Cinematography in Eastern Europe during the 40 years of the Communist regimes was subject to very close ideological and artistic supervision, as the rulers understood very well the power of cinema as a propaganda tool, either explicit in the newsreels or documentary films or implicit as mass entertainment. Yet, talents of exception existed, cinema schools and exceptional directors and actors made memorable movies which fought censorship and bureaucratic intrusion to make films written in their own language - a language that was eluding direct critics of the oppressive systems but were yet establishing through image and visual metaphors the communication between the artists and their audiences. Although lesser known than their Polish and Czech counterparts, the Hungarian school had also at least two top level directors - Miklós Jancsó and István Szabó, and was also continuing a school of film makers and cinematographers who had made it to Hollywood in the first half of the century. 'The Round-Up' (the original title is 'Szegénylegények' which would translate approximately as 'The Poor Lads') is one of the best if not the best film of Miklós Jancsó, considered also as one of the best Hungarian movies ever made. I have seen it 52 years after its release, and all the reasons and the exceptional qualities are still here.
In one of the few concessions that Jancsó may have made to the ideological kommissars the introductory part of the film places the story in a very specific historic moment - 1869, two decades after the revolutions that shook Europe in the middle of the 19th century and which led to the formation of the dual Austro-Hungarian empire. As the last pockets of resistance were liquidated, the remaining patriots were gathered in a sort of concentration camps in the middle of the endless Hungarian plains (the 'puszta'). No means were spared to identify and eliminate the heads of the revolt, including torture, blackmail, and the use of informing traitors. However everything in the tone, the style, the text indicates that Jancsó was aiming higher and was telling an universal story, one which is the same as the one told by many survivors of camps and prisons under authoritarian regimes at many times and in many places in the world. But even if the allusions to the lost fight for freedom are to be read in the context of the Hungarian history, we should not forget that the film was made in a country that only ten years earlier was invaded and its revolution crushed by another neighboring empire - the Soviet Union.
There are several reasons that make the watching of this film a cinematographic experience that is hard to forget. First of all the cinematography. 'The Round-Up' is filmed in black-and-white and the perfect composition of each frame, the dynamic of the movements and the aesthetic expression remind the early films of Ingmar Bergman. The setting is majestic with the horizon of the Hungarian plains visible almost all the time and building a permanent contrast with the concentrationary universe the characters are living in. There is a lot of suffering and there are some hard scenes in the film, but all these are sublimate and the heroes (even the villain ones) seem to keep a trace of dignity at any moment. The dialogs bring to mind Kafka and other writers who brought up in a more or less visible manner the absurd language of the bureaucratic and repressive systems. At the time of its release and more than half of century later 'The Round-Up' stands as a powerful and straggled shout for freedom.
