Summary:
It is the year 1919. The Reds and the Whites battle in the plains of Ukraine for the victory in the Russian Civil War, which came in the wake of the October Revolution of 1917. The movie’s action does not follow a main hero, or the causally connected events. Rather, viewers witness a series of happenings that take place at different locations: the monastery, the military hospital, a birch wood, and the banks of a large river. The soldiers fight a ruthless war and try to live to see another day. Atrocities are committed by both sides, and human life is not worth much. Women suffer as much as men do, and victory will be as bloody as defeat.
Analysis:
The Red and the White was made in 1967, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. No doubt, it was supposed to celebrate this most important date for the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe, including Hungary. However, it was subsequently banned in the Soviet Union, revealing the complexity of cultural policies in the countries that were nominally following the same political guidelines. What bothered the Soviets? Most certainly the ambivalence with which Jancsó portrayed chaotic events of the civil war, which raged in Russia from 1918 to 1920. Neither side, the Reds or the Whites, is clearly shown to have the upper moral hand in depicted, large movements of troops and the atrocities that take place during the movie. Historical events are shown as if they constantly escaped the attempts of the people (notably the officers) to control them. There is very little glorious in warfare waged with brutality, and there is very little that can protect soldiers or civilians from the various forms of suffering inflicted upon them.
In addition to celebrating the revolution, the film was supposed to demonstrate close links between the struggle of the Reds and the Hungarians, who joined their troops. This, of course, had wider implications for the ties between the Soviet Union and Hungary at the time the film was made. The Hungarians fought with Austro-Hungarian troops against czarist Russia. They defected to the Reds after the October revolution, which came in the wake of military reversals in the First World War. The internationalist facet of the Russian revolution is evident throughout the movie. We hear Russian, Hungarian and Polish spoken during the conflict while at the end La Marseillaise is sung in Russian and Hungarian. The cause of the Hungarian revolution is intertwined with the fate of the Russian one, and the internationalist cause of the working class (temporary soldiers) is one of the most unifying aspects, holding these desperate people together in their fight.
The White officers repeatedly try to separate the non-Russian from the Russian soldiers among the captured Reds, telling the non-Russians not to fight somebody else’s war, but they fail to break off the ties which bind various races and nationalities in their struggle for a better world. No doubt, this should have appealed to Soviet authorities when they were deciding whether to show the movie in the Soviet Union. But the impression that the film did not offer undivided support to the Reds held sway. There is no principal character in the film, and the participants address each without mentioning names. It is sometimes even difficult to distinguish different sides in the conflict. Nameless groups of people move around, take various positions in relation to the opposite side in carefully staged movements. They fight and die with seeming equanimity, like pawns in a big game of politics, which they fail to influence. The fear of death and a strong desire to survive do exist, but they come to the surface on special occasions when a rare chance for escape appears. The final charge of a group of Hungarian soldiers against the much stronger enemy is futile, yet they march to death with the Marseillaise on their lips, which seems everything but glorious, although the viewers are familiar with the final victory of communism in Russia and Hungary (albeit temporary, which was not known at the time).
This narrative structure, in which there is no one character to connect the described events, and in which historical masses battle for power in society, can be compared with the Soviet montage movement of the 1920s and 1930s.1 These films also portrayed historical events in which different classes and soldiers fought for the victory of their ideals. The difference is however striking. The unnecessary violence and cruelty in The Red and the White is depicted with disarming precision, which puts in doubt ideals and causes. However, the Reds show more mercy and humanity than the Whites. On both sides there are ruthless killers, but also souls able to empathise with the defeated and humiliated. Most importantly, there seems to be no justice at all. Good deeds are not rewarded, nor is evil necessarily punished. The Hungarian soldier who at the beginning refuses to shoot captured Whites is executed just a few scenes later. On the other hand, the Cossack officer who allows the rape of a civilian woman is promptly executed following the orders of the White colonel, who, as it happens, belongs to his own side. The war is shown to be merciless butchery, which seriously puts in doubt any justification of why it is fought. This might have been the ultimate reason that prompted Soviet censors to act. The revolution is not shown to be, in Lenin’s words, ‘the only justified war’, but rather a messy affair with numerous innocent victims. This was in line with many outbursts of humanism, which characterised post-thaw art in Eastern Europe, and very much not in line with rigid prescriptions of socialist realism.
Notwithstanding its politically intriguing dynamics, the main reason why this film holds high critical status in the West is Jancsó’s masterful use of the long take. The average shot length in The Red and the White is 52 seconds, while 68 per cent of shots have camera movement.2 Jancsó was, in his words, deeply influenced by the work of Antonioni, whose hallmark was also the long take. But, while Antonioni dedramatised his films through, among other choices, long shots, Jancsó’s film is teeming with movement, physical as well as dramatic, slow, but constant.3
The long take was very popular in the 1960s and later, in both Hollywood and art cinema. Dreyer, Welles, Mizoguchi, Ophüls, Tarkovsky and many others pushed acceptable boundaries of editing, and the long take became much more present in world cinema. One of the main apologists for the long take was French critic André Bazin, who demanded from film to ‘bring together real time, in which things exist, along with the duration of the action, for which classical editing had insidiously substituted mental and abstract time’. 4 He praised cinema that was interested in showing the passage of time, thus grasping the existence of objects in space and in time, contrary to what he, together with Eisenstein, called a ‘montage of attractions’. Indeed, Jancsó’s films display deep interest in the interrelationship of objects and people in space and time, depicted within the confines of the same shot. People and horses, which are constantly present, walk, stroll, run, and gallop in and out of widescreen shots, extending off-screen space in all possible directions. Sometime shots begin with a single participant, but soon they start to incorporate many others, carefully juxtaposed in Ukraine’s sprawling countryside, where the film was shot. Multiple movements prompt the viewer to carefully follow the movements of the camera, zooms, and rack focus, and connect them with the complex manoeuvring of the soldiers, officers and horses on the screen.
The action takes place in carefully chosen settings: a monastery, the banks of the river Pechetka, a military hospital, woods and eventually the banks of the Volga. Each of these is explored for its scenic potential to accommodate moving, long, widescreen takes, thus creating a magnificent setting for the staged action. This opulence runs somewhat contrary to the sombre events described in the film. Murders and fighting take place in carefully planned takes, which are aesthetically very attractive. Does this undermine the strong anti-war credentials we have described? Should war be simultaneously repulsive and pleasing? This remains the question, but it should be noted that Jancsó, except in the eerie sequence in the birch woods, strives to separate the beauty of rolling hills and rivers from the inhumane consequences of war, pointing out their sad simultaneity rather than substituting the advantages of the former for the deficiencies of the latter.
In addition to visual elements of the mise en scène, the sound plays a crucial role in creating the rhythm of the takes. Choreography of movements is achieved mostly through ordered activities of people and horses. Officers command people to walk, run, line up, move from one end of the shot to other, often stripped to the waist or completely naked. The women are ordered around as much as the men. At the same time, the movement of trotting and galloping horses is accompanied by many different sounds. Shots permeate the aural space. The symphony is complete. The long take reigns, never dull or empty. It is privileged in relation to other facets of narration, with an autonomy that is jealously protected. For example, when the communist Hungarian commander enters the church bell tower at the beginning of the movie, we see him searching for his comrades. In a long take, the camera follows him as he ascends the stairs and then walks along the tower until at one moment he turns towards the camera, staring, not revealing much emotion. He obviously sees something that viewers don’t. He takes off his jacket, the hat, puts down the weapons, and begins to take off his boots, using the opportunity to throw himself off the tower, committing suicide (which we hear but do not see). Only when the two White officers enter the shot, do we see the reason for his action. Classical narration would have supplied viewers with knowledge necessary to explain his behaviour, but Jancsó refuses to do so, as it would violate the unity of space, time and action represented by the long take. Another striking instance of the autonomy of the long take in relation to the story that dominates the narration can be seen a little bit later. A high officer of the Whites enters one of the monastery’s courtyards poised to show his soldiers how to treat Red prisoners. He orders them to run away, and proceeds to order the petty officers to shoot them like prey. However, the camera does not let the viewer see the results of their shots. No, it focuses on the officer and the Whites who followed his orders. Generally, the narration would inevitably show us what happened to people who tried to escape, thus completing the chain of events begun with the shooting, but Jancsó clearly breaks this ‘rule’ in order not to let the take be completely dominated by the demands of the story.
In the end, we should say something about the way in which Jancsó combines visual and aural elements of narration with the story constructed by viewers. His handling of the former suits the massive movements of the masses, which dominate his films. The long take provides the viewer with a vast array of elements, which can then be combined into messages, which relay the feeling of unique historical events of large proportions.
Saša Milic
Notes
1. See Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction, New York, McGraw-Hill, 2003, p. 465.
2. See James Udden, No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2009, p.180.
3. David Bordwell has called this kind of dedramatisation ‘oxymoronic’. See David Bordwell, David, Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2005, p. 157.
4. See Bazin, Andre. Bazin, What is Cinema? Volume I, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1967, p. 39.
Cast and Crew:
[Country: Hungary, Russia. Production Company: Mafilm, Mosfilm. Director: Miklós Jancsó. Producers: Jenoe Goetz, András Németh, Kirill Sirjajev. Screenwriters: Gyula Hernádi, Miklós Jancsó, Luca Karall, Valeri Karen, Giorgi Mdivani. Cinematographer: Tomás Somló. Editor: Zoltán Farkas. Cast: József Madras (Hungarian Commander), Tibor Molnár (Andras), András Kozák (Laszlo), Jácint Juhász (Istvan), Anatoli Yabbarov (Captain Chelpanov), Sergey Nikonenko (Cossack Officer), Bolot Beyshenaliyev (Chingiz), Tatyana Konyukhova (Yelizaveta the Matron), Krystina Mikolajewska (Olga), Nikita Mikhalkov (White Officer).]
Further Reading:
Roger Crittenden, Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing, Oxford, Focal Press, 2006.
Peter Hames (ed.), The Cinema of Central Europe, London, Wallflower Press, 2004.
Anikó Imre, East European Cinemas, London, Routledge, 2005.
Andras Bálint Kovács, Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema, 1950–1980, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
István Nemeskürty, Word and Image: History of the Hungarian Cinema, Budapest, Corvina Press, 1974.
Source Credits:
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Films, Edited by Sarah Barrow, Sabine Haenni and John White, first published in 2015.