István Szabó

István Szabó was born in Budapest, Hungary, on February 18, 1938, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. His father, a doctor, died of an infection in 1945, when he was just a child. Although the movie Father(1967) is not autobiographical, the truth is that Szabó incorporated various elements of his personal experience into the plot of this important film: the early death of his father and how it marks his protagonist; belonging to a generation that knows war in childhood and the uprising against the Soviet Union, crushed, when he is a young university student; the Jewish origins of a family with many converts to Catholicism. Controversial revelations in 2006 that Szabó was a police informant in the post-uprising years of Soviet rule add further subtext to his films, the filmmaker agreed to collaborate so as not to harm his career, and it appears that he did not seriously harm anyone with it. your reports.

Initially, Szabó thought of following his father’s profession, a family tradition for generations, and in fact he frequently appears in his films, but interested in performing arts since adolescence, he joined the Budapest Film Academy after a rigorous selection process. . The course was interrupted by the rebellion against the Soviets, with which the future filmmaker was committed, for example by collaborating with Free Kossuth Radio. The dream of liberation from the communist yoke did not last long, and Szabó rejoined the Academy to continue his studies. There he met filmmakers like Zoltán Huszárik and Félix Mariássy. His student work culminates in 1962 with Koncert , his graduation film. His first fully professional feature film comes in 1965,Álmodozások kora , which according to specialists contains influences from the nouvelle vague and contemporary Polish cinema. With Father , two years later, he achieves a very personal, sensitive and poetic, even romantic film that fully portrays the director’s soul, the anxiety of war and communism, the typical identity crisis of so many people in Eastern countries. where freedom was lacking; Curiously, the film was awarded at the Moscow Festival. With titles like Un film de amor (1970) and Tüzoltó utca 25. (1973) he tried new aesthetic channels and refined the staging. His cinema will never be easy, Szabó experiments and dives into human psychology without simplifications, and plays with dreamlike passages. In aBBC interview will claim to believe in God, but will decline to give more details, arguing that it is something very personal. Szabó is married to Vera Gyurey, and they have no children.

The 80s start with Confidence (1980), if I may use the pun suggested by the title of that film, photographed by Lajos Koltai , its regular operator ever since. Szabó’s international repercussion is forged with the award for best director in Berlin for that film and with his trilogy of films starring Klaus Maria Brandeauer about Mitteleuropa, the Austro-Hungarian empire: Mephisto (1981) –Oscar for best foreign film and award to the screenplay at Cannes–, Coronel Redl (1985) –Jury Award at Cannes– and Hanussen the fortune teller(1988). Characters with several layers, who see what they want to see, and power struggles and decadence, give rise to very personal elaborate plots. He will always value the work of actors, and in fact attributes the best advice received in the film profession to one of them, Erland Josephson : “Find the best camera position to show your actor’s talent”; something Josephson would have learned from Ingmar Bergman .

In 1991 the Hungarian director shot for the first time in English. Date with Venus , produced by David Puttnam, is a behind-the-scenes look at the staging of Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser starring Glenn Close , then at the peak of his career. He returns to his country the following year with Dulce Emma, ​​darling Böbe , an irregular film Special Jury Prize in Berlin, which wants to show the consequences of the fall of the wall on two women and their environment. Very ambitious and accomplished is Sunshine (1999) , a multigenerational portrait spanning a century, culminating in the collapse of the Soviet empire, starring Ralph Fiennes . And in Taking Sides(2001) returns to the musical world and duplicities by telling the true story of a director of the Berlin Philharmonic accused of war crimes.

Certain connections can be established between Knowing Julia (2004), an adaptation of a Somerset Maughan novel, and Appointment with Venus , since here we have the “backstage” of the theater world with the conventions of a married couple to live the conjugal pact each to their own way. Also in this case there is a great actress, Annette Bening . After Rokonok (2006), a period film about corruption without much impact, despite its attempt to draw a parallel with today, Szabó has just presented The Door (2012). Although it adapts a work by Madga Szabó, it is not related to the director, who has featured Helen Mirren and Martina Gedeckin the cast.