Hungarian classics
Nov. 10th, 2006 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartThe Auchan supermarket in our neighbourhood has big DVD sales all around the year, where you can buy DVDs for the equivalent of 3 or 4 Euros. Usually, it's just junk - American action movies nobody cares for any longer, or black and white Hungarian ones my grandparents used to enjoy in their youth. Or not. But this week we really, really had a case of luckies.
Mum recently got her annual "gift package" from the union, meaning that she can buy herself whatever she wants for, oh, about 66 Euros or so. We went to Auchan and discovered that they were selling real classics: classic movies that were made of books that have been classics for the last two hundred years or so.
So we jumped at the chance and acquired A Hungarian Nabob, Zoltán Kárpáthy and The Heartless Man's Sons, made from the novels of Mór Jókai (1825-1904), one of the greatest Hungarian romantic novelists and poets, who, by the way,wrote about the first Hungarian sci-fi, The Novel of the Next Century, back in 1872, when the term sci-fi didn't even exist yet.
We also bought Stars of Eger, after a novel by Géza Gárdonyi, which was published in English under the title Eclipse of the Crescent Moon and describes the siege of the castle of Eger by the Ottomans in the 16th century.
Furthermore, we bought Kincskereső Kisködmon, a movie made after one of the most heart-rending children's book by Ferenc Móra, the 1969's Zoltán Fábry version of The Paul Street Boys by Franz Molnar.
Four of the above six books have been obligatory lecture for Hungarian schoolkids since my primary school time to the current day, and I can still re-read them at my current age and still find them terrific.
Okay, we bought a light-hearted comedy (The Heathen Madonna), too, but it's also some 20-30 years old by now and still very funny. The sort of comedy I like because the fun comes from the personal quirks of the characters, not from some slapstick idiocy.
These old movies made me realize what incredibly talented actors we used to have in my youth. Actors like Ferenc Bessenyei, Iván Darvas, Zoltán Latinovits, Sándor Pécsi, Éva Ruttkai, Vera Venczel, István Bujtor and many, many more. If they hadn't been trapped by an unknown language in an equally unknown little country, they'd have swept half the Oscar Prizes in their prime.
I know that all this stuff probably means nothing to you guys. I just added a few links to show that we have more to offer than just wine and paprika.
Oh, and by the way: while US studio bosses were fainting in shock about alien princesses' visible belly button in the original Start Trek, we already had close ups on bare tits in A Hungarian Nabob, back in 1966! *g*
Mum recently got her annual "gift package" from the union, meaning that she can buy herself whatever she wants for, oh, about 66 Euros or so. We went to Auchan and discovered that they were selling real classics: classic movies that were made of books that have been classics for the last two hundred years or so.
So we jumped at the chance and acquired A Hungarian Nabob, Zoltán Kárpáthy and The Heartless Man's Sons, made from the novels of Mór Jókai (1825-1904), one of the greatest Hungarian romantic novelists and poets, who, by the way,wrote about the first Hungarian sci-fi, The Novel of the Next Century, back in 1872, when the term sci-fi didn't even exist yet.
We also bought Stars of Eger, after a novel by Géza Gárdonyi, which was published in English under the title Eclipse of the Crescent Moon and describes the siege of the castle of Eger by the Ottomans in the 16th century.
Furthermore, we bought Kincskereső Kisködmon, a movie made after one of the most heart-rending children's book by Ferenc Móra, the 1969's Zoltán Fábry version of The Paul Street Boys by Franz Molnar.
Four of the above six books have been obligatory lecture for Hungarian schoolkids since my primary school time to the current day, and I can still re-read them at my current age and still find them terrific.
Okay, we bought a light-hearted comedy (The Heathen Madonna), too, but it's also some 20-30 years old by now and still very funny. The sort of comedy I like because the fun comes from the personal quirks of the characters, not from some slapstick idiocy.
These old movies made me realize what incredibly talented actors we used to have in my youth. Actors like Ferenc Bessenyei, Iván Darvas, Zoltán Latinovits, Sándor Pécsi, Éva Ruttkai, Vera Venczel, István Bujtor and many, many more. If they hadn't been trapped by an unknown language in an equally unknown little country, they'd have swept half the Oscar Prizes in their prime.
I know that all this stuff probably means nothing to you guys. I just added a few links to show that we have more to offer than just wine and paprika.
Oh, and by the way: while US studio bosses were fainting in shock about alien princesses' visible belly button in the original Start Trek, we already had close ups on bare tits in A Hungarian Nabob, back in 1966! *g*
