Hungarian Film, 1929-1947: National Identity, Anti-Semitism and Popular Cinema

by Gábor Gergely

Overview

What does it mean for someone or something to be Hungarian? People in Hungary grappled with this far-reaching question in the wake of the losses and transformation brought by World War I. Because the period also saw the rise of cinema, audiences, filmmakers, critics, and officials often looked at films with an eye to that question, too. Did the Hungary seen on screen represent the Hungary they knew from everyday life? And-crucially-did the major role played by Jewish Hungarians in the film industry make the sector and its creations somehow Jewish rather than Hungarian? Jews, it was soon decided, could not really be Hungarian, and acts of Parliament soon barred them from taking major roles in cinema production. This book tells the troubled story of that period in Hungarian cinematic history, taking it up through World War II.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040792100
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/01/2025
Series:	Eastern European Screen Cultures
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	330
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Gábor Gergely is a lecturer in film studies at the University of Lincoln. He has published articles on Hungarian cinema in the 1930s and 1940s, and a book, >Foreign Devils> (2012), on perceptions of difference in the films of émigré stars in classical Hollywood. More recently, he has published on the MGM Tarzan films of Johnny Weissmuller. He is currently working on the accent, both as a linguistic and as a critical term, in relation to the films and stardom of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Chapter 1: Key Concepts in Pre-1945 Hungarian Cinema Chapter 2: A Contested Film History Chapter 3: An Industry Emerges 1931-1935 Chapter 4: Boom, Crisis and Anti-Semitic Reorganization 1936-1941 Chapter 5: From War Boom to Bust 1941-1944 Epilogue: Industry Reboot and the Myth of a New Start 1945-1947, Concluding Remarks.

Editorial Reviews

BAFTSS 2018 Best Monograph Runner-up. Comments by the panel: "The subtitle of the book strikes at the heart of Gergely’s concerns both as a critique of the cinema and as an appraisal of the gap in much of the extant academic literature. What is a real pleasure within the book, though, is the extent to which the author is keenly aware of the general ignorance around Hungarian culture for his mainly English-speaking readership, and as a history book more generally, the texts sits well alongside the style of cultural historians like Arthur Marwick. As such, this book speaks across disciplines and is truly enlightening."

From the Publisher