Humanities in the 1974–75 academic year. We learned a great deal in these lectures, about Eastern Europe and about history alike. Perhaps we learned the most when, in the following academic year, Yvette Bíró took leave of us, because she had been dismissed from Filmkultúra, and was informed that ‘no objection would be raised to her leaving the country’. Not long before that we had also lost the legendary film critic László B. Nagy – and even if we did not yet fully understand it, we sensed that all those things we discussed freely, cheerfully, in no way scholastically: film and history in our time and in our region were not a game, not a movie.”
After completing her university studies, she first took up a position at the Fővárosi Moziüzemi Vállalat (Budapest Municipal Cinema Operations Company), where she was given the opportunity to indulge her passion: she could watch as many films as she wished and was even paid for it. However, as she was not really assigned tasks that satisfied her creative ambitions, she soon changed workplaces.
She moved to the Filmfőigazgatóság (National Film Directorate), where her superiors surprised her with a task that truly suited her: she became the liaison officer for what was then perhaps the most exciting film workshop, the Balázs Béla Stúdió (Béla Balázs Studio). She spent ten years in this studio, which, within an increasingly softening dictatorship, radiated the air of freedom: young filmmakers were able to create – each year from the budget of a single feature film – without censorship (or self-censorship), and moreover without the oppressive burden of obligatory public release. Although the members were aware that she worked within the emblematic institution of cultural power, the Művelődésügyi Minisztérium (Ministry of Culture), they nonetheless trusted her. They sensed Klára’s supportive intent, as through her informed articles and studies she contributed to making the studio’s activities known and accepted (see: Profán köszöntő (Profane Greeting); A Balázs Béla Stúdió két évtizede (Two Decades of the Béla Balázs Studio))
Her husband, the Kossuth Prize–winning film director István Dárday, was one of the founders of the cinematic movement known as the Budapest School and a key developer of its methods. Over the thirty years of their marriage, Klára Tóth became not only the director’s life partner but, in certain areas, his creative collaborator as well. When the Filmfőigazgatóság (National Film Directorate) was dissolved following the political transition, they worked together at the emblematic art cinema operated by the Dárdays, the Blue Box. Klára was responsible for the distribution and promotion of films produced within the Mozgókép Innovációs Társulás (Motion Picture Innovation Association). At the Társulás, such renowned works were created as Panelkapcsolat (Panel Relationship), Rock Térítő (Rock Missionary), Álombrigád (Dream Brigade), Sátántangó (Satan’s Tango), A színésznő és a halál (The Actress and Death), Bolse vita (Bolshe Debate), Tükröződések (Reflections) – and the list could be continued at length. This enumeration also makes it clear that the Társulás primarily became a home for filmmakers whose unconventional, innovative aspirations set them apart from the more cautious studios of Mafilm (Hungarian National Film Production Company) (Béla Tarr, András Jeles, János Xantus, András Szirtes, Gábor Dettre, etc.).
For several films by the Dárday–Szalai creative duo, Klára Tóth served as dramaturg, artistic adviser, and expert (Nyugatról Keletre, avagy a média diszkrét bája (From West to East, or the Discreet Charm of the Media); Az emigráns (The Emigrant)). The idea for the latter also originated with her: as an enthusiastic admirer of Márai, it was she who proposed that the final phase of the writer’s life be captured on film – his isolation and disillusionment during his American exile, followed by his tragic suicide.
Duna Teleívzió (a Hungarian public television channel)
She was invited to join Duna Televízió (a Hungarian public television channel) as a film editor at a privileged moment, during the presidency of Sándor Sára, when the channel was awarded the title “The World’s Best Cultural Television” in 1999. At Duna, for twelve years she was responsible not only for Polish cinema but also for Hungarian documentary film. With outstanding discernment, she selected and edited into series the finest Hungarian documentaries, which had never before been presented to audiences in Hungary in such abundance and richness. In 2005, for half a year she also directed the work of Duna Television’s cultural magazine as editor-in-chief, but when a “promoted” presenter lodged a complaint with the president that the editor-in-chief demanded too much of her colleagues – for example, that they should read the book they were talking about – the president relieved her of her position, offering her another managerial post. She asked only to be allowed to return to her work as a film editor. Following the merger of Magyar Televízió (Hungarian Television) and Duna Televízió (Duna Television), like many of her colleagues, she too lost her position. There was no longer any demand for an editorial concept that placed value above ratings, and genuine culture above self-serving entertainment.
Independent Volumes
Four of her books have been published: two portrait volumes devoted respectively to the Russian film director Elem Klimov and to the tragically fated László B. Nagy; in addition, two selected volumes of her finest writings were issued under the auspices of Magyar Szemle.
Her portrait of the Russian film director Elem Klimov was published in 1988 in the Filmbarátok Kiskönyvtára series (Film Friends’ Small Library), offering a vivid portrayal of one of the leading figures of the Soviet New Wave that emerged after the schematic period. Klimov was among the most influential directors of the Russian New Wave, attracting worldwide attention with his 1964 film „Hurrá, nyaralunk!” (Hooray, We’re on Holiday!), a satirical allegory of the cult of personality and totalitarian dictatorship. His international reputation was further enhanced by his large-scale, genre-defining work on the Rasputin phenomenon, Agónia (Agony, 1981), as well as by his 1985 film Jöjj és láss! (Come and See), which conveys the horrors of war from a child’s perspective. Klára Tóth’s choice of subject was by no means accidental. The volume bears witness to an in-depth engagement with the topic, to a thorough knowledge of predecessors and contemporaries alike – including the oeuvres of Mikhail Romm, Marlen Khutsiev, Sergei Bondarchuk, Grigori Chukhrai, Mikhail Kalatozov, Andrei Tarkovsky, Gleb Panfilov, Andrei Konchalovsky, Larisa Shepitko and Nikita Mikhalkov – and it draws on an impressive body of Hungarian and foreign-language sources. “Klimov is one of the representative figures of this much-envied, admired, and by now almost anachronistic form of cinematic art. The emergence and fate of his films exemplify at once the multifaceted vulnerability of creators in this art form and, at the same time, the belief that the creation of value nevertheless does have, and may continue to have, its chances,” she writes in her introduction. It should be noted that already here, in her very first volume, the guiding idea that places emphasis on value creation appears with particular force.
In 2005 she published her long-missing, seminal portrait book on one of the most influential film and literary critics to this day, László B. Nagy, Don Quijote köpenyében (In Don Quixote’s Cloak). The title is taken from one of B. Nagy’s own essays, in which, discussing the opposition between commercial cinema and art film, he writes that “we critics can never take off Don Quixote’s cloak.” It is precisely this Don Quixote–like attitude that Klára Tóth finds lacking in contemporary life, yet which was so characteristic of B. Nagy. Of the author of the highly influential volume A látvány logikája (The Logic of the Spectacle), she writes: “in the Persian bazaar that increasingly characterises public life and the media today, I find B. Nagy’s ethics as an intellectual ever more exemplary – his openness to receiving quality without interest or ulterior motive, and the fact that he was able to work without debasing words in an era when words in fact served to conceal thoughts.” The publication of this gap-filling volume was preceded by several years of research, during which a great deal of previously unknown information came to light concerning the cultural policy of the period and its prominent cultural policymakers.
Her third volume, A láthatatlan ország (The Invisible Country), brings together her writings on Hungarian documentary film from the period between 1995 and 2010. Its title alludes to the fact that the country itself, revealed with relentless honesty and clarity by the finest documentary filmmakers of the era, was also invisible – with all its problems, helplessness, corruption, and lack of prospects. Invisible to the wider public, since the official media, to an overwhelming extent, allowed only results and cosmetically enhanced statistics to reach the public sphere.
Her perhaps most harrowing short story–essay, Fájni fog (It Will Hurt), was first published in ÉS. This autobiographical text begins with the revelation, learned from a distance of three decades, that her youthful suitor did not – or not solely – ask her to dance out of sincere feeling, nor did he follow her everywhere like a shadow for months only because of a love that was unfolding and deepening. His close interest in even the smallest details of Klára’s life and work was motivated by a commission from an invisible organisation, Department III/III. All this took place at the Kassák Klub, which at the time was classified by the authorities under the “tolerated” category of the so-called three “T”s. Moreover, a few days later it also emerged that almost simultaneously her closest friend had been writing reports about her as well. This text, which reveals so much about the 1970s, was included in A láthatatlan ország (The Invisible Country), the selected volume analysing the documentary films of the period – placed, significantly, at the very beginning. The editorial decision was no accident, as this powerful “opening” vividly conveyed what Hungary was like at the time: a country in which no one could trust even their beloved or their closest friend, where an invisible organisation monitored and controlled everything. The volume presents thought-provoking, often debate-initiating reflections on virtually all major Hungarian documentary filmmakers (without claiming completeness: Sándor Sára, Tamás Almási, Judit Ember, Pál Schiffer, the Gulyás brothers, Lídi Gyarmathy, István Dárday). While she does not conceal shortcomings, her studies focus above all on values. (At the time of the original publication of the articles, audiences were also able to see the documentary films discussed on the programme schedule of Duna Televízió, likewise edited by Klára Tóth.)
Her fourth independent volume offers a selection from her writings across a wide range of genres. Once again, it bears an irresistibly apt title: Első generációs szabadság (First-Generation Freedom). For what it means to grow up as a “first generation” – that is, without any childhood models of freedom to follow – she knows better than anyone. She sets this deeply personal experience in parallel with the deficiencies and growing pains of post-transition freedom. For Hungary, a country that throughout its history has suffered from continuous foreign domination, still has much to experience before it can learn to live with its freedom in a worthy way. In the volume, her autobiography unfolds with elemental force through several personally inflected pieces that could equally be read as short stories: Meddig él az ember (How Long Does a Person Live), recording the death of her aunt; Fájni fog (It Will Hurt), about the informer fiancé and the best friend; and Búcsúzni csak szépen szabad (One Must Take Leave with Grace), which recounts her dismissal from Duna Television.
In addition, it includes in-depth interviews conducted with directors (István Szabó, István Dárday), obituaries (Miklós Jancsó, Tamás Cseh, Gyula Maár), analyses of reading experiences, and topical political sketches castigating abuses of power. Most importantly, however – and also most prominently in terms of sheer number – are the perceptive analyses interpreting Hungarian films, from which, with some supplementation and a different editorial principle, a genuine history of Hungarian cinema could emerge in a future volume. Her style is light and vivid. Though not at all strident, her words carry weight and momentum. In her writings marked by social sensitivity there is no trace of purplish pedantry or strained self-display. Her literary vein is especially evident in her essays; Fájni fog (It Will Hurt) in particular seems to cry out to be adapted for film.
In the closing afterword of the volume Az elsőgenerációs szabadság (First-Generation Freedom), Gyula Kodolányi writes the following: “Klári has always been a person and creator who stands on the side of light and goodness, even as, as a film dramaturg and film critic – and in everyday life as well – she was able to look into the most dreadful psychological and social abysses. Wherever she goes, she builds, expands, enriches, organises. Alongside her breadth of knowledge and extraordinary erudition, she has to this day received an unshakable sense of values and moral integrity from the masters she worked with in film, literature, and aesthetics. The fundamentally positive orientation inherent in her character was reinforced by these models, examples, and influences.”
[2016]