According to the news released by the Hungarian Academy of Letters and Arts, the president of the academy, the Hungarian "New Wave" standard-bearer and the famous film director Károly Makk passed away on August 30 local time at the age of 91. His works such as Liliomfi, Love, Cat's Play and Another Way were shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival six times, with Love winning the Grand Jury Prize in 1971.
Caroly Mark
Karoli Mark was born on 22 December 1925 in the small eastern town of Bairaigio in Hungary. Because his family ran a movie theater, he was inspired by cinema very early. According to David Robinson, edited by Peter Hames in The Cinema of Central Europe, his film career began in 1943 as an assistant director in the expressionist experimental short film 2 x 2.
After World War II, Mark entered the Budapest Academy of Drama and Film Arts, where he studied under the famous director Géza von Radványi. While still in his studies, he and Félix Máriássy, another representative of the Hungarian "New Wave," participated in the film "Somewhere in Europe, somewhere in Europe," directed by his teacher Radwani, written by film theorist Béla Balázs.
Somewhere in Europe
After graduating, Mark worked for a film studio that shot newsloofs, but was sent to work on a remote farm for six months because he offended his manager. It wasn't until Maria was ill that she was unable to continue filming her second work, Kis Katalin házassága (The Marriage of Little Caitlin), that Mark was called back to Budapest as an assistant director. After shooting several short films and helping Zoltán Várkonyi complete the Venice Film Festival's "Simon Menyhért születése," his feature film debut Lily Wenfi finally came out in 1955. With this palme d'Or love film, he became a huge hit in The Hungarian and international film scene. The more important significance of "Lily Wenfei" is to break the singularity of the Hungarian film genre at that time, proving that works other than socialist realism can also win the resonance of the audience.
"Lily Wenfei"
After "Lily Wenfei," Mark began experimenting with various genres of films, from the realistic "Ward No. 9," to the comedy "Tale on the Twelve Points," to the popular drama "The House Under the Rocks," which portrays the psychology of the characters. However, the international influence of these works was relatively limited, and it was not until the 1970s that Mark reached the peak of his directing career.
In 1971, his most important work, Love, was published. Based on two novels by Hungarian writer Tibor Dery, the film is set in the 1950s and tells the story of a terminally ill old woman who looks back on her past life at the end of her life while worrying about the future of her son, who is a film director in the United States. However, her son was imprisoned for political problems at the time, and the kind daughter-in-law was afraid of the old man's sadness and painstakingly woven a beautiful lie. At the end of the movie, the son is finally pardoned, but he still can't see the last side of his mother.
Playing the role of her mother is Lili Darvas, a veteran actress born in Hungary who went to Hollywood at an early age. She was 68 years old when the film was made, but the characters in the film were much older. Later, in an interview with The Times, she recalled that one morning, when she came to the set, Mark and the photographer immediately surrounded her and asked her, "How did you sleep last night?" She replied, "Not bad." So, the two showed a look of disgust, and the director told her: "Yesterday you had the most beautiful wrinkles in the world around your eyes, and now they are gone." Please don't sleep tonight. ”
"Love"
"Love" caused a huge response at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and eventually shared the Jury Prize with Swedish director Bo Widerberg's "Joe Hill". Lily Davis and the Hungarian actress Mari Töröcsik, who played the daughter-in-law, were both awarded the Special Prize at the Festival.
"Love" contrasts the sadness of reality with poetic black-and-white lens language. "The film does contain a political point of view, but first it's about human values." In an interview with The New York Times that year, Mark said, "What matters is not the environment, but the performance of the two women." ”
In this regard, derek Malcolm, a film critic of The Guardian, once wrote: "In the cramped bedroom, the worried old woman and the anxious daughter-in-law who manage to appear calm are complex and delicate through the dramatic tension constructed by the little memories, and form a static reflex force, making a masterpiece." ”
Even so, the film was not easy to shape, and it took Mark six years to wait until filming was allowed. Last year, the Cannes Film Festival's "Classic Restoration" section screened the 4K restoration of "Love".
Peekaboo
After "Love", Mark completed another of his masterpieces, Peekaboo, in 1975. Through the correspondence between a pair of sisters, the film shows the different life journeys that their father has taken after their father committed suicide because of being slandered. "Peekaboo" was not only shortlisted for Cannes, but also nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but unfortunately lost to Coppola's "The Conversation" and Fellini's "I Remember, Think Of That Year" (Amarcord).
Since then, Mark has continued to explore a variety of different subjects. "A Very Moral Night" (1977) was a fantasy story about a brothel; "Another Paradise" focused on the death of a lesbian political journalist after the events of Hungary in 1956; and the English-language film Lily in starring Christopher Plummer and Maggie Smith Love) is a comical comedy about a Broadway actor who insists on playing a role in a movie written by his wife.
Among Mark's later works, the more famous ones are The Gambler and A Long Weekend in Pest and Buda, based on Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical novels.
The most notable of "The Gambler", released in 1997, was the actress Luise Rainer, who was a hit during Hollywood's golden age. She won the Oscar twice for "The King of Song and Dance Siegfy" and "The Land", and also starred in the song and dance film "Spring Dawn in Cuiti", and quit the screen after filming "Hostage" in 1943. Encouraged by his friends Roddy McDowall and Anthony Hopkins, he decided to re-emerge at the age of 87 to play The Gambler. In her mind, Mark is a very worried director: "He is worried that I have forgotten how to act, and he doubts that I can still play." It makes me think it's so funny. (Leo Verswijver, interview with Movies Were Always Magical, 2003)
The Long Weekend in Budapest
"The Long Weekend in Budapest" is the reunion of Mary Drachik and Iván Darvas in "Love", telling the story of an old man who left his homeland because of events in Hungary, and returned to Budapest many years later to rekindle his old lover.
Throughout Carolly Mark's life, perhaps the biggest regret is that he was shortlisted for the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival six times, but he did not have the opportunity to pick a leaf of the Palme d'Or. However, many of his outstanding works are not only treasures of Hungary, but also the jewels of the world film industry.