Athens without its Temples: Envisioning History in Jeles’ Annunciation

Abstract

After gaining critical and public acclaim with his 1979 directorial debut Little Valentino (A kis Valentino) and political infamy with his 1983 satire on the Stalinist work ethic The Dream Brigade (Alombrigad), Hungarian director Andras Jeles’ next release The Annunciation (Angyali udvozlet), an adaptation of Imre Madach’s nineteenth-century The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragediaja), saw him temporarily withdraw from cinema. We could be forgiven for assuming that Jeles was on safe ground in his choice to adapt The Tragedy. Other than a brief ban during the strict Rakosi regime, this national classic has enjoyed a healthy afterlife, having been reproduced over fourteen hundred times – in both Hungary and on the wider continent – on the theatrical, operatic and cinematic stage. Jeles, however, did not merely reproduce this poem; rather, he rewrote it, rejecting its presentation of linear temporality and history, in order to present his own notion of history, one that questions the very concept. It should come as no surprise considering the remit of this issue that it is through the physical landscape, or rather the mise-en-scene, of Jeles’ historical scenes that this questioning is best articulated. Indeed, Jeles creates what Lefebvre would term ‘intentional landscapes’: landscapes that owing to their strangeness call attention to themselves and invite interpretation. By combining cultural geographical theories, which consider landscapes to be sites of socio-political production and contestation, with theories on the fictional depiction of historical landscapes, which explore the connections between mise-en-scene and socio-political constructions of history, we will see how Jeles intentionally uses his historical landscapes to invite interpretations