Janovics’ Menace: inquiries into a duplicated silent film script

Abstract

In 1920, Hungarian artist Jenő Janovics directed Menace, a film that would become the last title belonging to the Transylvanian silent cinema industry. On a comparative note, its script bears similarities to The Blight, an adaptation of Eugène Brieux’s play Damaged Goods, produced two years prior by Janovics. While both films were written by the same scriptwriter and shared the operator and most of the cast, Menace remains in film history as a Romanian achievement. It was ordered by the Romanian Ministry of Health as a social hygiene drama warning on the devastating effects of syphilis, an effort integrated into the international health campaign of the post-World War I era. The paper explores the screenwriting morphology of The Blight and Menace by means of two complementary approaches. An examination of the figure of Janovics based on archival documents demonstrates his affiliation to the Hungarian generation of 1900. An ensuing comparative script analysis explores the conflicting status of Menace in his silent film portfolio in the light of this fundamental finding.