The 1860s: the government of the Austro-Hungarian empire is about to finish off the last remnants of Kossuth’s rebellion, the freedom fighters, the men of Sándor. This is the point of departure for a cruel cat-and-mouse game and a lesson about crushing identities (the ending is one of the most chilling moments of history fulfilled)…
Then or now. We are at the core of the speciality of Hungarian film of the 1960s. While the events of Szegénylegények take place in the historical period of 1860s, according to Jancsó, “everybody in the audience knew that the real story was about the 1950s and 1960s”; it was simply convenient to point out to any interrogator from Moscow or East Berlin that it was “a historical film, not about our time”…
There are good grounds for the sameness: the puszta that stretches almost into eternity is timeless. Szegénylegények was the first instance of a “method” that would become the legend of modern cinema. In the words of the director: “Nowadays even a child can film a long scene. Not then. We shot 12-minute scenes with a 35mm camera, we needed a complicated set of tracks; we started shooting early in the morning and shot until the day was darkening.” It was virtuosic: “Our method meant some kind of madness, and depended on all of us, technicians and actors alike, being friends – otherwise what we did wouldn’t have been possible.” (This is a nice paradox: camaraderie behind cameras, homo homini lupus – history – in front of them).
It meant the renewal of montage, which was now performed within the single-shot sequence – an act Marcel Martin has called “virtual montage”. The magnificent black-and-white Scope image shows us plain history, and man trapped by history: film as a prison space…
If a cinema spectator wants to watch history as film can reveal it, Quo Vadis? (et al) is the light answer while Szegénylegények is probably the most engrossing: a key moment in the art of Miklós Jancsó, and especially in modern cinema, when form, method and theme are totally one.

Peter von Bagh