CSILLAGOSOK, KATONAK

In the summer of 1918 somewhere in central Russia, the victorious armies of Denikin and Kolcak are advancing, but the Reds are regrouping. The Whites attack a monastery and execute all the Russians, but spare the Hungarians. A Cossack official discovers a Hungarian in a hut, kills him, and tortures the peasant woman who had hidden him. He is then shot for violence against civilians. The nurses at a country hospital decide to hide the Reds among the wounded. The Whites try to convince them to turn the infiltrators in. This repression cannot be completed, because the area is retaken by the Red Army. However, the situation turns around again. The tattered revolutionaries are desperately marching towards freedom. They get surrounded by the Whites and die singing the Marsigliese in Russian and Hungarian.

"Jancso's new work is a commemoration even in the strictest meaning of the term. Memory and the uniqueness of his look back from our days mould this episode from the civil war. The film's first sequence, which sets up its basic tone, brings us back to this nonhistorical way of seeing. [...] Jancso is not so much interested in the story and events of the civil war as he is in our attitude fifty years later towards that revolution, towards those ideals, and towards that quality of inspiring pathos that is hidden in the heart of history and battle. The film pierces through the contemporary viewers state of mind and creates its own philosophy of history. [...] It is a cruel film not only because of its basic plot and its way of presenting murder, blood, victims, suffering, and sometimes senseless death with documentary crudeness. It is cruel in its philosophy which interrogates the viewer, asking what we accomplish with our ideals. It exposes our philosophy of history to a cruel vivisection." (Miklos Almasi, "Kritika", 1/1968)

Director: Miklos Jancso.
Screenplay: Georgij Mdivani, Gyula Hernadi, Miklos Jancso.
Director of photography: Tamas Somlo.
Art director: Boris Cebotarev.
Editor: Zoltan Farkas.
Cast and characters: Tatjana Koniuchova (Elisaveta), Krystyna Mikolaiewska (Olga), Michail Kozakov (Nestor), Viktor Avdjusko (marinaio), Bolot Beisenalev (Cingiz), Andras Kozak (Laszlo), Joszef Madaras (comandante ungherese), Jacint Juhasz (Istvan), Tibor Molnar (Andras), Nikita Mikhalkov (sottotenente Glazuriov), Sergej Nikonenko (ufficiale cosacco), Anatolii Jabbarov (Celpanov), Gleb Strizenov, Vladimir Prokofev, Valerij Belbov, Vitalij Konaey, Evgenlj Karel'skich.
Production company: MaFilm (Studio 4), Budapest Mosfilm (Studio 1), Mosca.