Biographie

18 février 1938 · Budapest, Hongrie

Cinematography by Lajos Koltai

Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1986.

In January 2006, it became public that he had been an agent of the III/III department, a former communist agency of interior intelligence. After the revolution in 1956, he was blackmailed and forced to cooperate, though later he was considered willingly cooperative. Allegedly, he wrote reports about fellow Hungarian directors, actors and actresses such as Miklós Jancsó, Mari Töröcsik, Károly Mécs. An acknowledged Hungarian journalist Zsolt Bayer said: "This is the time to re-watch Mephisto (1981). It has just become obvious that Szabo directed his own life in the movie, masterfully." Szabo has never denied the charges and considers his agent work heroic and needful, claiming he saved the life of a friend sentenced to death for his involvement in the revolution of 1956.

Directed one Oscar nominated performance: Annette Bening in Adorable Julia (2004).

Member of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1985.

[on Mephisto (1981)] I only wanted to show the problem and hoped that the viewer will identify with that character and then feel ashamed. And if they do feel ashamed, they will encounter themselves. Then they can get to know themselves better. And maybe that feeling of shame - that cathartic sense of shame - is a vaccination against actually being like that. This is out effort with that film, and I view the film as a medicine.

[on critics who claim that a knowledge of Hungarian history is necessary to understand his films] I'm talking universally about how our subconscious apprehension of our history guides and controls us. It runs us without our knowledge necessarily. You don't need Hungarian history to explain it.

[on being Oscar-nominated for Mephisto (1981)] The Oscar wouldn't give me anything in particular. It doesn't mean anything particular in Europe. I know it's a beautiful thing to be nominated twice, and twice not to win, but it is nice; it is good to be nominated.

People really make too much of a mystery of directing. There is nothing a director needs to know about movie-making that an intelligent high-school graduate can't learn in two weeks.