A Jewish ghetto in the east of Europe, 1944. By coincidence, Jakob Heym eavesdrops on a German radio broadcast announcing the Soviet Army is making slow by steady progress towards central Europe. In order to keep his companion in misfortune, Mischa, from risking his life for a few potatoes, he tells him what he heard and announces that he is in possession of a radio - in the ghetto a crime punishable by death. It doesn't take long for word of Jakob's secret to spread - suddenly, there is new hope and something to live for - and so Jakob finds himself in the uncomforting position of having to come up with more and more stories.
A gypsy apothecary-violinist befriends a Hapsburg prince after saving his life during the disastrous Hungarian War of Independence in 1849.
In the small village of Rátót, every male is called Béla. When a woman gives birth to her child, she names him Józsi...
This is a story of a man who wants to grasp and hold his beloved one by him and a woman who insists on that her love can't be grasped; 'she' only can deliver hers. It has written Comedy, Romance etc... but, this movie doesn't include anything funny, I believe. After I see the movie, I thought that love springs through a one's heart and it has its own spirit. It doesn't have to have any company. The matter is if it coincides its mate; that's it.
This quirky episodic comedy weaves together three plotlines centered around the employees of a car garage, with some unexpected fairytale elements to get things moving. A woodland fairy convinces shy bookkeeper Piel to suddenly start driving his Trabi far above the speed limit. Manager Neumann sells his soul to a black cat in order to purchase a more respectable vehicle. And a spirit named "Car Accident" offers to warn owner Sengebusch about upcoming traffic accidents so he can make money by always being the first on the scene.
Ferenc Molnár's cartoons, published in various newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s, were not originally intended for performance. The producers of the show brought them to life with great authorial ideas and sparkling dialogues. Some of the scenes, which touch on the bourgeois life of the time in Pest, may be relevant to today's Pest, and promise to entertain the audience.
A barber goes for a walk on an average Sunday morning, and end up winning an other guy's wife on card.
13 March 1965 (Hungary)
Winter of 1944, the last days of the war. When the roads and houses ceased to exist and the bottom of the cellars become filled with life, when fortunes were lost and countries burned up, her used coat was only important to Mama, the cloak-room servant of a local dance-school. Her son stole it to sell it for twenty pengő. He did it because Aranka Fussbaum's love cost money. There is no honour left in such a destroyed world. Yet still they start looking for that coat... (Elemér Ragályi won Best camera with this movie in Montreal, 1979, and in Budapest, 1980.)
A divorced middle-aged woman takes home an ardent suitor, only to discover that he prefers her teenage son. The mother is an overworked coffee-shop attendant, the suitor turns out to be a plain-clothes policeman and the boy is a frustrated flautist.
The film is set in Budapest, 1924. Laundryman Ede Minarik's only passion is football. His dream is to see his team, Csabagyöngye, qualify for the first division. For this goal he would be willing to sacrifice everything he has. But he has nothing, even footballers just barely. The team is just like the times. But still, "we need a team!"
"Ripacsok" is a great movie with great soundtrack, acting, cinematography, direction, etc. The world of "artists", hamming actors, good clowns and bad clowns... A unique movie in many ways. Pál Sándor is a very good hungarian director, watch his movies (especially the slightly better "Régi idõk focija") if you have the chance.
A typist girl who is under the influence of nervous breakdown walks out to the street stark naked from the office she works in. A young physician goes by accidentally and tries to help her, spreading his coat over her nude body. From this moment his life changes completely.
In December 1956 there is a chaotic situation in Hungary. The revolution is put down by the Soviet army. People leave the country in large numbers for fear of revenge. A young soldier (György Angeli) who also took a part in the revolution, takes a train to Vienna together with his friend (Dániel Szerencsés). Written by Tamas Patrovics
As a last chance in his career, the young acrobat with a broken leg, Sajek Oszkár, attempts to obtain the wonderful secret from the retired old artist, Uncle Binder Lipi, a secret which was a world hit.
The story of 10-year-old boy and his family against the backdrop of the bloody events of 1956, in Budapest. Children do not yet understand what is going on, but they're happy because the schools are closed. But gradually, to adults and children comes the understanding that something terrible is happening. Disappearing relatives, friends, and even killed some. Tips sent an army to put down the counterrevolutionary rebellion.
To celebrate Hitler's birthday, a soccer match is organised between the Germans and a group of Hungarian political prisoners, one of whom is a famous pre-war football star.
When the court astrologer warns the king that the stars predict his imminent murder, the terrified monarch dons a beggar’s disguise and flees the palace, seeking refuge in the cupbearer’s home. Unbeknownst to him, the very assassin his own court magician hired lies in wait under the same roof.
Set in the "Golden Era" of the wandering Hungarian theatre troupes. Mariska and Liliomfi fall in love without suspecting that Mariska's foster father, Professor Szilvay, is also Liliomfi's uncle. Soon the couple must contend with the professor's plan to make Liliomfi give up his "unrespectable" profession of acting by exposing the professor's hypocrisy, greed, and tyrannical selfishness.
Mihai Toth worked for forty years as a watchman in a timber warehouse. On his last watch, there was a fire: the warehouse burned to the ground. The damage amounted to one and a half million forints. It was a terrible blow to Mihai, who had worked honestly all his life. Suddenly it turns out that Mihai has won one and a half million forints in a lottery. Wanting to save his good name, he wants to deposit this sum in the state treasury. But it turned out to be not so easy: the cause of the fire has not been established and Mihai's guilt has not been proved. That's why nobody had the right to take money from him. For a long time Mihai wandered from one institution to another with a request to accept money from him, but everything was in vain. Then the old man tried a trick...
This epic story takes place between 1820 and 1860 during the Habsburg Monarchy, and portrays the life one of the greatest Hungarian aristocrats - Count Széchenyi - who was born with extra-ordinary mental and spiritual talents. In the years following the fall of Napoleon the young count Széchenyi irresponsibly seduces his brother's wife, and the consequent scandal ruins his career as an army officer. After the sudden death of his humiliated lover Count Széchenyi drastically changes his character from that of a shallow young man into a responsible nobleman seeking to conquer his fate by creating great achievements in his remaining life.
The story setup in the late Communist era. Two school boys are best friends. One's Father is a mighty communist party secretary, the other is an anti-communist rebel.
The twenty-year-old Gida, having just survived his first amorous disappointment, falls for Katinka, the young widow, at first sight.
Seven stories about love and women.
A murder has been committed in a block of flats in Pest. Almost all the dwellers of the building behave in a suspicious way at the beginning of the investigation, although it is their everyday lapses they try to hide. In spite of the janitor's unpleasant comments, light is gradually thrown upon the case.
Upon his father's death, a Hungarian stage actor travels to Israel for the funeral and meets his stepmother for the first time.
An atmospheric, sub-hallucinogenic venture into the world of the unknown. The enigma facing a young woman is the identity of her father. Unfortunately for her, she becomes drawn into a small Romanian underworld of brooding menace, darkness, torture chambers, and vampires.
The parents of Kabala (Lucky Charm) and Facsiga (Wooden Top) are divorced. Kabala, an adolescent girl was awarded to the father, while Facsiga, the younger brother was awarded to the mother, but they do not really belong to anyone. The two children want to live together at all costs.
This light comedy with grotesque elements tells the story of M, the young and beautiful model mother, who seeks happiness and a father for her precocious, but inventive daughter, Tündike.
Iván is living in exile from Hungary when he receives word that an old flame is ill. His return to Budapest rekindles old memories and reopens old wounds.
If there has ever been pure and undestroyable love, this is it. That is how Imre and Vera feel. The talented chemist loses his best friend for the girl's sake, then gives up his profession, only to be able to stay in the capital with Vera. But the young actress at the beginning of her career is neglected. Imre accepts an uninteresting, but well-paying position. They seem to be happy together.
A comedy about the dwellers of a newly handed-over building. The sullen doctor Birkás is concerned that his wife also has a job so there is nobody to keep the apartment tidy. What is more, it happens that the doctor must cook the dumplings stuffed with plums himself. The lady hairdresser, Albert, is rather jealous of his wife. His jealousy is not entirely ungrounded, and Mancika runs away with a motorcyclist. The Korbusz family live a little crowded, because in addition to Öcsi, even an energetic grandmother lives with them. But the peacefully troublesome time spent together does not disturb the family's happiness.
The grotesque comedy with crime elements takes place in a grocery store.
Eve, the old professor zsongják beautiful wife surrounded by colleagues. When the professor's going away for a conference abroad, intensifying the suitors attempts. Eve, however faithful to her husband, so that the denials are increasing. Oddly enough, the rejected accidents ...
Story of the owners (Mastroianni and Schygulla) of a fancy nightclub in Budapest before and during WWII.
Director Sandor Simo based this film on his recollections of a period in his father's life just after World War II. In the film, Janos Torok is a chemist and an entrepreneur With enormous enthusiasm, he gets loans to purchase a small chemical plant and begins experiments to create innovative products, such as hormones. Meanwhile, the communist party has come to dominate Hungarian life in such a way that his activities are viewed as little more than criminal. He is hauled away to a prison camp, but even then his letters home are full of boundless optimism and his ideas for further experiments.
Divided into two different halves separated by mood and subject matter, this is an uneven drama about the experience of one Hungarian Jew before and during the fascist takeover of Budapest. The hero Pali (Zoltan Bezeredi) arrives back in Budapest from the U.S. and meanders among the intellectual and social elite before he leaves for a brief stay in England. There he has an even briefer affair with a happy-go-lucky aspiring actress (Anna Kubik), and after a few other encounters with movie mavens, he heads back to Budapest -- quite inexplicably. The rest of the film deteriorates into a dark realm of hatred and violence.
A ghost is haunting Lubló: Kaszparek Mihály, trader of wines, does not refrain from haunting his native town even in broad daylight. He rides his horse sitting backwards, pays with false gold and pays frequent visits to his widowed wife, who is far from being appalled by the caresses of her dead husband.
This sour satire records how narrow-minded, perishable and prejudiced human relations are. Lili, an open, good-hearted, but clumsy girl gets a rusty Renault Gordini from her uncle living in France. She wants to learn driving, but makes horrible and perilous mistakes behind the wheel.
The protagonists of a comic Romeo and Juliet story full of gags are two widowed pensioners. Nádor and Mrs. Komáromi meet in the cemetery while mourning their dead spouses and they fall in love.
The actress is always lonely, she has nobody to love. She adopts a young boy from the orphanage, who formerly arrived on Earth by a flying suitcase and a policeman took him to the orphanage. The actress would be willing to adopt him, but there is no hope for this at the beginning.
In Budapest’s Sixth District stands the “Noah’s Ark”, a “dirty-beautiful” tenement housing thirteen flats filled with a rapper, a poet, a washed-up footballer, an unfaithful wife, three aspiring actresses, retired cinema director Stock Ede and his home-bound octogenarian friend Aurél Tálas. When Ede, long disgusted by TV game shows, shocks everyone by entering “Hungary’s Best Grandpa” contest for a 5 million-forint prize, the building erupts in excitement.
Janos Flandera (Frigyes Funtek) is a student who is kept by an older woman in this depressing drama. When he applies to a prestigious school in Moscow, he is turned down because he is a gigolo. Not only is his scholarship request denied, he is sentenced to a year in prison at hard labor. Janos abandons the jealous older woman who helped deny his entrance to the school. Punished after defending a political prisoner, Janos takes solace in love affairs, but his union with the crippled daughter of a prominent political official puts his life in danger.
The protagonist of this farce is the enthusiastic, bald, spectacled Krebsz, an employee at the Prime and Sample Institute. He alerts the whole village to organise a beauty contest in the weed-field of Balatonszutykos. Hoping to win the grand prize, the leading role in a two-hour colour-film, the girls make all efforts and use all their tricks.
"Are you looking to buy a car? Not sure which one to buy? Clueless? We can solve all your problems. Watch our latest film! All your problems will be solved because we'll talk you out of them for the price of a single ticket." - says the comedy's obliging narrator (Ervin Kibédi), who tries to talk the viewer out of buying a car. To do this, he tells the audience some instructive and humorous car-related stories...
After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young Hungarian, wanted by the police for political crimes, escapes to just this side of the Austrian border. When he discovers that his escape contact has been shot, he disguises himself as a woman and, posing as a maid, takes refuge at a tuberculosis sanatorium. He lives there as a woman for the entire winter before resuming his journey in the spring.
In 1974, mountain climber Molly Higgins (Lori Singer) begins her ascent of Lenin Peak, located in the Pamir Mountains on the edge of the Himalayas. She's part of an international climbing expedition that has brought a team of U.S. climbers into the USSR. But completing their mission won't be easy, as Mother Nature and internal divisions hamper their journey up the perilous peak, putting all their lives in jeopardy. This made-for-TV movie is based on a true story.
Defoe, lacking fantasy of his own takes home the drunkard sailor from the pub and lets him tell his stories on the uninhabited island.
In the thirties, the poor living by the Romanian-Hungarian border were forced to smuggle if they wanted to survive. Mihály, a Hungarian peasant, kills a border guard while fleeing. He is fed up with smuggling and wants to put an end to it, yet he needs money to get a job, so he embarks on another turn.
The flat of Doctor Bartha is wetting, the Communal Management Enterprise does not act, the doctor and his wife are at the edge of divorce. Géza would marry his colleague, Kató, but mum is sick, the apartment is small, no money. Uncle Károly is fed up with unsuitable, charlatan business managers. Vali would marry, in order not to live on Titi and Piri any more, but the selected man wants to have a woman with her own apartment. All of them have a chance by the lottery, especially by hitting twelve scores.
Cabinet crisis threatens in Futbólia, due to a series of lost matches. The head of state charges admiral Duca with the task, as a last chance, to get hold of the football star of the Hungarian team presently playing in Switzerland.
A flamboyant comedy about love, work and money—revealing that the "planned" economy produced some unconventional entrepreneurial methods.
"Good evening... I'd like to report a murder... Where do I live? In the basement... but I'm not there now... I'm on the top floor, in the boss's room... Ah, I don't know who the body is... You like to know, I'm the cleaning lady... How can I check if he's just taking a nap? Maybe, but he's got a dagger sticking out of his back the size of half my arm... So I lock all the doors... don't touch anything... keep my mouth shut and don't tell anyone until you arrive..." - Mrs. Piper, the cleaning lady, begins the eerily cheerful, twisty story with her broken sentences, but at the end we are left with no answer as to why Mrs. Pipper talks so much.
Mocorgó, the well-meaning worker boy, is a tough guy. In his 40s he is still a mechanic's apprentice, but he is disappointed by his family, women and friends, and becomes a criminal. He goes to prison several times and tells the story of his life to the writer, who follows his story until 1956, until Mocorgó's death.
Librarian Géza Kriston is fired from his job after 20 years of work, but he refuses to leave the library building and gets into a fight with the people carrying out the demolition. After the fight, he ends up in police custody, where he meets Sándor Tököli, the Roma pickpocket, who sniffs out the severance pay from the strange librarian in his pocket.
A young woman on board of a bus notices that her watch has been stolen. The ticket collector keeps everybody on board, and upon the advice of a traffic police, they drive directly to the nearest police station.
Captain Kovács investigates the case of a taxi driver who was knocked down and later he disappeared without leaving a trace. Responding the call of the police six women present themselves: they all confess to be the fiancée of the driver.
Small town girl Eszter adores her husband, Zoltán. He doesn't know Zoltán is having an affair with Alizka, until the woman moves in to their apartment.
The sisters have been living in a Soviet barracks in Hungary for eleven years. They long to go to Moscow, but they are drawn here by habituation and inertia. Their father, the brigade commander, is dead, yet they are unable to act and prefer to remain in the closed world of the barracks. So the plot is the same, only the setting has changed.
On the crowded train, the workers entertain each other by telling stories.
The subject-matter of this comedy is age-old: that of the schizophrenic soul. Papa would have liked boy twins years ago, but her wife gave birth to a single child weighing six kilograms. He would like to dampen his feeling of emptiness by having the boy registered both as Péter and Pál.
Three people skilfully kidnap the company director, who never takes the responsibility, takes sleeping pills and spends his time feeding ornamental fish. The kidnappers turn out to be no other than the Engineer, the Technician and the Worker, who only wanted to avoid bankruptcy this way.
Péter tries to make a film on "Swan-Lake". At the weekend, shooting stops and the staff goes home. Péter leaves for home with his wife, Judit, but as he catches sight of a girl at the station, he cannot resist the temptation and gets off the train.
1852. Gáspár Noszlopy escapes from prison in order to capture the emperor, who is to visit Hungary, with his companions and force him to sign the Declaration of Independence. He is only able to find four fanatic men, as his one-time soldiers have already accepted the established order as unalterable, each of them having found a satisfactory way of life and unwilling to undertake a suicidal experiment.
The life of Tamás, antiquities dealer, runs in a normal, everyday way, he is stealing, swindling, cheating on his wife just like everybody else. Suddenly three men, who live in the attic, start harassing him. They construct coarse and unpleasant schemes against him and carry them into effect at the most unexpected times and places.
Andris is almost an adolescent boy. He would need the trust and encouragement of his family. But his father is too much preoccupied with his moral problems in his job. He has the choice either to make a fuss about the corruption discovered at the company or he tries to cover it up skilfully.
The pseudo crime story honours the bohemian world at the beginning of the century.
Félix, a somewhat clod-hopping young man, finds himself in the Grand Hotel of Little Lagonda, barefooted and in pyjamas. He is soon followed by a hooded, fat and leggy gangster. This is all the more strange as the hotel is under quarantine with the pretext of a plague-epidemic, in order to make it a suitable ground for the negotiations of certain oil-companies.
The turnings of this satirical story are accentuated by the comments of the Director and the Author. Éva is in love with Zoli. She expects to live a wild and modern life by his side, not the boredom of a petite-bourgeois household. On a drunken morning, Zoli writes a poem. The poem is published in a morning paper and divides readers. Because of the poem the young man is dismissed it from his work, and his landlord kicks him out from the apartment.
Mrs. Endrényi, an old woman in Old Buda learns that her house is going to be demolished and she is going to get a new apartment. Since she would like her family members to have the same advantage, she takes them in her apartment.
Gazsi, the protagonist of the novel, comes from the very edge of the society of the small village; he is an unliveable, helpless, simple-minded person. The only thing he dreams of is a rabbit paprika. However, when the dream could come true, as he takes part in a hunt, Gazsi takes the side of the persecuted and saves the rabbit Paprikás.
Transylvania during the reign of the great prince Mihály Apafi I. The Turk asks Prince Apafi for another tribute, and the Prince sends him two hundred gold pieces with Kristoff Szitáry. His two sons accompanied him halfway. On the way, they stop at the house of the caliph Pisliczar and spend the night there, and in the morning only Kristóf Szitáry continues his journey to Oradea. The Pasha is happy to receive him, but as soon as he opens the bags of money, stones and pieces of horseshoe fall out.
Irma arrives at her 18th birthday in a reform school.
Hungarian tales around the end of the regime(s).
1932, Budapest. Gere János, an unemployed worker searching for employment in the capital, is organised into the secret police after a raid. Summary justice is declared, and the police wants to find an illegal communist press at any price. Gere, wandering about in the dark city, joins a man, helping him to carry his luggage. Slowly, Gere learns that his companion is a Communist and his task is to keep the press machine hidden from the police.
Panni, coming from a landless family of ten and Miska have loved each other for a long time. The pretty Panni, however, has another suitor as well: Komáromi, the big farmer. The two men fight from time to time, but then, during the time Miska is serving his military duty, Panni marries Komáromi to end the tremendous squalor of her family.
The hero of the film, János Kiss, a Kossuth Prize-winning cylindersmith, is about to be visited by an old Italian friend. Comrade Kubik from the Ministry of Heavy Industry, having assessed the Kisses' impossible living conditions, tries to transform them into a Westerner's home for one evening during the visit. This then becomes the source of a whole series of satirical situations during the evening, in order to recreate the Kisses' familiar, bleak home the next day.
Grün Lili's parents have been collecting the dowry for years and now, with the help of a matchmaker, they have found her a fiancé, László Bölcskei. But Lili prefers the lump Szabo. Eventually it turns out that Lili's brother, Oscar, has been embezzling the dowry.
The pride of this rural town is its profitable spa. Gedeon Pap, a director with a soaring imagination and a penchant for breaking discipline, is the envy of his entourage, who write anonymous letters to the top management, while his colleagues, the chief accountant, the coffee maker and Uncle Buzsák all seem to be on his side. Imre Bódis, the inspector of the powerful headquarters, arrives, whom Gedeon Pap and his circle try to win over with small courtesies.
In Gerolstein, those girls who were born the same year as the princess, cannot marry until she remains maiden. An attractive and very rich husband is needed for Antónia in order to fill the treasures up. The wonderful reigning princess meets her selected bridegroom, the emperor of the neighbouring Pecunia in disguise and by accident.
Kölyök, this lovely, ham-handed young woman, has caused many a trouble already in the Dunaújváros Iron Works. Fortunately, however, the manager does not want to give her up, what is more, Kölyök found a second father even at the police.
In 18th-century Paris, Jerome Coignard, an abbé who enters a Parisian soup kitchen called the Queen of Goosefoot, takes on the owner's son, James the Impaler, as his apprentice in exchange for a good salary. The abbé, a doctor of theology and a master of the arts, is a man of great learning, adventurous and fond of physical pleasures, who humorously highlights the contradictions between common sense and Catholic beliefs. In the house of D'Astarac, a wealthy alchemist philosopher, he employs the abbot and his disciple to translate ancient Greek texts.
Karinthy's best-known and most popular work to date is So You Write. It was this work that made him famous, and it was with this work that he had his first real, great success. The most popular characters of the series of caricatures, which was formed by café games and mockery of his peers, are quoted with the greatest figures of the Hungarian theatre.
Children asked God's help for quarreling parents. Cupid came for them.
In the streets of Vichy, France, during World War II, the Germans apprehend nine men and a boy. Among them are a painter, a businessman, an electrician, a waiter, an army doctor, an actor, a prince, a gypsy, and a Jew. Confined without explanation, they can only speculate about their fate.
1946. Borok Vince, party secretary, and Holló Döme, former landowner, arrive in Nagybökény the same day at Easter. The latter wants to get back his castle and land with the help of his attorney. Albert József, the police-chief, wants to strengthen Communist power with tough actions. His R-guards disperse the clerical torch march.