This page is to obtain access to the Sands Films Cinema Club presentation ONLINE
To attend in person, please CLICK HERE
SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE
(aka, It Happened In Europe)
The first postwar Hungarian film, Somewhere in Europe . . . (Valahol Európában . . .), set in the mid-1940s, is about children who, orphaned or otherwise dispossessed or discarded by the war, band together and hunt for food in order to survive. This requires vandalizing and theft. A remote ruined castle, the adopted domain of a distinguished musician whose career the war has put on hold, becomes their hiding place as the composer and conductor reeducates them, introducing them to socialistic ideas and classical music, and reversing what seemed their inevitable slide into Lord of the Flies. Locals have been instructed to shoot to kill roaming looters, and suspicious authorities raid the castle, killing one of the boys as the others defend their fortress with cascades of boulders and rocks down the hillside—a possible allusion to Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944). Without doubt, however, scenarists Béla Balázs and (also director) Géza Radványi have another film in mind, for which theirs provides a fitting variant: Nikolai Ekk’s The Road to Life (Putyovka v zhizn, 1931).
- Year:
- 1947
- Runtime:
- 100 minutes
- Language:
- Hungarian
- Country:
- Hungary
- Subtitle Language:
- English
- Director:
- Géza von Radványi
- Screenwriter:
- Géza von Radványi, Béla Balázs, Félix Máriássy, Judit Fejér
- Cast:
- Artúr Somlay, Miklós Gábor, Zsuzsa Bánki
- Cinematographer:
- Barnabás Hegyi
- Editor:
- Géza von Radványi, Félix Máriássy
- Production Design:
- József Pán, Miklos Benda
- Composer:
- Dénes Buday
This page is to obtain access to the Sands Films Cinema Club presentation ONLINE
To attend in person, please CLICK HERE
SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE
(aka, It Happened In Europe)
The first postwar Hungarian film, Somewhere in Europe . . . (Valahol Európában . . .), set in the mid-1940s, is about children who, orphaned or otherwise dispossessed or discarded by the war, band together and hunt for food in order to survive. This requires vandalizing and theft. A remote ruined castle, the adopted domain of a distinguished musician whose career the war has put on hold, becomes their hiding place as the composer and conductor reeducates them, introducing them to socialistic ideas and classical music, and reversing what seemed their inevitable slide into Lord of the Flies. Locals have been instructed to shoot to kill roaming looters, and suspicious authorities raid the castle, killing one of the boys as the others defend their fortress with cascades of boulders and rocks down the hillside—a possible allusion to Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944). Without doubt, however, scenarists Béla Balázs and (also director) Géza Radványi have another film in mind, for which theirs provides a fitting variant: Nikolai Ekk’s The Road to Life (Putyovka v zhizn, 1931).
- Year:
- 1947
- Runtime:
- 100 minutes
- Language:
- Hungarian
- Country:
- Hungary
- Subtitle Language:
- English
- Director:
- Géza von Radványi
- Screenwriter:
- Géza von Radványi, Béla Balázs, Félix Máriássy, Judit Fejér
- Cast:
- Artúr Somlay, Miklós Gábor, Zsuzsa Bánki
- Cinematographer:
- Barnabás Hegyi
- Editor:
- Géza von Radványi, Félix Máriássy
- Production Design:
- József Pán, Miklos Benda
- Composer:
- Dénes Buday