After the nationalization of film production in Hungary in 1948, film was regarded as a means of ideology and propaganda by the cultural leadership of the one-party state. This film by Viktor Gertler, the great doyen of the Horthy era, was to become a symbol of the age. Made in the style of an operetta, and featuring some of the biggest stars of the period (Kálmán Latabár, Kamill Feleki, Pál Gábor, Imre Soós), the film attracted several million spectators. Every single shot suggests the illusion of an idyllic life and a happy future. The department store, called Triumph, is a model of society. The figure of its newly trained and appointed director (Miklós Gábor), who is of working-class origin, is a manifestation of how the new socialist type of man copes with new and enormous challenges: he dampens the ardour of the over-zealous, defeats the alarmist forces of imperialist reaction from without and within, and even overcomes the perplexities of his own love affair. The lovers visit the major sites of collectively monitored privacy: swimming-pools, Margaret Island, boathouses, and the Buda hills, while the most beautiful hit celebrating the ideology of collectivism is born on Gellért Hill, under the Soviet monument: “It is for our sake that this city is so beautiful!”

Eszter Fazekas