The story, written in the early ‘twenties, when the counter-revolution was still in control, is rather trite. The suicide is forced. The almost mythical attraction and power of the woman’s sex appeal are improbable, and are reminiscent of the sirens and vamps of Hollywood. Under existing Hungarian conditions, however, this breeze that streamed into the stuffy atmosphere of the cinema brought something new and good. The office was a real Budapest office, an insignificant factory of documents, where everybody believes himself of central importance; the apartment of the modest young girl radiates calm, practical philosophy, a fit place for her uncle, a sergeant in the fire-brigade, and a cheerful journalist who often drop in for supper. This seems very little: a bourgeois consciousness that has vanished with the past; but at the time it was new in a film-world teeming with hussar officers. This is shown also by the fact that the censor would not let the father be a general, and the policeman had to be trasformed into a sergeant of the fire-brigade.

István Nemeskürty, Word and Image, Corvina Press, 1968