Silence and Cry (Miklós Jancsó, 1968) (Patreon)

Interiors!

With Silence and Cry, it seems Jancsó was trying something different, and the results are mixed. The primary themes are still in place, as the action takes place immediately following the dissolution of the Hungarian Communist government in 1919, and the temporary consolidation of authority under the Royal Police. These officers were the remnants of the falled Habsburg Monarchy, and they would not maintain control for very long. The shifting power dynamics that define Jancsó's cinema are given a kind of micro-sociological treatment here, in contrast to his usual epic sweep.

In keeping with this examination of the local application of power, Silence and Cry does something no other Jancsó film I've seen has attempted. It focuses on individual subjects, staking its larger thematic concerns on the often-unclear interactions between these villagers. There is even a main character. István (András Kozák) is wanted by the gendarmerie for having fought with the People's Army. He is hiding out on the farm of an old friend, Károly (József Madaras), who himself must feign capitulation with the Royal Police. Károly wants István to remain in hiding, but he has a way of strolling around in public, daring the authorities to arrest him.

But there is a complicating factor, one which is interpersonal rather than political. Károly is housing two young women, Teréz (Mari Töröcsik) and Anna (Andrea Drahota). Anna is frequently asked to pretend to have "lovers" in the house, as an excuse for the presence of István and other men in hiding. And while the two women do seem to have a pronounced sexual interest in István, they are obviously in a relationship with each other. We eventually learn that they are poisoning Károly and his elderly mother, with the aim of taking their farm once they die. And when István learns of the plot, he must decide whether to denounce them to the police, knowing that it will result in his own doom.

There are a lot of problems here. Jancsó's gender politics have never exactly been progressive. But in Silence and Cry, where he is working to articulate his broad historical concerns with the nuances of a more intimate drama, the director is at sea. He relies on a predatory-lesbian trope, which he mostly conveys in almost laughable second-rate Bergmanisms. The women slowly embrace, melding into one. They communicate with furtive looks and gesture, not with words. And in the end, the plot (such as it is) pivots on the brave Socialist fighter who must sacrifice himself in order to do what's right. The women are deceitful bourgeois self-seekers, and perverted to boot.

It's frustrating, then, that in many ways Silence and Cry is one of Jancsó's most formally advanced films. More than anything else I've seen, this is the Jancsó film where we can quite palpably see the director's influence on Béla Tarr. It's not just that Jancsó and cinematographer János Kende manage to navigate the insides of houses and barns, offering textural variety to the typical open-field shots. Throughout Silence and Cry, rigid geometry and firm lines are replaced with a more ambiguous, serpentine camerawork and a misty, diffuse quality of light. 

The enveloping atmosphere of this film suggests a very direct lineage to Satantango and especially The Turin Horse. A large part of this has to do with Jancsó's decision to locate Silence and Cry in a small rural outpost, with actual brick homes, walls, and roads -- locations quite familiar in Tarr's films. On a purely visual level, Jancsó has nailed this attempt at human-scaled drama.

The problem is that Jancsó doesn't really understand human psychology, and so when he tries to create people with interior motives, he falls back on the mythic archetypes (and stereotypes) that populate his more expansive films. By placing them in an ostensibly realistic framework, Jancsó only underscores the limitations of this type of thinking. In Silence and Cry, the net result is like an isolating a detail from a massive painting, blowing it up and expecting high definition.