Miklós Jancsó’s historical cinematic spectacles and moving pictorial figurations in a Hungarian landscape a study and a phenomenological perspective on Jancsó’s films of 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

In the following article, I examine the originality of Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó’s (1921–2014) filmmaking practice. Jancsó appears as a unique representative of European filmmaking tradition who was motivated by a specific commitment to develop and increase the function of cinematic form, the effectiveness of images and sounds and performances of the actors which aesthetically formulate, translate and change the effects of Hungarian cinema to higher qualities and dimensions of art and spectacle. The significance of the filmic form comes forward, and the camera-based organisation of it increases the intensity of narration. Jancsó’s use of folk rituals adds a strong sense of pictoriality to the overall narrative structure, because his emphasis lies in the physicality of different appearances inside the frame. In his own stylistic way, Jancsó processes these various formations executed by the performers in a style in which all the elementary forces—whether physical, pictorial, psychological, or aesthetic—work in conjoint with one another. In this regard, Miklós Jancsó’s cinematic spectacles are symbolical fantasies enriched by phenomenological realism.