''Szindbád'' (also known as ''Szinbád'' / ''Sindbad'' /''Sinbad'') is a 1971 Hungarian film directed by

Zoltán Huszárik Zoltán Huszárik (born József Zoltán Huszárik, May 14, 1931 – October 15, 1981) was an influential Hungarian film director, screenwriter, visual artist and occasional actor, an acclaimed auteur of the European modern art film. Huszár ...

, and based on short stories by the writer

Gyula Krúdy Gyula Krúdy (21 October 1878 – 12 May 1933) was a Hungarian writer and journalist. Biography Gyula Krúdy was born in Nyíregyháza, Austria-Hungary. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a maid working for the Krúdy family. His ...

Plot

The film opens with a sequence of fleeting images - the stamens of a flower, drops of oil on water, glowing embers, a spider's web, a strand of blonde hair, a leaf frozen in the ice, rain dripping from a wooden roof, etc. - each of which will subsequently be linked to one of Szindbád's memories of his love affairs. We then see the body of the dead or dying Szindbád lying in a cart drawn by a horse through the countryside, where nobody any longer seems interested in him. A voiceover (of Szindbád) then introduces a stream of memories, often disconnected and unchronological, of the many women who have been the focus of his life.

Cast

Zoltán Latinovits Zoltán Latinovits (9 September 1931, in Budapest – 4 June 1976, in Balatonszemes) was a Hungarian actor. Early life His mother divorced his father Oszkár Latinovits in 1941 and married István Frenreisz, a medical doctor, with whom she had ...

, as Szindbád *

Margit Dajka Margit is a feminine given name, a version of Margaret (name), Margaret. People bearing the name include: *Margaret of Hungary, Margit of Hungary (1175–1223), Empress consort of Isaac II Angelos, Byzantine Emperor *Saint Margaret of Hungary, ...

, as Majmunka *

Éva Ruttkai Éva Ruttkai (31 December 1927 – 27 September 1986) was a Hungarian actress, well known from her work on stage, cinema, and television productions. She was the wife of Miklós Gábor, and later Zoltán Latinovits. Life Éva Ruttkai (born Éva ...

, as Lenke

Production

The central figure of Szindbád, although his name makes reference to the character of Sinbad in the

Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

, here belongs to the last years of the

Austro-Hungarian empire Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

around the turn of the 20th century (the period during which the original stories were written). Szindbád is a middle-aged traveller driven by memories of his amorous adventures (and of the favourite meals he has savoured along the way); he is an observer of life as it passes by rather than an active participant in it, and his inner world is conveyed in a stream of consciousness reflecting his unsatisfied desires and his nostalgia for the past. The original choice to play the role of Szindbád was

Vittorio De Sica Vittorio De Sica ( , ; 7 July 1901 – 13 November 1974) was an Italian film director and actor, a leading figure in the neorealist movement. Four of the films he directed won Academy Awards: ''Sciuscià'' and ''Bicycle Thieves'' (honorary) ...

, but when terms could not be agreed the part was given to the leading Hungarian actor

who played it with "a reckless chic that makes him irresistible even as he's being detestable".David Parkinson
''Oxford Times'', 14 July 2011
(see last five paragraphs of the article). etrieved 5 October 2012
Archived
at the Wayback Machine. The rich colour photography (its "tactile sensuality") created by cinematographer

Sándor Sára Sándor Sára (28 November 1933 – 22 September 2019) was a Hungarian cinematographer and film director. He directed 16 films between 1962 and 2004. His film ''The Upthrown Stone'' was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but ...

was central to the evocation of the refined and elegant social world of the Hungarian bourgeoisie at the turn of the century.Mira Liehm and Antonin J. Liehm. ''The Most Important Art: East European Film after 1945''. Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1977. p.406. This, along with the film's fractured time structure and rapid montages of brief and freely associated shots, created a marked contrast with the prevailing style of stately tracking shots associated with the cinema of

Miklós Jancsó Miklós Jancsó (; 27 September 192131 January 2014) was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. Jancsó achieved international prominence starting in the mid-1960s with works including '' The Round-Up'' (''Szegénylegények'', 1965), ''T ...

.Michael Atkinson. "Memory bliss", in ''Sight and Sound'', vol.21(8), August 2011, p.87. In this respect the director Zoltán Huszárik, who completed only one further feature film before his suspected suicide in 1981, was seen as a unique contributor to Hungarian cinema.

Reception

''Szindbád'' was presented at the

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...

in 1972. In Hungary ''Szindbád'' has been regarded as one of the classics of its national cinema. In 2000 a group of Hungarian critics included it in a list of the twelve best Hungarian films, the so-called New Budapest Twelve. In the English-speaking world, apart from some limited screenings at the time of its release, ''Szindbád'' remained largely unknown for many years. It was issued on DVD in 2011.''Szindbád'', Second Run DVD (UK), July 2011. (Region 0). Critics have invariably praised the sumptuous visual qualities of the film: "the extraordinary (and very beautiful) images that pour over the screen";Nora Sayre. "A Rueful 'Sindbad'", i
''The New York Times'', 25 October 1974
etrieved 5 October 2012 "a film of intoxicating voluptuousness"; "a beautiful film ... painterly but not simply pretty, with a late-evening pilgrimage by candlelight that settles in your memory, and possibly the loveliest ice-skating sequence ever put on film". The film's non-linear and fragmented structure allows the linking of images, sometimes almost subliminally, to evoke Szindbád's memories or his subconscious, and the description "Proustian" has repeatedly appeared in critical assessments (perhaps echoing a frequent characterization of the writings of the author of the original stories, Gyula Krúdy).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Szindbad 1971 films 1971 drama films 1970s Hungarian-language films Films based on short fiction Hungarian drama films