Trahison à Budapest

When this was released students attending Roman Catholic grammar schools were encouraged to see it, since it was an account of the Hungarian prelate, Joszef Cardinal Mindzenty's courageous stand against the Communist regime that had his native land within its ruthlessly cruel clutches. Charles Bickford, an actor of considerable gravitas, was a good choice to play the Cardinal, and, among the cast, Bonita Granville, the wife of this film's producer, Jack Wrather, was another of those arrested, interrogated and tortured by the Hungarian Communist regime, then still firmly in place at the time of this film's release.

I can still recall some rather graphic scenes of torture, including victims chained and forced to endure alternately scalding hot and freezing cold showers, and being strapped to chairs that spun dizzyingly for what was made to seem many agonizing minutes at a time. Nightmares precipitated by a viewing of this film haunted my dreams for quite a few months thereafter. It has always been a source of bewilderment to me that political and religious regimes use torture to break down the resistance of those opposed to their cruel and manifest untruth. What have they proved when they drag forth their victims to attest to their supposed "crimes"? Those who know the truth but have somehow escaped the terrible fate of their compatriots know that the "confessions" elicited by their hated oppressors are a sham. What they also know is that, at the Final Judgment, something which the concept of justice assures all honest hearts and minds will someday occur, the Lord's vengeance will be swift and eternal, and Satan himself will be assigned the task of meting out tortures more horrible than anything inflicted on this plane.

It is a film defined by its political context. A piece from Cold war, maybe naif today , maybe too simplistic and, no doubts, too American but seductive for the try to discover to public , in large traits, a dark reality. A film about faith and opression, about people and their options ,a decent portrait of Joseph Mindszenty and , against its status of sketch, useful today not as accusation against Soviet Union policy but as clear and precise definition of freedom.

The Story of Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty (Charles Bickford), A Roman Catholic Cardinal from Hungary.

He Stood-Up Against the Oppression of Russian Communist.

Arrested and a Private Mock-Trial Ensued, He was Tortured and Forced to "Confess" that He was an "Enemy of the State".

One of the Most Gripping, Realistic Anti-Communist Films of the Era.

It Strikes a Balance of the Famous Plight of the Cardinal with a Personal Story of a Journalist (Paul Kelly), a Music Teacher (Bonita Granville), and a Russian Col. (Richard Derr).

The Film is Stylized in a Film-Noir Pastiche with Surreal Scenes of Interrogation and Torture that can Disturb, even Today.

Gut-Wrenching at Times, Punctuated with Tender Scenes that makes the Totalitarian Regime even More Brutal.

Visually Stunning, Well Acted "Propaganda" Piece that is Mostly True and the Facts Speak for Themselves.

What could be Considered "Embellishments" for Political Purposes is Not Because these Things Actually Did Occur.

Although Paul Kelly's Journalist Breaks the Fourth-Wall in the Final Shot, Looks Straight Into the Camera and "Calls to Arms" the Fight for Liberty...

It is the Only Time the Movie Separates Itself from the Gruesome Reality.

There was certainly no shortage of anti-Soviet films coming out of Hollywood in the 1950's and this one, directed by extremely capable 'B' director Felix E. Feist, has a sense of immediacy, partly based as it is upon the personal papers of Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty whose torture, show trial and imprisonment in 1949 were still fresh in the memory.

Alec Guinness played a character based upon Mindszenty in 'The Prisoner' from 1955 and apparently the Cardinal was none too keen on that actor's 'fictional' portrayal. We do not know what he thought of Charles Bickford's performance in this earlier film, the very nature of which requires a far less complex and far more one-dimensional interpretation. Mr. Pickford never disappoints of course but although his Cardinal symbolises strength of character and determination he somehow lacks spirituality. His is muscular Catholicism to be sure.

The film is co-produced by a Catholic and features his wife Bonita Granville as an idealistic schoolteacher who suffers a terrible price for her hopeless love for a Russian Colonel whose beliefs are diametrically opposed to hers. Leonard Maltin considers her miscast but the sincerity of her performance is beyond question. Perfectly cast is Paul Kelly as a no-nonsense investigative reporter. In the understandable absence of any Russian actors we have Americans Roland Winters as a glib and oily Commissar and Richard Derr as Colonel Melnikov is suitably expressionless as a Soviet automaton. There is a chilling turn by Morgan Farley as a 'doctor' entrusted with the task of breaking Mindszenty down and a pragmatic, mediocre Hungarian playwright is played by John Banner, a refugee from Hitler's Anschluss who is probably best known as Schultz in 'Hogan's Heroes'.

The film has the advantage of editing by Walter Thompson and owes its darkly atmospheric look to the superlative lighting cameraman John L. Russell, most renowned for his work on 'Psycho'.

Although low on budget it does not stint on the truth and makes no distinction between the twin evils of Communism and Nazism. As Paul Kelly's character observes, 'Liberty is everybody's business'.

This movie came out 63 years before the release of "Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism," by Ronald Rychlak and Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa. The same points in this film which anti anti-communists and religious skeptics and bigots resent or deny have been more than confirmed by Pacepa's detailed and carefully constructed memoir. Pacepa, former acting chief of communist Romania's espionage service and senior person in the Soviet Union's "Dezinformatsiya" campaign, reveals what Communist disinformation accomplished and wrought. His account of Mindszenty's plight only substantiates the entire plot and dialogue of this movie. In fact, what we learn in this production is fact, as opposed to the highly fictionalized accounts of Che Guevara.