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Remembering Mikls Jancs. A long take of his early oeuvre

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Mikls Jancs
Tim Deschaumes

The momentum of the sixties era must have endowed some of its New Wave directors with boundless energy.
Half a century later they keep adding titles to their impressive filmographies. Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda and
Andrzej Wajda are still making films. Vra Chytilov, Alain Resnais and Mikls Jancs, all of whom passed away in
2014, also continued working well into their eighties.1 Resnaiss last film Aimer, boire et chanter had its premiere
three weeks before its maker died at the age of 91. One month earlier one of the leading figures of the Hungarian
New Cinema, Mikls Jancs, had left us at the age of 92. Jancs directed his last film when he was 89. His career
spans six decades, in which he realized 33 feature films, not to mention his numerous documentaries and shorts.
Yet the work of the Hungarian master has largely remained under the radar, even in cinephile circles. Is it his
peculiar style that is to blame? Jancss films are sometimes described as cold and stylized exercises with
minimalist and disturbing narratives, lacking protagonists one can engage with. Or is the reason for his obscure
status to be found in his critical treatment of Hungarian history and his explicit thematization of Marxist politics? In
the formation of his political thought, Jancs was influenced by one of his compatriots, the Marxist philosopher and
film buff Gyrgy Lukcs. Lukcs believed in the social potential of cinema and was convinced that dogmas are
the archenemy of creative Marxism.2 Cinema has to self-examine, pose questions and debate instead of offering
cut-and-dried answers or corny socialist-realist happy endings. This theoretical approach is reflected in the
practice of Jancss open-ended films. They offer a fascinating combination of political commitment and extreme
aestheticization, something Jancs called the middle way and J. Hoberman aptly described as red
modernism.3 All of Jancss early films are embedded in Hungarian history and explicitly refer to major wars,
revolutions and revolts. Red Psalm harks back to a 19th century peasant revolt. The Round-Up concerns the
aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. No less than three films refer to the Hungarian involvement in the
Russian Civil War: The Red and the White (1967), Silence and Cry (1968) and Angus Dei (1971). My Way Home
(1965) is situated at the end of the Second World War. The Confrontation (1969) recalls the student revolt of 1948
and its attempt to establish Marxist Peoples Colleges. The Revolution of 1956 is missing from this list, probably
because overtly dealing with it might have led to Russian criticism and censorship. Yet his work doesnt require a
thorough knowledge of Hungarian history or Marxism. Its appeal comes from the universality of its central themes:
violence, humiliation and the abuse of power.

That Jancss films have been characterized as cold or detached is understandable, given his unique style. Yet
entering the universe of the Hungarian master can be a highly emotional, even devastating experience. I think a
closer view of his stylistic idiosyncrasies can help to solve the paradox of this cold emotionality. Jancs is, in
Bordwells terms, a stubborn stylist whose stylistic choices are consistent within each film and throughout his
early oeuvre.4 Here Id like to shed some light on the mechanisms and effects of his visual style and the aesthetic
and emotional delights it so generously offers. Since the auteur Jancs uses similar stylistic features, themes,
moods and motives throughout his acclaimed sixties oeuvre, the analysis of one typical scene can serve as a
gateway to an understanding of early films like Cantata (1963), My Way Home, The Round-Up (1966), Silence
and Cry and the later color films The Confrontation and Red Psalm (1972).5 I will use a scene from the first
Jancs film I ever saw: The Red and The White.

FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTRICATE STYLE

The Soviet authorities asked Jancs to make a film in honor of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.
They may have had some sort of sixties version of Eisensteins flamboyant October in mind, but with The Red and
The White Jancs offended his patrons. Instead of presenting them with a warm-hearted tribute to Bolshevik
heroes, he came up with an anti-war picture. The events take place in 1919, during the Civil War. Forces of the
Workers and Peasants Red Army are fighting a fierce and chaotic battle with the anti-Bolshevik White Army.
Jancs situates the warring Hungarian and Russian Reds and the tsarist Whites in the infinite flatness of the
puszta, a landscape of steppes, dunes, marches and rivers that is part of the Great Hungarian Plain. In a hospital
near a river, nurses take care of wounded men according to their Hippocratic oath: There are no Reds or Whites,
only patients. Nurse Olga is the first sign of warmth and empathy in this world of hunting and hunted men. An
unexpected moment of tenderness between her and a revolutionist is interrupted by patrolling White Guards. The
interaction between Olga, the rebel and several White Guards is shown in a scene that entails two long takes.

Figure 1

The first deep-focus long take shows the rebels attempt to run away along the brook (figure 1). We see him in the
left-hand corner of the frame. The frontal plane shows Olga, who intently watches the guards riding away in the
right-hand corner of the frame. Jancs will regularly exploit the extremities of his preferred, widescreen format.
Figure 2

Notice the importance of offscreen sound: during the tracking movement to the right, we lose sight of the
horsemen, but the sound of horses hooves returns. As such, Olga and the viewer are prepared for the
reappearance of one of the White Guards (figure 2). Olga quickly decides to undress in front of him, a ploy to
distract his attention and give the revolutionist a chance to escape.

Figure 3

In an attempt to further exploit her ploy, the naked girl runs to the river to bathe. The camera tracks to the left and
picks up other guards who are searching the haystacks and riverbed for the fugitive. We see them in the
foreground while in the background the distant figure of Olga reaches the treehouse near the river (figure 3). This
scanning-like left/right/left tracking movement combined with the intricate staging of moving figures in the
foreground and deep background is Jancss stylistic signature. There is often something inconspicuous but
important to behold in the distance, like the vulnerable body of Olga in the meadow at the right of the treehouse,
for every guard to see.
Figure 4

The nurses diversion seems to be working: one guards interest shifts from the rebel to her ( figure 4). The second
long take the longest in the film starts with him eyeing Olga and asking her to turn around. As she refuses to
expose herself completely, he takes his gun and orders her to swim, mockingly calling her a water sprite.

Figure 5

While Olga swims away, the camera tracks and pans to the right and shows to the viewers surprise and
disappointment that the fugitive has been caught (figure 5). While in the case of the horses hooves offscreen
sound was used realistically, in this instance the unlikely absence of offscreen sound, such as screams or gunfire
during the arrest, has manipulated us into hoping that Olgas short-time lover might have escaped. We suddenly
realize that her self-inflicted humiliation was in vain.

Figure 6

Following the guards order to the rebel to pull Olga out of the river, Jancs again uses left/right/left tracking and
panning as a tool to continuously restage the positions of the five characters in such a way that they are always
clearly visible (figure 6). In the foreground the two guards in gaudy uniforms contrast with the barechested rebel
who is forced to sing, a recurring tactic of humiliation. In the background two steady figures catch our attention: a
motionless guard pointing his gun and the frail nurse, her head slightly bowed. In a moment another guard will
stand next to her, order his prisoner to jump into the river and finish him off with an oar. Olga collapses and squats
on the wooden pier. The three guards exit the frame on the right.
Figure 7

The last five seconds of this sustained long take show the tiny body of Olga ( figure 7). We dont see her face, but
we realize she feels devastated. Instead of a heartbreaking scream we hear the whistling of birds, natures
indifferent presence. Jancss characters either have no emotions to show or they cant express them. Either they
dont feel anything or they feel too much.

Jancss style in his early period after Cantata is so consistent that these two long takes offer a fairly exhaustive
list of themes, moods, motives and stylistic devices: the violent game of dispassionate oppressors and resigned
victims, the distancing or hiding of the violent event, emotional minimalism, the manipulative use of offscreen
space (which leads to a particular mood), fluid long takes with mobile framing and careful (re)staging of the figures
and finally, the portrayal of a morality of violence and the mise-en-scne of humiliation.

RULES OF THE GAME OF VIOLENCE

The opening shots or early scenes in My Way Home, The Round-Up, The Red and The White and Silence and
Cry are strikingly similar. They acquaint us with the way in which violence operates in Jancss universe and how
he handles the viewers response to it. War and violence are absent in Cantata, but My Way Home, Jancss third
feature film, gives a first impression of the gruesome behavior of men at war. A young man tries to hide from
Cossacks on horseback. He succeeds, but stumbles into three armed rebels. While they search him, we notice in
the background that the horsemen have returned. The rebels are captured and brought to an ominous place, a
quarry that looks like a vast arena without the cheering crowds. The three of them, together with the hapless boy,
are lined up and ordered to undress. When an officer realizes the boy is Hungarian, he is set free. In the next shot
only an officer and the boy are shown, but we hear the offscreen sound of three machine gun salvos: the rebels
have been executed without further ado. While the line-up may have suggested that their deaths were imminent,
the heedless way in which the execution is performed came as an utter surprise to me. The awkwardness of the
situation is emphasized by the total lack of emotional reaction on the part of the officer and, disconcertingly, even
on the part of the boy. The dead bodies of the rebels are never shown. The only dialogue their deaths evokes is
chilly in its conciseness: Done? Done.
Figure 8

An early scene in Jancss next film, The Round-Up, resembles the quarry scene in its unpredictability, but goes
beyond it. A prisoner, accused of smuggling rebel leader Kossuths papers, is told he is free to go. He quickly
walks away from the interrogation house, into the vast space promising freedom. His fast forward movement is
emphasized by the backward tracking of the camera, then boldly stopped to a halt by a single gunshot. Again, the
executioner and the sound of gunfire are located offscreen and the scene is devoid of emotion cues. In this
instance, the death of the executed detainee doesnt evoke any dialogue at all. He is immediately forgotten.

In her article The Horizontal Man, Sight and Sound critic Penelope Houston describes an analogous scene in
Silence and Cry: a friendly officer asks his prisoner to get a twig from a tree up a sand dune and then urges his
colleague to shoot him in the back.Unmistakably, we are in Jancs country, Houston observes. 6 From the
outset, these three introductory scenes indicate that we enter a violent universe with an internal logic that seems
to be stripped of empathy and emotion. Every friendly gesture or kind invitation may result in freedom or in sudden
death. There is no way to tell. Once the viewer gets the knack of this perfid system, she experiences every
interaction as a potential minefield just like the prisoners do. These introductory scenes enable Jancs to evoke
in victims and viewers alike a nearly permanent mood of apprehension and vigilance, interrupted with fierce
emotional reactions caused by bursts of indifferent violence. Jancs succeeds in creating this mood through
emotional minimalism and strategies of surprise that entail uncommunicativeness regarding offscreen space
combined with the manipulative use of the long take.

EMOTIONAL MINIMALISM

While Eisenstein another director with a penchant for revolutionary films focused his art on the depiction of
aggressive moments and the evocation of emotional shock, Jancs prefers subdued moments and focuses on
the careful construction of a particular mood. In his inspiring book Film Structure and the Emotion System, Greg
Smith investigates the differences between mood and emotion. Primary emotions like fear, anger or surprise are
brief states, whereas mood is a less intense but long-lasting state. A movie contains a number of emotional bursts
that have a profound impact on the viewer. Yet mood is the primary emotive effect: its an orienting state that is
usually established in the first scenes and predisposes the viewer towards experiencing intensely emotional
moments. The mood is sustained during the film by reusing emotion cues (e.g. a captivating leitmotif, a gloomy
set design, a specific camera movement or acting style), which prepare for and lead to the next emotional
discharge. Classical Hollywood cinema tends to provide the viewer with redundant emotive cues. We not only see
the chased protagonist scream in big close-ups, but the expressive lighting and suspenseful soundtrack
emphasize his fear.7 Like Bresson, Jancs is an extreme example of the opposite approach: he tempers or hides
emotion cues and strives for emotional minimalism.

BLANK FACES

What would Jean Epstein think of a Jancs film? He would probably enjoy the roving camera and the minimal story
line, but might regret the lack of psychologizing and the scarcity of close-ups or other emotive cues. For the
French impressionist the grossissement was the soul of cinema, a direct road to photognie. In the beginning of
his career, Jancs had no qualms about using expressive or even shocking close-ups, as the in-your-face
operation sequence in Cantata demonstrates. The film tells the story of Ambrus, a young, initially somewhat
arrogant surgeon who assist a genius but retired specialist during the heart surgery of a young woman. Ambrus
believes the professor is too old to perform such a risky operation. During the procedure, we see close-ups of
Ambruss concerned look and of the professors able hands, with gloves, without gloves, while being disinfected or
palpating the throbbing heart of the woman Bressons representation of the dexterous hands of pickpocket
Michel in the eponymous film came to my mind. The shots are edited with images of a heart monitor that
dramatically visualize the heart rate of the patient, introducing suspense to the scene. Editing as an emotion
elicitor will completely disappear in Jancss next films. He has acknowledged that Cantata was influenced by
Antonionis La Notte. Its style and narrative structure is indeed quite different from his later work. Yet, despite the
presence of classical emotional sequences, the germs of his later stylistic idiosyncrasies are already present.
Therefore, I feel Cantata is certainly more than, pace Andrs Blint Kovcs, an Antonioni replica. 8 During the
operation, there are two inserts of big close-ups of the professors glasses and eyes. However, it is hard to decide
exactly which emotion he expresses, since the inserts are stills. After the surgery the face of the exhausted
professor is shown from a high angle and partly hidden behind his hand, which makes it difficult to see and
interpret. In the second part of Cantata, a melancholic Ambrus leaves Budapest to visit his father in the
countryside. Here, we make acquaintance with Jancss fondness of white farmhouses with a courtyard in the
middle of nowhere, vast open spaces, long shots and semiabstract geometrical compositions. Jancss use of long
shots and deep space is more prominent in his next film, My Way Home, and develops further in his ensuing
masterworks. In these films emotive cues like close-ups of the human face or wild gesticulations all but disappear.
Long shots with figures lingering in the background make it hard to discern facial expressions. But even if
characters are clearly visible in medium shots or medium close-ups, their expression is almost always blank,
irrespective of the circumstances and even of their personalities. Not only the cold-blooded characters like most
of the military men have poker faces, but the detainees and abused women as well, the difference being that in
their case emotions are expressed with other stylistic means.

NAMELESS PEASANTS

Jancs not only avoids close-ups and intense facial gestures, but minimizes several other emotion cues as well.
Many of his films lack goal oriented protagonists the viewer can engage with. The revolutionary in The Red and
The White is introduced in the beginning of the film as one of the prisoners who successfully escapes a sardonic
execution game, but halfway through the movie he is unheroically killed with an oar. For a while, nurse Olga
seems to become the center of our emotional interest, but when the Reds overtake the hospital she too faces
sudden, offscreen death. Jancs country is too violent for protagonists to live long enough for comfortable viewer
engagement. The first potential protagonist in The Round-Up is executed after less than nine minutes. When the
narration shifts attention to another prisoner, he turns out to be an unsympathetic, cold-blooded murderer. Later
films like The Confrontation and Red Psalm feature Eisensteinian mass protagonists with limited psychological
appeal: they merely represent social classes, like the peasant, landowner, military or clergyman. Images of
dancing and singing men and women dominate those of individual characters, although there is some kind of
hierarchy: in Red Psalm one woman recurs regularly, even survives the bloodbath of the Whites, but remains a
psychological shell typifying the oppressed peasants. Jancs also discouraged his actors to express emotions
through dialogues. Dialogues tend to be trivial or consist of repetitive military orders or incantatory rebellious
slogans (Rights for the people) and mask rather than reveal the characters psyches. Jancss actors often didnt
even know the names of their characters. They had a lot of leeway to improvise their lines, as long as these lines
didnt invite psychological or philosophical interpretations.

HIDDEN ATROCITIES

Although violence is a central theme, visceral violence is never shown. The viewer is not exposed to close-ups of
gory battle scenes, man-to-man combat, dismembered bodies or gaping wounds. Instead, Jancs uses three
masking tactics to represent executions or other violent confrontations: they happen offscreen (usually
accompanied by the sound of gunfire); they are shown in the background (tiny figures collapsing) or they are
blocked from view through intricate mise-en-scne tactics. I have described the first two tactics above, so here I
will focus on the third. An example of this blocking tactic comes in The Red and The White. The Whites have a
code that prohibits the assault of civilians. A Cossack who has sexually humiliated a peasant woman is ordered to
give up his sword and belt, a ritual that turns out to be a preparation for his execution under martial law. Jancs
could have given us a clear view of his death, but his dropping body is partly hidden by the bodies of his
executioners. We only see the dying Cossack for a fraction of a second at the bottom right of the frame.
Figure 9 - The officer awaits his execution.

Figure 10 - The camera slightly pans to the right. One of the soldiers blocks the officer from view.

Figure 11 - The executed officer is visually reduced to a black spot at the bottom right of the frame ( The Red and
The White).

In Silence and Cry an officer slaps a woman in the face for no apparent reason. His thrashing of a defenseless
victim is blocked from view by the white wall of a farmhouse. Again, sound the muffled screams of the victim is
the most accessible emotive cue. The continuously moving camera hides the violent event even more: next to the
wall, a tree becomes a second blocking device, while the bullying officer transforms into an out of focus smear
near the edge of the frame.
Figure 12 A bullying officer slaps a woman, but the physical violence is mostly hidden by the white wall of the
farmhouse (Silence and Cry).

In Red Psalm Jancs stretches his masking tactics to further extremes. Peasants are united in their fight against
exploiting landowners, but a bailiff admonishes them for crimes against the wellbeing of the powers that be. He
orders soldiers to set fire to their harvest, a pile of grain sacks. Peasant women try to convince the cowards of
the error of their ways and ask them to throw away their guns. When the bailiff tries to avoid the soldiers retreat, he
is caught by five peasants who shove a grain sack over his head. The subsequent action unfolds in no less than
four planes: in the foreground the blazing fire dominates the frame. In a second plane behind the fire, seven
dancing peasants pass by, arms linked. In the third plane we see how the bailiff is carried away, and in the
background frame the retreating soldiers are still visible. While the camera moves to the right, the five peasants
and the bailiff are blocked from view behind the fire, just like most of the dancing peasants.

Figure 13 The drama unfolds in no less than four planes ( Red Psalm).

The camera moves further to the right and shows that the five peasants who assaulted the bailiff have joined the
dancers, forming a line of twelve. In a typical move the scanning camera returns to the left, to the right and again to
the left. Meanwhile, the attentive viewer may have spotted the retreating soldiers near the horizon and an empty
sack of grain behind the fire. Which begs the question: what happened to the unfortunate bailiff? The suggestion
seems to be that he was tossed into the fire. If that is the case, it is chilling to realize that the peasants gladly join
their comrades in joyful dancing immediately after they sent the bailiff to a horrific death. The now complete
absence of emotive cues supportive of a violent scene thwart an adequate reaction: the murder itself is invisible,
no screams of the bailiff are heard, there are no flames eating a burning body or emotional reactions of
bystanders. The addition of opposite emotive cues the gaiety of the revolutionary music of the Carmagnole
complicate an adequate viewer reaction even further. Some viewers might not even realize what has happened.
The suspicion that the bailiff is dead may arise later, when it becomes clear that he doesnt return. A similar scene
halfway the film may nourish this suspicion. The priest who, like the bailiff, has condemned the peoples uprising,
is locked up in his church. In the next scene, at night, the peasants set fire to the church and dance around it.
Instead of the Carmagnole, we hear the crackling sound of fire. Are they celebrating not only their (temporary)
victory over the church, but the death of the priest as well? Is this mood of gaiety and conviviality misleading? Do
the peasants share with their oppressors a similar morality of violence? The extreme minimization of
straightforward emotive cues and their replacement with contradictory ones may eventually evoke a highly
emotional response in the viewer, once she realizes the rules of the game.

STRATEGIES OF SURPRISE

The panoramic vista of the puszta is vintage Jancs. The endless grasslands with their racing horses and low-
flying airplanes seem to hold the promise of freedom. Yet the limitless space grants no liberty, only the
impossibility of hiding. The horses dont offer the fugitives a way out of captivity, but a way back to their prisons.
Even when the bandits in The Round-Up are allowed to choose a horse to demonstrate their skills, this gesture
only serves to identify rebel leader Sandors men. The puszta is a giant prison without bars.

Jancs visualizes this vast landscape befittingly, through majestic widescreen long takes and lateral tracking
shots. In doing so, he creates the impression of offering the viewer an all-embracing view of the characters and
their surroundings. However, Jancs doesnt only minimize emotional information, but spatial information as well.
Although the sweeping camera covers a lot of ground, it manipulatively withholds crucial story information that
unfolds offscreen. While we and the prisoner think he has evaded the hunting horsemen, they have approached
him offscreen behind his back. In this instance, the sound of horses hooves has been eliminated as well. But not
only the oppressed are subject to the unpleasant surprises of the puszta. In The Red and The White, a White
officer has taken control of the hospital where Olga works. He has ordered her to break her Hippocratic oath and
identify the Red soldiers among the patients. His attention is caught by galloping, riderless horses across the river.
At first, it is a bit of an enigma what this semi-surrealistic event signifies. When the pensive officer walks back from
the river to the hospital, he suddenly drops dead. Unbeknownst to us and him, the Reds have overtaken the
hospital from the other side.

In Jancso country, we constantly expect the worst. I experienced this especially during the extraordinary birch
forest scene. A White Guard quietly selects a number of nurses. They have to line up and are ordered to step into
a carriage, no explanation given. The womens feeling of unease is expressed by the furtive looks they exchange,
rather than by their facial expressions. The mask-like face of a White Guard watching them leave invites all kinds
of interpretations. Does he know their fate? Will they be beaten, or raped, or maybe executed? Its like a virtual
Kuleshov effect: our fantasies of what gruesome happenings might unfold influence the way we read the guards
face. But then we see the carriages and white horses riding into a fairylike birch forest, followed by a row of
uniformed soldiers, black spots scattered between the white trees. A military band joins them with a happy tune. It
turns out that the Whites want the ladies to perform a birch forest waltz. Our feeling of apprehension abates, while
the soldiers take delight in this gracious spectacle, which is like a fata morgana in a war zone. When the officer
ends the dance with the words You are at liberty, madam, you may go home, our sense of foreboding returns.

Jancss emotional minimalism and strategies of surprise have a profound impact on our viewing experience.
Violent events are difficult to predict and hard to interpret. The awkward dispassionateness of the characters in the
face of life-threatening circumstances contributes to our confusion. This minimalist approach moreover enables
Jancs to forcefully express his view of the futility of life and triviality of death in an out of kilter world. People live,
then die abruptly, literally disappearing from view like the lifeless body of the prisoner in Silence and Cry, rolling
down the white dune and vanishing in an offscreen limbo, never to be seen again. Or like the affable Olga in The
Red and The White, who tried to save a rebel but is executed by his comrades. They consider her a traitor for
succumbing to the Whites threats and revealing the identities of Red patients. My reaction to this scene was one
of shock and indignation, because of its utter unpredictability, injustice and universal sadness. The one person we
could identify with simply and suddenly disappears, as if evaporated into thin air. The paradox of Jancss films is
that they invite or evoke strong emotions in the viewer by masking the emotions of the characters and hiding well-
chosen parts of the space in which they move. His films are definitely not coldly intellectual or not involved, as
Czigany would have it.9

POSTURE, FIGURE MOVEMENT AND COLOR

Jancs substitutes classical ways of expressing emotions with more personal solutions. Characters who are
frightened, frustrated or angry express themselves in subdued ways through the posture, position or movement of
their bodies. I think of the bowed head and crouched position of Olga in The Red and The White, shocked by the
rebels blunt execution (figures 6 and 7) or the similar posture of the deserter in The Round-Up,when he kneels in
a river of blood (figure 14). Already in Cantata, emotions are expressed through the movement of the characters.
When Ambrus realizes that his aging father will not join him to live in the city, the distance between them literally
widens while he walks aimlessly to and fro in the open space of the courtyard.

Figure 14

When Jancs started to use color film, he explored colors potential to express emotion. It is not unusual for
filmmakers to focus on the color red, because of its capacity to direct viewers attention. In Jancss case red is an
even more attractive choice, because its symbolic meanings fit his central themes of socialism and violence
neatly. Indeed, the color red is regularly used in stylized and expressive ways. The most touching example comes
after the massacre of the group of dancing peasants. A cadet who has deserted the army walks to the river and
notices that the water is turning red. He bows forward while putting his hands on his knees, kneels down and puts
his hands in the water. By now, the river surrounding him is crimson red. The cadets bare hands and his white
shirt assimilate this color of death. His head becomes invisible, hidden behind a green-leafed branch. Loyal to his
stylistic preferences, Jancs hides facial expression to the benefit of body posture and color expressiveness. The
mans posture is reminiscent of Olgas, after the rebels respectless execution.
Figure 15 Blocking, posture and color as alternatives for classical expressions of emotion ( Red Psalm).

Yet Jancss alternative emotive cues are enhanced by the diegetic music performed by a guitarist who sings a
mournful song to commemorate his murdered comrades. In his political-didactic color films, music is more
dominant as compared to the relative silent black and white films. The combination of personal and classical
stylistic elements results in a baffling scene, very involved indeed and ambiguous enough to raise the question:
what exactly does the deserter feel? Does he feel guilty by proxy for the atrocities committed by his fellow-officers?
Is he overcome by a universal, despairing sadness engendered by the incurable cruelty of man? Does his
kneeling gesture express his solidarity with the oppressed? Or all of the above? The red river is a stylized and
symbolic representation. The massacre took place in an open field without a river in sight. In Red Psalm Jancs
refuses to apply the potential of the color red for the display of realistic, gory violence. When an officer shoots a
woman, her wound is shown as a bloody but painless hole in her hand, which in a next scene transforms into a
red cockade. Its significance is more symbolic than emotional, as the aestheticized wound refers to Christs
stigmata and the fascinating marriage of socialism and Catholicism. The cockade, a rosette-like emblem, refers to
the French Revolution, and the peasants wearing this emblem sing socialist psalms, well-nigh forgotten texts that
were found by Jancss scriptwriter Gyula Herndi.10

Another impressive emotional use of color is reserved for the last sequence of the film. If there is a protagonist in
Red Psalm, this label should go to the blue-dressed woman the bailiff considered to be the leader of the peasants.
She recurs regularly, survives the massacre and in the end reveals herself as an avenging angel, trading her blue
robe for a vindictive red dress. Her bright red garment contrasts with the dark attire of her strangely defenseless
victims. These men behave like hypnotized puppets that topple over like bowling pins under the angels merciless
volley of gunshots. In this scene, Jancss use of color contrast and underexposure evokes emotions that a more
classical approach could not procure.
Figure 16 Red avenging angel executes soldiers.

LONG TAKE SPLENDOR

With his long-take aesthetics Jancs has touched a nerve with critics, who exhaust themselves in lyrical
descriptions of his graceful style. The roaming, roving camera movement is stunning, convoluted or
majestic. Raymond Durgnat even coined the cryptical term choreo-calligraphy. Similar labels turn up in
descriptions of the work of other long-take aficionados like Kalatozov, Tarkovsky, Tarr or Angelopoulos. But what is
typical about Jancss long takes? I have already pointed out their function in creating surprise and a mood of
apprehension. In my analysis of the two long takes in The Red and The White, the scanning quality of the camera
movement came to the fore: the camera tends to track or pan to left, lingers for a while, and then returns to or goes
beyond the original position. This left/right/left-movement is usually lateral, underscores the horizontality of the
puszta setting and fits with Jancss predilection for the 2.35:1 widescreen format. He explored the compositional
possibilities of widescreen in The Round-Up, The Red and The White, Silence and Cry and The Confrontation, for
which he used Agoscope, a CinemaScope format that was developed in Sweden in 1956 and was adopted in
Finland and Hungary. But Jancss long-take aesthetic has more to offer.

In Silence and Cry he unleashes his stylistic creativity with beautiful long takes Bla Tarr might have cherished.
The setting is again a farmhouse in the puszta, where Kroly, his wife Trez, his sister Anna and his mother live.
This reads like a straightforward account, but the spectator has to strain herself to determine the exact nature of
the characters relationships. The fugitive Red soldier Istvn is hiding with this enigmatic party of four. He has tried
to escape, but as we know by now it is virtually impossible to flee the puszta. Like The Red and the White, Silence
and Cry is set in the aftermath of the First World War, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was established. After
only a few months its communist leader, Bla Kun, was ousted and a period of White terror began. Kun-
sympathizers like Istvn had to run for their lives. However, this political and historical context soon shifts to the
background, while a family drama unravels in the desolate farmhouse and the open enclosure of the courtyard. In
a long take of nearly five minutes, Jancs lays the groundwork of a low-key murder plot. For this pervasively
gloomy sequence, the usually freewheeling camera is pinned down to a single zone. The camera pans and tracks
forward, but there is no lateral tracking. Since the camera is placed within the farmhouse, its point of view is
restricted. It is capable of scanning the room and casting an eye through windows and doorways, but it cant leave
the house. In medium close-up Anna carefully adds drops of medicine to a glass of water and hands it to the old
woman. We can hardly discern the old womans features for a number of reasons: she sits at a distance, she
bows down, she is dressed in black and wears a hood, and she is backlighted and as such her face and body are
underexposed. After she has sipped Annas glass of water, she inexplicably drops to the ground. Her already
limited perceptibility diminishes further, as her collapsed body is represented as a black shape at the bottom of the
frame. Later in this lengthy shot Jancs displays a minimalist, painterly table scene of four people praying and
eating. It is a fine instance of careful lateral staging, with the old and seemingly recovered woman joining the
group on the right. Because of her bowed posture and the lack of contrast between her black clothes and the dark
grey wall, it is as if shes vanishing in shades of black.
Figure 17

To add to this dismal atmosphere, the soundtrack features diegetic farmyard sounds of chickens, dogs and birds
(start worrying when you hear birds in Jancs country). The whole scene has an abstract geometric quality, since
the doorways, windows and wooden beams divide the frame in squares and triangles, used as framing devices for
the characters. Only later we realize that this scene is full of signs that refer to a murder plot: Anna and Trez are
not taking care of the old woman; they are poisoning her. Only when more story information seeps in, we realize
how morally depraved Anna and Trez really are. In retrospect, this scene depicts a Huis Clos situation where
other people are lenfer, the characters figuratively have no exit and the camera literally cant leave the premises.
For good metaphorical reasons, Jancs doesnt hesitate to restrain his roving camera.

In Red Psalm the characters still move around in an unstructured space. Peasants, children, soldiers and
landowners linger, run or form lines to dance or march. Racing horses crisscross the space, skillfully maneuvering
between peasants, sheep and carts. The presence of dozens of characters requires a tactic to give the viewer
access to such an overpopulated set. Jancs uses a combination of long lenses, zoom shots, shallow focus and
rack focus to guide viewers attention. His camera is as mobile as ever, but eschews long shots to the benefit of
medium shots and medium close-ups of faces and folkloric objects. The long-take, long-lense tactic results in
chaotic or dense compositions, because the long lense flattens the space and causes hazy foreground figures to
clutter the frame. Still, Jancss style brings order to the chaos by picking out points of interest an officer, a
peasant woman, a green jar, a red ribbon, a platter of food following them for a while and shifting attention to
another point of interest. Within one long take the camera temporarily follows and abandons several peasants and
soldiers, a way to cinematographically express the absence of real protagonists and the importance of all the
members of the different social classes. As such, he adds a Marxist meaning to an Antonionian stylistic device
and raises the bar by shifting to a new character more quickly and more often in one long take. Moreover, the
extended long take in Red Psalm enables Jancs to juxtapose these conflicting classes. While the tracking
camera follows a man moving to the left, the background consecutively features the peasant-guitarist, a group of
officers celebrating their victory and eventually the priests and acolytes, ringing bells and swinging censers. Every
time the camera picks up a new group, the accompanying music abruptly changes to a score that fits its class.

MORALITY OF VIOLENCE AND THE MISE-EN-SCNE OF HUMILIATION

In my analysis of Jancss style and its emotional impact, his thematic interests came to the fore as well. His films
deal with power imbalances on a military, social and individual level. This imbalance is usually so profound
certainly in the tetralogy that the oppressed are completely at the mercy of their oppressors. Crucial to Jancss
vision of the logic of war and revolution is the idea that, once the oppressed get into power they change and
immediately try to oppress and exploit everyone else.11 The Red and The White was disliked in Russia because
some of the Bolsheviks were portrayed as mirror images of the merciless Whites. The peasants in Red Psalm,
despite the gay atmosphere with cheerful dancing, whirling ribbons and naked girls, burn or shoot their opponents
without the blink of an eye. In comparison, the revolt of the Marxist students in The Confrontation is a rather
peaceful event, but it lays bare the difficulties of achieving the goal of a truly democratic leadership. At one point
Jutka, the revolutionist leader, orders the burning of the books of the Catholic students. She wants to convince
them of the necessity of communist Peoples Colleges, oblivious of the Nazist overtones of her intervention.
Jancss critique of communisms affinity with exploitation and violence resonates with Oshimas similar exercise
in self-reflection in Night and Fog in Japan (1960). In this film the Japanese director criticizes in his own
exceptional foray into long-take aesthetics the authoritarian leadership of the Zengakuren, the communist
league of Japanese students.

The violence in Jancs country is based on an internal ethical framework in which values like patriotism and honor
play a central role. In the multiple moralities approach, the morality of violence is one of the five moral systems
that people use to underpin and legitimize their moral conduct.12 In Silence and Cry an officer distinguishes his
moral system from a familial morality when he states: Listen, Id finish off my own father if I was ordered to. In a
similar vein, a peasant in Red Psalm realizes: I know if you were ordered you would even murder your own
fathers. When war is at hand, the hierarchy of values shifts from family ties and other moral systems, like
principled morality to honor and patriotism.

Honor is expressed in the philosophy of open warfare as opposed to trench warfare. In the concluding battle in
The Red and The White, the Reds march the puszta side by side, proudly showing their camaraderie and courage
in the face of an overwhelming opponent. Real men dont hide in trenches; they boldly show themselves and get
shot. An officer in Red Psalm derides the peasants for hiding behind their children, for a true Hungarian is
chivalrous, open and patriotic. Honor materializes in military uniforms, decorations, swords, plumed hats, clean
shirts and polished boots. Completely dressed up, the officers look like parading peacocks. In The Round-Up, the
oppressors even wear ahistoric black cloaks that seem to bestow them with Nosferatu-like malignancy. In marked
contrast with this male vestimentary display, Jancs develops the motif of the naked figure. Compulsory
undressing is a recurring tactic of humiliation for both men and women. Male prisoners usually have to take off
their shirts, resulting in a stark hierarchical contrast between the uniformed soldier and the barechested detainee.
After a while the command to undress contributes to our apprehensive mood, because we realize it is often the
harbinger of death. When women are ordered to take off their clothes, the humiliation is of a sexual nature. This
difference in treatment is clearly visible in The Round-Up. Women accused of membership of rebel leader
Sandors gang are stripped naked, while the fully dressed men suffer a humiliation of an opposite kind: they have
to wear white hoods that seem to function to erase their identities and intensify their sorrow. One of the women will
be subjected to a torture game, performed on the puszta stage before an unwilling audience of hooded men.
When they are ordered to take off their hoods, they find themselves in the royal box of this perverted stage play.

Figure 18

The men witness how their female comrade runs naked to and fro between two lines of soldiers. They whip her
relentlessly until she collapses. One of the spectators the woman may have been his lover or wife cant bear
the sight of it and after an explicit, un-Jancsian display of emotions commits suicide. Compared to the detached
representation of violence, the mise-en-scne of humiliating nakedness is relatively explicit. Between the rows of
soldiers, the whipped womans breasts and pubic hair are visible. In Silence and Cry a young girl is undressed
and caressed by Trez, a gesture that holds the middle between humiliation and tenderness. Can we deduce that
the murderous women are running a prostitution business on the side as well? Humiliation is not a prerogative of
men or women, Reds or Whites; it is a tactic of whoever is in power. With the unsavory behavior of the women in
Silence and Cry Jancs already undermined the notion that questionable ethics is a strictly male territory. In The
Red and The White he showed that when humiliation is in conflict with the code of honor, the humiliator himself will
be humiliated and punished or executed. This tactics of humiliation stretches from 19thcentury Austria-Hungary
and Nazi Germany to Abu Ghraib, where the whole nudity thing was part of the military intelligence
process.13 Besides sexual humiliation, Iraqi prisoners were forced to sing The Star-Spangled Banner and do
jumping jacks. This is discouragingly similar to the obligatory singing and rabbit-jumping in Jancss world.
Nevertheless, Jancs country isnt a lawless moral wasteland, it just privileges a dubious moral system that
throughout the ages has had the tendency to flourish in times of war.

GRIPPING ANTI-CINEMA
If a highly personal, stubborn style and the pre sence of recurrent themes are fundamental criteria for auteurism,
Jancs certainly qualifies. He strived for this status, distancing himself from the classical Hollywood fare, which he
associated with an all too overt display of emotions, the manipulative use of realism and a hierarchical studio
system that smothers creativity and degrades fellow-artists to second-rate figures.14 He found it crucial to be
able to work with a team of kindred spirits for every new project. The scripts of all the films discussed here, except
Cantata, were written by his friend Gyula Herndi. The actor Andrs Kozk plays important roles in three films of
the tetralogy, despite Jancss shying away from the use of real protagonists. The final image in these films
supports the hypothesis that his actor-friendfunctions as his alter ego: a close-up of Kozk who looks the
spectator in the eye (figures 19-21). The Japanese New Wave director Kiju Yoshida has described the films of Ozu
and his own work as anti-cinema: a cinema that breaks the rules of classical montage and composition, denies
the importance of an intricate storyline and avoids the comfortable cradle of emotions.15 Jancss early oeuvre
similarly shuns the soothing cradle of emotions, but through his method of emotional minimalism he has
succeeded in creating gripping anti-cinema.

Figure 19 Kozk looks us in the eye for the first time. The final image of My Way Home.

Figure 20 Again, Kozk demands our attention and concern, just before he will be killed by the Whites. The final
image of The Red and The White.
Figure 21 Kozk looks at us just before committing suicide. The final image of Silence and Cry.

Tim Deschaumes teaches film history and film style at the Flemish Folk High School Vormingplus in Ghent and is
freelance teacher at the Flemish Service for Film Culture (VDFC). He is associated with the cinema and art
collective PostX. His interests include film style, film and emotion, silent cinema and new wave cinemas, especially
the Japanese New Wave.

1. These three masters of New Wave cinema left us in quick succession: Mikls Jancs, 31 January 2014,
Alain Resnais, 1 March 2014 and Vra Chytilov, 12 March 2014.
2. Czigany, L. (1972). Jancso Country: Miklos Jancs and the Hungarian New Cinema. Film Quarterly, Vol.
26(1), 44-50.
3. Hoberman, J. (2006, September). Red Modernism. The Hungarian Master's late-Sixties Trilogy.
Retrieved from Film Comment: http://www.filmcomment.com/article/miklos-jansco
4. Bordwell, D. (2007, August 11). Bergman, Antonioni, and the stubborn stylists. Retrieved from David
Bordwell's website on cinema: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/08/11/bergman-antonioni-and-the-
stubborn-stylists
5. For convenience sake, I will refer to My Way Home, The Round-Up, The Red and The White and
Silence and Cry as the tetralogy.
6. Houston, P. (1969). The Horizontal Man. Sight and Sound, 38(3), 116-120.
7. Smith, G. M. (2003). Film Structure and the Emotion System. Cambridge University Press.
8. Kovcs, A. B. (2007). Screening Modernism. European Art Cinema, 1950-1980 . The University of
Chicago Press.
9. Czigany, L. (1972). Jancso Country: Miklos Jancs and the Hungarian New Cinema. Film Quarterly, Vol.
26(1), 44-50.
10. Petrie, G. (1998). Red Psalm. Mg kr a np. Flicks Books, 3.
11. Petrie, G. (1998). Red Psalm. Mg kr a np. Flicks Books, 33.
12. Verplaetse distinguishes five moral systems: familial morality, morality of violence, purification morality,
morality of cooperativeness and principled morality. Empathy and attachment, scarce emotions in Jancs
country, belong to familial morality. Honor and revenge are essential ingredients of the morality of violence.
Verplaetse, J. (2008). Het morele instinct. Over de natuurlijke oorsprong van onze moraal . Nieuwezijds.
13. Zernike, K., & Rohde, D. (2004, June 8). Forced Nudity of Iraqi Prisoners Is Seen as a Pervasive
Pattern, Not Isolated Incidents. Retrieved from The New York Times on the web:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/articles/08NAKE.html.
14. Bisztray, G. (1980). Auteurism in the Modern Hungarian Cinema. Canadian-American Review of
Hungarian Studies, Vol. VII(2), 135-144.
15. Yoshida is unfortunately as overlooked as Jancs, but luckily, Dick Stegewerns has edited a fine
volume on Yoshidas work, including texts of the filmmaker himself.

Stegewerns, D. (2010). Master of the Modern Art Film. In D. Stegewerns, Yoshida Kiju. 50 Years of Avant-
Garde Filmmaking in Postwar Japan. (pp. 5-7). Norwegian Film Institute.

Yoshida, K. (2010). My Film Theory. The Logic of Self-Negation. In D. Stegewerns, Yoshida Kiju. 50 Years
of Avant-Garde Filmmaking in Postwar Japan. (pp. 15-19). Norwegian Film Institute.