MONTHLY ARCHIVE SCREENING

IN ASSOCIATION WITH
NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE OF INDIA, PUNE

ON 18TH NOVEMBER, 9.15 AM

AT SAVITHA THEATER, ERNAKULAM.



Álmodozások kora (1964)/
(The Age of Daydreaming)

Runtime:95 min /Country:Hungary /Language:Hungarian
Color:Black and White


Writer/Director:István Szabó
Cast :András Bálint Ilona Béres Judit Halász Kati Sólyom Cecília Esztergályos
Béla Asztalos Tamás Eröss László Murányi István Dékány István Bujtor



István Szabó (born February 18, 1938 in Budapest) is both the best-known and one of the most critically acclaimed Hungarian film directors of the past few decades. In the 1960s and '70s he directed auteur films in Hungarian, which explore his own generation's experiences and recent Hungarian history (Father, in Hungarian: Apa (1966); Lovefilm, in Hungarian: Szerelmesfilm (1970); 25 Fireman's street, in Hungarian: Tűzoltó utca 25. (1973)). For the public beyond arthouse cinema, his signature film trilogy consists of Mephisto (1981, winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and a Cannes Award for the Best Screenplay), Colonel Redl (1984, winner of a Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival) and Hanussen (1988). He made a switch to English-language films with Meeting Venus (1991), Sunshine (1999), Taking Sides (2001) and most recently Being Julia (2004), which garnered an Oscar nomination for actress Annette Bening.
His most acclaimed films came from his work with famed Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, and his ongoing collaboration and friendship with cinematographer Lajos Koltai. In 1996 he was awarded with a Pulitzer Prize for his TV documentary series, "The hundred years of cinema".
Istvan Szabó’s films are notable because he works with a rich spectrum of possibilities and decisions, which only when seen in their totality attain the poetic quality that becomes the viewer’s primary experience. Istvan Szabó reacts like a sensitive membrane to everything that has happened around him in the past or is just happening. At the same time he builds solely from motives that brand a film reel with the mark of an individual personality. This is true even when he strives for seemingly objective symbols such as, for example, a streetcar—“that constantly recurring, tangibly real and yet poetically long logogram for his individual and very special world.” Such were the words of the noted Hungarian historian and film theoretician Josef Marx as he considered the work of director Szabó. They underscore the essential characteristic of Szabó’s work: its inventiveness, which in his films takes on general forms in the broadest sense.
Szabó’s first feature film, Álmodozások kora, together with Gaal’s Sordásban, was the most expressive confession of an artistic generation and became a model for other artists, while his entire work has built up an unprecedented picture of contemporary life and its activities. In his earliest period Szabó’s starting point was his own experience, which he transformed into artistic images. At the same time he carefully absorbed everything that was happening around him. He attempted to discern the essence of modern people, and to come to an understanding of their concerns, endeavors, and aspirations. His films examine young engineers at the start of their careers; the personal ideals of a young man on the threshold of maturity; the changing relationship of two people, framed within a quarter-century of Hungarian history; the dreams and locked-up memories of people living together in an old apartment building; the story of an ordinary city streetcar with an allegorical resemblance to our contemporaries; the love and distrust between a pair of completely different people in a charged wartime atmosphere; and a deep probe into the character of a young actor whose talents are displayed and subordinated by the totalitarian power of nascent German fascism.
All of these films are linked by the setting off of intimate confession against historical reality. The images of Szabó’s films are full of poetry and the symbolism of dreamlike conceptions. They capture the small dramas of ordinary people—their disappointments, successes, loves, enthusiasms, moments of anxiety and ardor, joy and pain—as the history of post-war Hungary passes by in contrapuntal detail. Istvan Szabó creates auteur films in which the shaping of the theme and the screenplay are just as important as the direction, so that the resulting works bears a unique stamp. The heroes of his films are not only people, but also cities, streets, houses, parks. In his films, his native Budapest serves as the point of intersection of human fates. Under Szabó’s creative eye the city awakens, stirs, arises, wounded after the tumult of the war, and lives with its heroes.
In the early 1980s Istvan Szabó deviated from the rule of auteur films (the model for his film Mephisto was a novel by Klaus Mann). This detracted nothing from the importance of the work, which won an Oscar and several other awards. Even in this film the director left his imprint; he managed to develop it into a picture of personal tragedy painted into a fresco of historical events. At the same time, it shows that the creative process is a tireless search for pathways. Only a responsible approach to history and the way it is shaped can help the artist gain a complete understanding of today’s world.
“To awaken an interest in the people I want to tell about; to capture their essence so that a viewer can identify with them; to broaden people’s understanding and sympathy—and my own as well: That’s what I’d like to do,” Istvan Szabó once said in an interview. His films are an affirmation of this credo.

Istvan Szabó
Filmography:

Being Julia (2004)
Taking Sides (2003)
Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (2002) (segment "Ten Minutes After")
Sunshine (1999)
Dear Emma, Sweet Böbe (1992)
Meeting Venus (1991)
Hanussen (1988)
Colonel Redl (1985)
Bali (1984)
Mephisto (1981)
Der Grüne Vogel (1980)
Confidence (1980)
Várostérkép (1977)
Budapest Tales (1976)
25 Fireman's Street (1973)
Dream About a House (1972)
Budapest, Why I Love It (1971)
A Film About Love (1970)
Piety (1967)
Father (1967)
Traffic-Rule Tale for Children (1965)
The Age of Daydreaming (1964)