Olvaso

When I was 10 I watched this movie and loved it. When I was 20, I loved it more. This is an almost unknown gem of Soviet cinema, and now I enjoy it even more. The movie is not only a very funny comedy with excellent children and adult actors, but a perfect parody of Soviet life, of the relationship between society and Soviet power. The leader of the camp is so stupid and suspicious, that he turns people one by one to "resistance fighters", living in "illegality". The ordinary "citizens" of the camp don't know who is the informer, but they do their best to help the persecuted ones. In the beginning of the 1960's, Khrushtchev suddenly let to publish one of Solzhenitsyn's books, and to make movies like this -- and then the short springtime was over, and the bold masterpieces like these were buried for the next 25 years under the gigantic heap of dull books and films. If you won't laugh a lot watching this movie, write me angry letters!

This is a characteristic movie of its age and its country. The message is undoubtedly propagandistic: you can not live outside the beautiful, progressive, communist society of Hungary of the 1960's. If you try, you will loose all of your friends, you will stay alone etc. A kind-hearted police officer even explains this message verbally, and does his best to find jobs for the young tramps... Yeah, right. But the actors are great, especially Antal Páger, in the role of Tamburás, the easy-going, smart, tricky, but lovable old tramp. There are some excellent songs, a lot of funny moments and even some good jokes. In 1963, we Hungarians liked this movie very much: we laughed at the pranks of the vagabonds, we enjoyed the new dance they introduced (the twist...), the song of "Villa Negra" was extremely popular -- and we ignored the political propaganda.

Extremely intelligent drama about a very young woman and her middle-aged lover. The scene is an apartment for the whole movie, there is mostly only one person here, and the second human face is seen only at the end of the story. But the movie is not boring at all, the tension is greater and greater as the heroine fights with her past, with her dreams, with her absurd situation. This is a tragic movie about the love of a woman and about the total selfish attitude of a man, who has his wife, home, family -- and wants to keep his young lover too.