István Szabó (; born 18 February 1938) is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director.
Szabó is one of the most notable Hungarian filmmakers and one who has been best known outside the Hungarian-speaking world since the late 1960s. Working in the tradition of European auteurism, he has made films that represent many of the political and psychological conflicts of Central Europe's recent history, as well as of his own personal history. He made his first short film in 1959 as a student at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, and his first feature film in 1964.
He achieved his greatest international success with Mephisto (1981) for which he was awarded an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, most of Szabó's films have been international co-productions filmed in a variety of languages and European locations. However, he has continued to make films in Hungarian, and even in his international co-productions he has often filmed in Hungary using Hungarian talent.
In 2006, weekly Hungarian magazine Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature in English) published an article revealing that Szabó had been an informant of the Communist regime's secret police.
Life Born in Budapest, Szabó is the son of Mária (née Vita)"Istvan Szabo Biography," <http://www.filmreference.com/film/58/Istvan-Szabo.html>, Film Reference. Retrieved 6 May 2012. and István Szabó, the latter of whom was a doctor from a long line of doctors.David Paul, “An Excerpt from 'István Szabó,'” David W. Paul, 6 May 2012 <http://home.comcast.net/~dwp1944/Szabo.htm>. Szabó came from a family of Jews who had converted to Catholicism, but were considered Jews by the Arrow Cross Party (Hungarian fascists). They were forced to separate and hide in Budapest sometime between 15 October 1944, when Nazi Germany deposed the Hungarian government for trying to sign an armistice with the Allies, installing the Arrow Cross in power, and 13 February 1945, when the Soviets defeated the German Army in Budapest. Szabó survived by hiding at an orphanage, but his father died of diphtheria shortly after the German defeat. Memories of these events would later appear in several of his films.
In 2006, weekly Hungarian magazine Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature in English) published an article revealing he had been an informant for the Communist regime's secret police.Gervai András: Egy ügynök azonosítása, Élet és Irodalom, 2006. January 27. Between 1957 and 1961, he submitted 48 reports on 72 people, mostly classmates and teachers at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. According to historian István Deák, in only one case did Szabó's informing cause significant damage, when an individual was denied a passport. After the article was published, over 100 prominent intellectuals, including some of those about whom Szabó had made reports, published a letter of support for him. Szabó's initial response to the article was that informing had been an act of bravery, since he had intended to save the life of his former classmate Pál Gábor. When this claim turned out not to be true, Szabó admitted that his true motive had been to prevent his own expulsion from the Academy. Author Anna Porter asserted that "whether this is true or not is impossible to prove as not much has remained of Szabó's file and as revelations about the murky past of prominent figures such as Szabó have become mired in controversy."
In a 2001 interview, Szabó revealed that he believes in God, but considers the subject personal and does not like to talk about it.
Career
Pre–1964 As a child, Szabó wanted to be a doctor like his father. By the age of 16, however, had been inspired by a book by Hungarian film theorist Béla Balázs to become a film director. After finishing high school, he was one of 11 applicants out of 800 who were admitted to the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, where he studied under Félix Máriássy, who became something of a father figure to him. His classmates included Judit Elek, Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács, János Rózsa, Pál Gábor, Imre Gyöngyössy, Ferenc Kardos, and Zoltán Huszárik. During this period, Szabó directed several short films, most notably his thesis film, Koncert (1963), which earned a prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Subsequently he was apprenticed to the head of the Hunnia Film Studio, János Herskó, which resulted in an opportunity to direct his first feature film at the age of 25, rather than having to spend ten years working as an assistant director.András Gervai, “A Screen Moralist,” The Hungarian Quarterly 43, Winter 2002.
The beginning of Szabó's career coincided with the beginning of a “new wave” in Hungarian cinema, one of several new wave cinemas that occurred around this time throughout Western and Eastern Europe. The new wave in Eastern Europe began against a backdrop of political liberalization, the decentralization of film industries, and the emergence of films as valuable commodities for export to Western European markets. The resulting films were more formally experimental, politically anti-establishment, and, especially in the case of Szabó, psychologically probing than the films of the previous generation . Hungarian filmmakers in particular experienced a significant increase in freedom of expression due to the reforms of the Kádár government.Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 460-469.
Hungarian films, 1964–1980 Szabó's first feature film, The Age of Illusions (1964), is a partly autobiographical film about the problems Szabó's generation had starting their careers, dealing with the older generation, and developing romantic relationships. The appearance of a poster for François Truffaut's The 400 Blows in the background of a scene suggests Szabó's artistic compatibility with Truffaut and the French New Wave.David Paul, “Istvan Szabo,” Five Filmmakers, ed. Daniel J. Goulding (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) 162-164. The film won the Silver Sail for Best First Work at the Locarno International Film Festival and a Special Jury Prize for Best Director at the Hungarian Film Festival.
Father (1966) is a coming-of-age story that displays Szabó's increasing fascination with history and his childhood memories. The plot covers events from the Arrow Cross Party dictatorship to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, revolving around the disorientation and self-awareness of a generation that had to grow up without a father figure in wartime. The main character replaces the image of his absent father with fantasy images that change over time. These events take place during a period of his life when he begins to transition to adulthood. Finally, he is able to face the reality of his situation and comes to understand that he has to rely on his own strength rather than that of an idealized father figure.Paul, “Istvan Szabo” 164-166. The film won the Grand Prix at the 5th Moscow International Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize at Locarno, and established Szabó as the most internationally famous Hungarian filmmaker of his time,Thompson and Bordwell 624. as well as an auteur in the European film tradition. In 2000, Father appeared as number 11 on a list of the 12 best Hungarian films according to a group of Hungarian film critics.“A Brüsszeli 12,” Sulinet, <http://www.sulinet.hu/tovabbtan/felveteli/2001/23het/kommunikacio/komm23.html>. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
Lovefilm (1970) focuses on a young man's relationship with his childhood sweetheart, told through flashbacks that include the Arrow Cross dictatorship and 1956, and rendered in an experimental, fragmented form. This experimental tendency in Szabó's films reached its apotheosis in 25 Fireman Street (1973), which began as a short film, Dream About a House (1971). 25 Fireman Street takes place during the course of a long, hot night in Budapest, during which the residents of a single apartment building are plagued by dream-memories of pain and loss spanning thirty years, including both World Wars, the Arrow Cross dictatorship, the Communist takeover, and 1956. While the film won the top prize at Locarno, Szabó was upset by its lack of success at the box office and at film festivals. Attributing this lack of success to the film's complex structure, he decided to give his next film a simpler structure.Paul, “Istvan Szabo” 175.
In Budapest Tales (1976), Szabó traded his earlier, complex narrative structures, characterized by flashbacks and dreams, for a more linear one. At the same time, he traded the literal representation of history for an allegorical one. The film follows a disparate group of people who come together on the outskirts of an unnamed city at the end of an unnamed war to repair a damaged tram and ride it into the city. Allegorically, the film was interpreted by critics variously as representing Hungarian history specifically or universal human responses to war and reconstruction more generally.Paul, “Istvan Szabo” 177–179.
Szabó's first four full-length films featured the actor András Bálint in roles based on Szabó himself. While Bálint also appeared in Budapest Tales, this was Szabó's first feature film that did not contain a significant amount of autobiographical material. He did not make another autobiographical film until Meeting Venus, eighteen years later.Joshua Hirsch, Afterimage: Film, Trauma, and the Holocaust (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) 116–117.
Budapest Tales was even less successful than 25 Fireman Street at the box office and festivals. According to author David Paul, this may explain why Szabó shifted gears even more dramatically in his next film, Confidence (1980), in which historical events are represented straightforwardly, and are filtered through neither memory nor allegory. The film focuses on the relationship between a man and woman who are forced to share a room as they hide from the Arrow Cross toward the end of the Second World War. It garnered a Best Director award for Szabó at the Berlin Film FestivalPaul, “Istvan Szabo” 180–183. and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 53rd Academy Awards.
International co-productions featuring Brandauer, 1981–1988 Szabó's next three films constituted a new phase in his career—moving away from Hungarian productions, in Hungarian, written by Szabó alone, and featuring Bálint, and moving toward international co-productions, in German, written by Szabó in collaboration with others, and featuring Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer.Hirsch 117. The informal trilogy—Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988)—features Brandauer in a series of roles based on historical figures who, as represented in the films, compromised their morals in order to climb the ladder of success within a context of authoritarian political power. In Mephisto, based on a novel by Klaus Mann, Brandauer plays an actor and theater director in Nazi Germany, a role based on Mann's former brother-in-law Gustaf Gründgens. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and the award for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, and greatly increased Szabó's international prestige.Paul, “Istvan Szabo” 183-187.
In Colonel Redl, Brandauer plays Alfred Redl, counter-intelligence chief of the Austro-Hungarian Empire who was blackmailed into espionage for the Russians in order to prevent the revelation of his homosexuality. The film won top awards in Germany and the UK, but provoked a scandal in Austria, where several periodicals accused the film of bringing the country into disrepute. In Hanussen, Brandauer plays the real life clairvoyant performer Erik Jan Hanussen, whose growing fame brings him into increasingly close—and dangerous—contact with the Nazis.Paul, “Istvan Szabo” 189-194.
1991–present