IGY JOTTEM

In the spring of 1945, Joska, a high school student who has escaped from being deported to Germany, is Made prisoner by the Russians and sent to take care of the cows under the supervision of Kolja, a Red Army soldier the same age as film. Joska makes a clumsy attempt to flee and runs the risk of blowing himself up in a German minefield, but Kolja steps in to save him by showing him the way out. The two fraternize. Without warning, an old stomach wound of Kolja's reopens. When Joska returns with a doctor, Kolja is already dead. Joska then puts on his friends uniform. Even though he is thrown off a train when it is discovered that he is Hungarian, he takes up his path towards home again proudly hoisting the hat high with the five pointed star.

"In Hungarian film I have never before seen a result as expressive as the scene of the girl who is bathing. There is the way in which the two boys one Hungarian and the other Russian stalk that girl in the same way. They are both eighteen years old and the lust for life is boiling over in them. Here we are not dealing with any type of 'national' characteristic. Both boys want to hug the girl a little bit more but their fear of that airplane that keeps on appearing forces them to lie low. There is a little bit of humorous eroticism. It is human, and, if you will, clean and human. This is the aim of art to give man's substance, even though showing the accidents. This is the way one person can become typical and he can become truly historical if one is referring to some historical period. With this film, Miklos Jancso has managed not to stray a bit from the truth of history and to use his clear and honest intuition to create the best film made about the liberation so far." (Jozsef Lengyel, "Filmkultura", 1/1965)

Director: Miklos Jancso.
Screenplay: Gyula Hernadi.
Director of photography: Tamas Somlo.
Editor: Zoltan Farkas.
Music: Zoltan Jeney (e Béla Bartok).
Cast and characters: Andras Kozak (Joska), Sergey Nikonenko (Kolja), Janos Gorbe, Tibor Molnar, Jurij Bodovskij, Joszef Madaras.
Production company: MaFilm (Studio 4), Budapest