Béla Balázs (; 4 August 1884 in
Szeged
Szeged ( , ; see also other alternative names) is the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county seat of Csongrád-Csanád county. The University of Szeged is one of the m ...
– 17 May 1949 in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...
), born Herbert Béla Bauer, was a Hungarian
film critic
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media outlets ...
,
aesthetician, writer and poet of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
heritage. He was a proponent of
formalist film theory.
Career
Balázs was the son of Simon Bauer and Eugénia Léwy, adopting his ''nom de plume'' in newspaper articles written before his 1902 move to Budapest, where he studied Hungarian and German at the Eötvös Collegium.
Balázs was a moving force in the
Sonntagskreis
The Sonntagskreis ( hu, Vasárnapi Kör, italic=no, "Sunday Circle") was an intellectual discussion group in Budapest, Hungary, between 1915 and 1918. The main focus of the group was on the relationship between ideas and the social and histori ...
or Sunday Circle, the intellectual discussion group which he founded in the autumn of 1915 together with Lajos Fülep,
Arnold Hauser,
György Lukács
György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aesth ...
and
Károly (Karl) Mannheim. Meetings were held at his flat on Sunday afternoons; already in December 1915 Balázs wrote in his diary of the success of the group.
[Mary Gluck (1985]
''Georg Lukács and His Generation, 1900–1918''
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. . pp. 14–16
He is perhaps best remembered as the librettist of ''
Bluebeard's Castle'' which he originally wrote for his roommate
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály (; hu, Kodály Zoltán, ; 16 December 1882 – 6 March 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály method of music edu ...
, who in turn introduced him to the eventual composer of the opera,
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hu ...
. This collaboration continued with the scenario for the ballet ''
The Wooden Prince''.
The collapse of the short-lived
Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Socialist Federative Republic of Councils in Hungary ( hu, Magyarországi Szocialista Szövetséges Tanácsköztársaság) (due to an early mistranslation, it became widely known as the Hungarian Soviet Republic in English-language sources ( ...
under
Béla Kun in 1919 began a long period of exile in Vienna and Germany and, from 1933 until 1945, the Soviet Union. In 1922, Balázs published ''Mantel der Träume'' (translated and published in English as ''The Cloak of Dreams: Chinese Fairy Tales'' in 2010). The book, lauded by
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
as a "beautiful book," is a collection of strange, sometimes chilling, fairy tales.
In Vienna he became a prolific writer of film reviews. His first book on film, ''Der sichtbare Mensch'' (''The Visible Man'') (1924), helped found the German "film as a language" theory, which also exerted an influence on
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (russian: Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪtɕ ɪjzʲɪnˈʂtʲejn, 2=Sergey Mikhaylovich Eyzenshteyn; 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, scree ...
and
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin ( rus, Всеволод Илларионович Пудовкин, p=ˈfsʲevələt ɪlərʲɪˈonəvʲɪtɕ pʊˈdofkʲɪn; 16 February 1893 – 30 June 1953) was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwrite ...
. A popular consultant, he wrote the screenplay for
G. W. Pabst's film of ''
Die Dreigroschenoper'' (1931), which became the object of a scandal and lawsuit by
Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
(who admitted to not reading the script) during production.
Later, he co-wrote (with
Carl Mayer
Carl Mayer (20 November 1894 – 1 July 1944) was an Austrian screenwriter who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays to ''The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' (1920), ''The Head of Janus'' (1920), '' The Haunted Castle'' (1921), '' Der Letzte Mann'' (192 ...
) and helped
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, photographer and actress known for her role in producing Nazi propaganda.
A talented swimmer and an artist, Riefenstahl also became in ...
direct the film ''
Das blaue Licht'' (1932). Riefenstahl later removed Balázs's and Mayer's names from the credits because they were
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
.
Hanno Loewy: "Balazs' and Leni Riefenstahl's The blue Light. A martyr's story"
. Uni-konstanz.de. Retrieved on 24 May 2015. One of his best known films is '' Somewhere in Europe'' (''It Happened in Europe'', 1947), directed by Géza von Radványi
Géza von Radványi (born Géza Grosschmid; 26 September 1907 – 27 November 1986) was a Hungarian film director, cinematographer, producer and writer.
Biography
Born Géza Grosschmid, he took the name Radványi from his paternal grandmother. ...
.
His last years were marked by petty vexations at home and ever increasing recognition in the German-speaking world. In 1949, he received the most distinguished prize in Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...
, the Kossuth Prize
The Kossuth Prize ( hu, Kossuth-díj) is a state-sponsored award in Hungary, named after the Hungarian politician and revolutionist Lajos Kossuth. The Prize was established in 1948 (on occasion of the centenary of the March 15th revolution, the ...
. Also in 1949, he finished ''Theory of the Film'', published posthumously in English (London: Denis Dobson, 1952). In 1958, the Béla Balázs Prize was founded and named for him as an award to recognize achievements in cinematography
Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography.
Cinematographers use a lens to focu ...
.
Selected filmography
* ''Modern Marriages
''Modern Marriages'' (German: ''Moderne Ehen'') is a 1924 Czech-German silent comedy film directed by Hans Otto and starring Fritz Kortner and Helena Makowska.Grange p.184
Cast
* S. Polonsky as Prof. Holstein
* Helena Makowska as Thea Hols ...
'' (1924)
* '' Madame Wants No Children'' (1926)
* '' One Plus One Equals Three'' (1927)
* ''The Girl with the Five Zeros
''The Girl with the Five Zeros'' (German: ''Das Mädchen mit den fünf Nullen'') is a 1927 German silent comedy film directed by Curtis Bernhardt.Bock & Bergfelder p.41 It was shot at the Grunewald Studios in Berlin. The film's sets were design ...
'' (1927)
* '' Grand Hotel'' (1927)
* ''Doña Juana
Doña Juana ( es, Volcán Doña Juana) is a stratovolcano, located within the Doña Juana-Cascabel Volcanic Complex National Natural Park ( es, Parque Nacional Natural Complejo Volcánico Doña Juana-Cascabel) in Nariño, Colombia.
With a ...
'' (1927)
* ''Sunday of Life
''Sunday of Life'' (German: ''Sonntag des Lebens'') is a 1931 American drama film directed by Leo Mittler and starring Camilla Horn, Willy Clever and Oscar Marion.Gevinson p.328 It was made at the Joinville Studios in Paris by Paramount Pictur ...
'' (1931)
See also
* Ballets by Béla Balázs
* Film semiotics
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
Article on the relationship between Riefenstahl and Balazs
Béla Balázs on Jewish.hu's list of famous Hungarian Jews
{{DEFAULTSORT:Balazs, Bela
1884 births
1949 deaths
People from Szeged
Hungarian Jews
Hungarian male poets
Ballet librettists
Film theorists
Hungarian critics
Hungarian film critics
Philosophers of art
Jewish Hungarian writers
Burials at Kerepesi Cemetery
20th-century Hungarian poets
20th-century Hungarian male writers
Hungarian people of German descent
Hungarian Marxists