A Pendragon legenda

Long time before Umberto Eco wrote the Name of the rose Antal Szerb wrote The Legend of Pendragon. Thriller, crime story, mystical story? All of them - and a parody too.

This film was made in Hungary - but you have the feelings that it is not here. The main actors are nearly the best hungarian actors ever were in screen. And of course to see Latinovits and Bujtor together is a very special thing - cause they were brothers in the real life.

Antal Szerb in his best novel write about a parody of his own real experience in London. Dr. Bátky is the alterego of Szerb.

There is an amazing lineup of the best Hungarian actors of the 70s and 80s, a good story, meaningful message, and some funny scenes. Still not a good movie: it feels rushed from beginning to end and it lost me early on.

The dialogue (sound quality is not good) and story are hard to follow (beyond intended), the raciness that must have been daring in the communist era is funny (beyond intended), the camerawork is shaky (almost unheard of in Hungarian cinema) and some of the special effects are cheap (even for a 1970-s Hungarian movie). But the real downer is rushing the story: feels like budget was shoestring and that included the amount of film they could use.

Not bad, but I expected much more.