In 2006, weekly Hungarian magazine Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature in English) published an article revealing that Szabó had been an informant of the Communist regime's secret police.
[3] In 2006, weekly Hungarian magazine Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature in English) published an article revealing he had been an informant for the Communist regime's secret police.
Szabó's initial response to the article was that informing had been an act of bravery, since he had intended to save the life of his former classmate Pál Gábor.
[2] After finishing high school, he was one of 11 applicants out of 800 who were admitted to the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest, where he studied under Félix Máriássy, who became something of a father figure to him.
His classmates included Judit Elek, Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács, János Rózsa, Pál Gábor, Imre Gyöngyössy, Ferenc Kardos, and Zoltán Huszárik.
The plot covers events from the Arrow Cross Party dictatorship to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, revolving around the disorientation and self-awareness of a generation that had to grow up without a father figure in wartime.
[15] Lovefilm (1970) focuses on a young man's relationship with his childhood sweetheart, told through flashbacks that include the Arrow Cross dictatorship and 1956, and rendered in an experimental, fragmented form.
25 Fireman Street takes place during the course of a long, hot night in Budapest, during which the residents of a single apartment building are plagued by dream-memories of pain and loss spanning thirty years, including both World Wars, the Arrow Cross dictatorship, the Communist takeover, and 1956.
Allegorically, the film was interpreted by critics variously as representing Hungarian history specifically or universal human responses to war and reconstruction more generally.
According to author David Paul, this may explain why Szabó shifted gears even more dramatically in his next film, Confidence (1980), in which historical events are represented straightforwardly, and are filtered through neither memory nor allegory.
The film focuses on the relationship between a man and woman who are forced to share a room as they hide from the Arrow Cross toward the end of the Second World War.
[21] The informal trilogy—Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988)—features Brandauer in a series of roles based on historical figures who, as represented in the films, compromised their morals in order to climb the ladder of success within a context of authoritarian political power.
[24] With Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe (1992), Szabó returned to a strictly Hungarian subject—this time, however, focused on a contemporary, rather than historical, social problem.
The film follows two young, female teachers of Russian facing the obsolescence of their specialty after the fall of the socialist government, as well as a variety of types of sexual harassment in the new Hungary.
In Sunshine, for the first time, Szabó focused explicitly on this aspect of Hungarian history, which he himself had experienced as a child during the Arrow Cross dictatorship.
Ralph Fiennes plays three generations in the Sonnenschein family as they experience the trials of twentieth-century Hungarian Jewish history, from the late Austro-Hungarian Empire through the Holocaust to the 1956 Revolution.
[3] Several characters are based on real people, including the Zwack family, with their successful liquor business, the Olympic fencer Attila Petschauer, and the Jewish police official Ernö Szücs.
It shows such sympathy for its characters, and approaches its subject with such intelligence, that it's easy to forgive the clumsy editing, the haphazard insertion of black-and-white newsreels, and the hyperventilating sexual ardor that seems to be a Sors family curse.”[30] In Taking Sides (2001), Szabó returned to thematic territory he had explored in Mephisto.
[11] Being Julia (2004), based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, stars Annette Bening as a famous British actress experiencing a series of romantic and professional rivalries.
[34] The Door (2012), an English language production based on a Hungarian novel by Magda Szabó (no relation), focuses on the relationship between an affluent novelist (Martina Gedeck) and her poor, mysterious maid (Helen Mirren).
When one crosses the line, then the compromise starts to be a bad, even deadly, one.”[39] This theme is dominant in the Brandauer trilogy and, as Istvan Deak points out, may be related to Szabó's own collaboration with the Communist secret police.
[40] Szabó's early films—culminating in Lovefilm and 25 Fireman Street—were influenced by the French New Wave in their experimentation with flashbacks, dream sequences, and unconventional narrative structures built on these techniques.
[45] Szabó has directed several operas, including Tannhäuser in Paris, Boris Godunov in Leipzig, Il Trovatore in Vienna, and Three Sisters in Budapest.