The Red And The White Details

Film as the Angel of History

'The Red and the White' is, currently (mid-2006), the only one of Jancsó's films available on UK DVD, and hence the only one that I have seen, but it is unquestionably one of the great cinematic treatments of war.

Russia, 1919: while the Bolsheviks struggle to maintain the centre of power, the White Army of reactionary former Tsarists moves through the country, shooting people on sight. Caught up in the midst of this are Hungarian prisoners of war who have taken up the Red cause, and consequently suffer at the hands of the Whites.

This, in essence, is the 'plot'. Jancsó does not create individual characters, preferring wide sweeping vistas of the Russian plains, littered with cavalry and fleeing men. Most of the dialogue is utilitarian, and the general atmosphere is one of detached austerity; I have seen the film described as 'military pastoral', which fits to a degree - there is a brilliant scene in which a White military band play music in a sunlight-flecked wood - but its perspective is clearly anti-war, and there is little doubt that the Whites are the real enemy.

The lengthy takes and vaguely 'epic' dimension are comparable to Tarkovsky's 'Andrei Rublev', but 'The Red and the White' is more of a materialist (Marxist?) film, with no pretensions to 'spirituality'. Overall, a landmark in Eastern European cinema, and I look forward to further Jancsó releases from Second Run. (Also included on this disc is a rather eccentric choice of extra, a documentary made by Jancsó in the 1990s about the Jewish community in Budapest.)

[Highly rated reviewer]

Only 3 stars for Jancso?!

As a great admirer of Miklos Jancso's work, I'd never have expected to rate one of his films at only three stars. But, three stars it is for 'The Red and the White'. This film's subject-matter is very similar to that of Jancso's masterpiece 'The Round-Up', in that it deals with Hungarian partisans caught up in the wars of a bigger empire. But somehow, 'The Red and the White' never manages to get going as a coherent story, let alone have anything like the brooding tension that marks out 'The Round-Up'. There's certainly plenty of violence in both films, and, in Jancso's trademark style, the violence is dealt out quietly, matter-of-factly, and often pictured happening at a distance. However, one problem for me was that I was never quite sure who was shooting whom, let alone why. In the story, the Hungarian partisans are supporting the Bolsheviks (Reds) against the counter-revolutionary Mensheviks (Whites). But it never became clear to me how to distinguish the uniforms of the Bolsheviks from those of the Mensheviks, and thus I didn't know which of these outfits the Hungarians were supporting and which they were fighting against. Add to this the fact that sometimes the members of each Russian group shot at each other...

Maybe if I were Hungarian, or Russian, it'd have been clear to me which crowd were which. But I doubt it - would a present-day Hungarian know the difference between a Bolshevik and a Menshevik uniform any better than I do?

Well, I don't suppose even a genius can hit the mark every time, and I think Jancso misses his own (very high) mark with this film.