Released to Blu-ray by Second Run this week is a boxset of films from acclaimed Hungarian director István Szabó. Made between 1981 and 1988, these three films (Szabó himself is loathe to term them as a trilogy, though they have thematic- to say nothing of geographic and historical – similarities) showcase the director’s rightful claim as a landmark filmmaker in twentieth century Hungarian cinema, as well as his collaborative relationship with several figures, including the actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, writer Péter Dobai, who sadly passed away in October this year, and cinematographer Lajos Koltai.
The first film to consider in this set is Mephisto. Made in 1981, it is an adaptation of the 1936 novel of the same name by Klaus Mann, son of the renowned German author Thomas Mann. Using allusions to the 16th and 17th century legend of Mephistopheles and Doctor Faustus, the novel tells the story of Hendrik Höfgen, an actor who abandons his conscience in favour of wealth and acclaim in Nazi Germany. It was based on the real-life German actor Gustaf Gründgens, a performer who made a similar Faustian pact with the Third Reich, becoming the director of Berlin’s State Theatre under the patronage of Adolf Hitler.
Szabó came across the novel in the late 1970s, when it was still officially banned in West Germany following a successful court case led by Peter Gorski, Gründgens’ adopted son, who feared the novel would tarnish his father’s reputation. The ban on Mann’s book wasn’t actually lifted in West Germany until Szabó’s film was released to critical and commercial acclaim in 1981, so we must presume that the director either got the novel from the US or from much closer to home in East Germany, where Mephisto had been in publication since 1956. So much for the DDR being a totalitarian state that censored authors and artists!
In Szabó’s film Klaus Maria Brandauer stars as Höfgen, a young actor who starts out with some sympathy for the left and a passionate interest in the Workers’ Theatre Movement in Hamburg. Höfgen soon rises to the top in this provincial Bolshevik theatreland but he is determined to go even further in his pursuit of fame, recognition and social mobility. A marriage to Barbara Bruckner (Krystyna Janda) sees him become part of an esteemed upper middle-class family, though he continues to see his mistress Juliette (Karin Boyd), a Black German, in secret.
Having conquered Hamburg, it isn’t long before Höfgen is invited to appear on the Berlin stage and he works vigorously to become a star there – an ambition that is achieved when he portrays Mephistopheles in a staging of Marlowe’s play, catching the eye of Rolf Hoppe’s General (unnamed but clearly based on Hermann Göring – he even utters the line “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun” long attributed to the Minister-President of Prussia) just as the Nazis seize power. Immune to the protestations and escapes into exile of his friends and family, Höfgen is entranced by the General’s promise to make him a star. However, in becoming Germany’s greatest actor, the performer of Mephistopheles has, in fact, become Faustus instead; selling his soul to the real devil that is fascism, to the point that his own self has become supplanted.
Across a runtime that stretches to almost two and a half hours, Szabó creates an immersive world with Höfgen at its core. It’s almost impossible for the audience to look away from the lead character and, indeed, Brandauer is rarely off screen in what must surely have been an exhausting work. It’s as if the director is asking the audience what they would do in Höfgen’s shoes. This focus also means that very little violence from the Nazis is shown on screen; we briefly see Höfgen witness a mob of brownshirts attacking a (presumably) Jewish man on a dark street corner, before the actor is frightened off and heard to remark “they must be drunk” – already he is excusing their actions and refusing to see reality.
It is this latter aspect of Höfgen’s make-up that Szabó is drawing on to keep the actions of the Nazis off screen, opting instead for characters referring to events that Höfgen will either ignore or come up with a convenient excuse that means he doesn’t have to worry or even think about them. The film ends with Höfgen having lost everything: his friends (many of whom have been murdered or “disappeared”), his wife and his Black lover (both exiled in Paris – their fates uncertain given what we know lay around the corner with the Nazi invasion of France), and trapped in a literal spotlight – exhausted at the performance he gives to keep up appearances. “What do they want of me?” he wonders aloud, finally spent in the harsh glare. “After all, I’m only an actor.”
The genius of a story like Mephisto is that it remains relevent to this day. Indeed, with the rise of the far right across the world and influential and wealthy celebrity figures like Elon Musk tossing out Nazi salutes at a right wing president’s inaugeration (to say nothing of such actions being excused and normalised), it can be argued that Mephisto is as relevent now as the period in which Klaus Mann first put pen to paper. In Höfgen’s refusal to acknowledge the reality around him and his pursuit instead to secure his own career, position and privilege, 2025 audiences will also be able to see a parallel with the A-list megastars of today, those actors, entertainers and musicians whose silence during the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people has been positively deafening these last two years. The notion that personal morality can become the first casualty of war sadly remains all too topical.
Szabó followed up Mephisto in 1985 with Colonel Redl, another film about Central Europe between the wars that starred Brandauer in the eponymous role. Whereas Mephisto was based on a novel that was inspired by a real person, Colonel Redl is emphatically about a real historical figure; Colonel Alfred Redl, a notorious figure in Austrian history. Born in Lemburg, Galicia (now Lviv, Ukraine) during Austrian administration, Redl came from peasant stock. Despite such a humble beginning, he gained a commission into the Austrian army and rose to become the head of its counter intelligence corps in 1900.
Regarded for his intelligence, Redl was arguably a man ahead of his time and, during his position in intelligence implemented many practices that went onto become commonplace in the world of espionage to this day, including bugging rooms with listening devices or hidden cameras. Despite his success, which included a move to Prague to serve as Chief of Staff, Redl committed suicide in 1913. Initial reports claimed that the colonel had succumbed to stress, but the truth was that the former peasant had in fact succumbed to a life of luxury well beyond his means.
The notion that personal morality can become the first casualty of war sadly remains all too topical.
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A closeted homosexual, Redl had been caught in a Russian honeytrap and was being blackmailed into providing Russia with vital information regarding the Eastern defences of the Austrian empire, and his pay for trading such secrets kept him in the high life he was now fatally accustomed to. In death, Redl was also exposed for falsifying evidence against his fellow officers, identifying them as Russian agents to keep his own cover secure. The reality of Redl’s demise was that his double agent status was uncovered by colleagues. Arriving in Prague, they confronted him with the truth and, gifting him a loaded revolver, persuaded the fallen hero to now do the honourable thing.
The story of Redl came to light in the early twenties when Ergon Ervin Kirsch wrote his play The Pursuit about the scandal and published his account, The Case of General Staff Chief Redl, in Berlin. Kirsch claimed that he was given the documents pertaining to the affair at a football match in Vienna. By the 1950s, Redl’s story was being used as a prominent illustration by Senator Joe McCarthy in his infamous Lavender Scare speech in which he argued that homosexuals should be banned from working for the State Department because, as Redl proved, “the pervert is easy prey to the blackmailer”. Fifteen years later, John Osborne wrote his play A Patriot for Me, about the life of Redl, which gained controversy when the Lord Chamberlain’s Office refused to grant the play a performance licence. It was this play that inspired Szabó’s film.
Thematically there are similarities here with Mephisto as both films deal with Central Europe at a time when the region was in flux, with growing tensions leading inevitably to war; in Mephisto’s case it was the rise of Nazis that led to World War Two. In this case, it is the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and World War One. However, whereas Brandauer’s Höfgen loses his own identity in his bid to shore up his position within Nazi Germany, his characterisation of Redl is that of a man who has to hide his true identity from those he wants to call his equals.
Though an avowed patriot and an exceptional soldier, it is his humble inauspicious roots, his sexuality and even, it is hinted, his religion (is he Jewish?) that will inevitably mark him down and so he must bury all these parts of himself and work twice as hard as his contemporaries in order to succeed. This is where Szabó’s other thematic concern in these movies occurs – power. Though Redl starts out as ambitious yet essentially a decent, honest man, it isn’t long before his ascent through the ranks leads to a descent in his own morality.
Finding himself rubbing shoulders with nobility, he discovers that their moral compass was long since traded for a silver spoon. He becomes involved with the scheming Thronfolger, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl. It’s clear that Szabó wishes us to draw comparisons here with Rolf Hoppe’s unnamed General in Mephisto as not only do both serve as similarly devilish characters responsible for the fates of Brandauer’s central protagonists, they are also based on real people; in this case it is the Archduke Ferdinand. Thronfolger wants to stage a coup against the Emperor and Redl, with his eye on his own security in the new order, agrees to do his bidding.
As such, he becomes corrupted and therefore corruptable. When the plan goes awry, Thronfolger ensures that Redl takes the blame – a fate that is secured when it is revealed that Redl has been seduced by an Italian officer and persuaded to give secrets to Russia.
The final film in this set sees a return to pre-war Germany. Hanussen sees a return to the world of Mephisto, of Germany and the years leading up to WWII, when the country fell under the spell of the Fuhrer. As with Colonel Redl however, this is explicitly based on a true story; the life of Erik Jan Hanussen, the man who is said to have treated Adolf Hitler for depression and to have taught him in the technique of performance. A clairvoyant, there was something of the Rasputin about Hanussen, at least his rivals in the Sturmabteilung seemed to think so. Afraid of the pull he had with Hitler, they assassinated him in 1933.
Szabó’s film is kern to draw parallels between Hitler and its hero. At the start, Hanussen (Brandauer) is, like the Fuhrer, an Austrian sergeant recuperating from fighting in WWI. In hospital he forms friendships with two people who will go on to shape his future: Jewish psychologist Bettelheim (Erland Josephson) and the ambitious Nowotny (Károly Eperjes), who spies an opportunity to be had in his friend’s gifts for clairvoyancy.
Released from hospital, Nowotny tours Hanussen in Vienna and Berlin, where his incredible predictions bring him close to the emerging Nazi party. Again, Szabó is keen to explore the fate of an individual buffeted by the time. Hanussen claims he is apolitical, yet his prophecies soon implicate him with the new, ugly power at the heart of Germany, the price of which are his friendships and personal safety. But Szabó is also using Hanussen’s own rise as a metaphor for that of fascism as his own willpower and ability to manipulate runs parallel with the influence of the Nazi dictatorship.
An incredible trilogy before you even get to the extras, second run have packed this release with supplementary features. All three films are 4K restorations by the National Film Institute Hungary. There are four “acclaimed but rarely seen short film works” also restored: Variations on a Theme (Variációk egy témára, 1961), You (Te, 1963), Concert (Koncert, 1963) and City Map (Várostérkép, 1977). There’s a filmed interview with Szabó. A remembrance of Hungarian production designer, József Romvári, a tribute led by his granddaughter, filmmaker Sophy Romvari, with narration by Szabó. And feature that called ‘Szabó’s Central Europe’: A look at Szabó’s Hungarian films. And individual booklets each with new writing by Hungarian cinema experts John Cunningham, Peter Hames and Catherine Portuges, plus journalist Stephen Lemons on the real-life Erik Jan Hanussen. And to tip it all off, it is region free, Second Run really are too generous.
ISTAN SZABO (1981-1988) IS OUT NOW ON SECOND RUN BLU-RAY
