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Interwar Hungarian Entertainment Films and the Reinvention of Rural Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2010

ANNA MANCHIN
ANNA MANCHIN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Toronto, Canada
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Abstract

In interwar debates about Hungarian modernity, the countryside played a prominent symbolic role. For conservative nationalists, the Hungarian countryside became a symbol and source of authentic, ‘traditional’ Hungarian national culture, unchanging, hierarchical, ordered society and stable community, and national uniqueness. Entertainment films of the 1930s provided alternative representations of the countryside that upheld the possibility of modernising traditional Hungary. According to the films, modern Hungary would be created at the intersection and out of the cooperation between rural and urban, modern and traditional. The films questioned and challenged the idea that the rural was ‘pure’, authentic, untainted, but they also rejected the idea that it was shameful, hopelessly backward, or unable to change. Showing the countryside as both traditional and part of modern mass culture, as both nostalgically stable and an exotic vacationland, the films offered an integrative vision of Hungary which destabilised assumptions of both liberals and conservatives. Popular films used the countryside to provide a unique and alternative vision of modern Hungary that was integrative and reconciliatory; they provided an outlet for a liberal, democratic, capitalist perspective unavailable elsewhere in the public sphere.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , October 2010 , pp. 195 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. Romány, Pál, ‘Tanya World and Village Research’, Magyar Tudomány, 163 (2002), 1187Google Scholar.

2. Ibid., 1187.

3. Ibid., 1187.

4. Ignotus, Pal, Toll 8 (1936), p. 4Google Scholar.

5. Szekfű, Gyula, Három Nemzedék és ami Utána Következik (Budapest, 2007)Google Scholar.

6. Szabó, Dezső, Az Elsodort Falu (Budapest, 1999)Google Scholar.

7. Miklos, Horthy, Emlékirataim (Budapest, 1993), p. 130Google Scholar.

8. Romsics, Ignác, Magyarország Története a 20. Században (Budapest, 2004), p. 219Google Scholar.

9. In film year 1917–1918, only the United States and Denmark produced more films than Hungary. Quoted in Nemskürty, István, Képpé Varázsolt Idő [Time transformed into Image] (Budapest, 1983), p. 232Google Scholar.

10. David S. Frey, ‘National Cinema, World Stage: A History of Hungary's Sound Film Industry 1929–1944’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 2003).

11. See for instance the rural landscape and untainted national culture featured prominently in German mountain films of the 1920s. Das Blaue Licht (Blue Light) by Leni Riefenstahl (1932, Germany) and in Czech films such as Zem Spieva (The Singing Earth) by Karel Plicka (1933, Czechoslovakia) and Marijka Nevěrnice (Faithless Marijka) by Vladislav Vancŭra (1934, Czechoslovakia).

12. See the films of Czech directors Karel Anton and Gustav Machaty, for example, or Yiddish films from Poland.

13. Alföld, Sándor Petőfi Az, Összes Versei (Budapest, 2007)Google Scholar.

14. H.T.S., ‘Three Dragons’, New York Times, 22nd December 1936.