Ferenc Molnár’s novel The Paul Street Boys was originally serialised in a boys’ magazine in 1906. Since then it has acquired classic status and remains one of the best-loved books in Hungary. The story has been adapted to the screen several times. In 1917, Béla Balogh directed the first film version, returning to the novel in 1924 for a second Hungarian silent adaptation. Of the two, only this later film survives.

The story relates the bitter conflict between the Paul Street Boys and their rivals, the Red Shirts, in defence of their territory, the “grund”, a piece of wasteland between the smoke-blackened houses in Budapest’s Józsefváros neighbourhood. Nemecsek is the only private in this “regiment” of officers, yet he ultimately proves himself a hero. His death, one of the most affecting death scenes in literature or film, is an extraordinary symbol of the tragic waste of the First World War. The small, frail, yet defiant and altruistic Nemecsek was played by Gyuri Faragó, known for his musical talent. Thin, pale, hollow-cheeked, timid, and with a loser’s sad smile, Faragó was the very opposite of the child-star ideal of the 1920s, angel-like, full-cheeked, and self-assured.

The 1924 adaptation of The Paul Street Boys (which – like the novel – enjoyed considerable success abroad) was long believed lost until a vintage Croatian release print was found in the archive of the Jugoslovenska Kinoteka in Belgrade. It is unfortunately incomplete, lacking, above all, the decisive battle for the “grund” in which fever-ridden Nemecsek, emerging from his sickbed, defeats Feri Áts, captain of the Red Shirts. The print has also lost László Kalmár’s elaborately designed intertitles. A contemporary review explains, “Each insert produced a characteristic type, which in its graphic appearance expressed the situation and atmosphere being expressed. For example, if there was weeping, tears escaped from the letters, if there was fear, the letters trembled, if there was a lie, they shrank as if with cowardice.”

Márton Kurutz