The Red and the White
Capsule by Jonathan Rosenbaum From the Chicago Reader
This 1967 feature was one of the first by Hungarian filmmaker Miklos Jancso to have some impact in the U.S., and the stylistic virtuosity, ritualistic power, and sheer beauty of his work are already fully apparent. In this black-and-white pageant, set during the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the reds are the revolutionaries and the whites are the government forces ordered to crush them. Working in elaborately choreographed long takes with often spectacular vistas, Jancso invites us to study the mechanisms of power almost abstractly, with a cold eroticism that may suggest some of the subsequent work of Stanley Kubrick. If you've never encountered Jancso's work, you shouldn't miss this. He may well be the key Hungarian filmmaker of the sound era, and certain later figures such as Bela Tarr would be inconceivable without him. In Hungarian with subtitles. 90 min. --Jonathan Rosenbaum
