Silence and Cry review deeply strange 1960s erotic ballet meditating on Hungary's history and politics

"Miklos Jancso's mysterious film from 1968 is a deeply strange somnambulist ballet. It shows a piece of Hungary's political history implicitly juxtaposed with the postwar Soviet present, in which Czechoslovakia and Hungary have been crushed. The brutality of the anti-Communist powers of 1919 depicted in the film would have been an officially acceptable subject, but the indictment of brutality is clearly transferable."

"The scene is the vast Hungarian plain, with a desolate wind always blowing, on which the characters perform their roles as if on a gigantic stage; it is a single unitary space which appears to extend, Sahara-like, to the far horizon in all directions. People do not quite enter and exit in the conventional fashion, but rather can often be seen gradually arriving from an impossibly long way away, and leave by progressively dwindling to a vanishingly small dot in the distance."

"One of these is Istvan (Andras Kozak), a fugitive hiding out on a farm owned by two sisters called Terez (Mari Torocsik) and Anna (Andrea Drahota); driven perhaps mad in the tension and isolation, they are secretly poisoning Terez's husband Karoly (Jozsef Madaras) and his elderly mother. An army officer, Kemeri (Zoltan Latinovits) is aware of Istvan but appears to turn a blind eye, in return for implied sexual favours from the women and also because as a soldier he can't help admiring Istvan's gallant"

The film is set just after the First World War on a vast Hungarian plain where a desolate wind constantly blows and characters move like performers on a gigantic stage. Long unbroken takes and sinuous camerawork glide around actions that unfold as if in a dream. The nationalist government that overturned the Hungarian Soviet republic in 1919 pursues an anti‑Communist manhunt. A fugitive soldier hides with two sisters who secretly poison a husband and his mother. An army officer tolerates the fugitive for implied sexual favours and admiration. The work combines political indictment, impenetrable psychological trauma, and weird erotic overtones.

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