Celluloid Nights by Cinema Niche: Twilight

35 mm print screening

A young girl is found sexually assaulted and murdered in a remote mountain forest. A peddler with a criminal record is suspected of the crime, but the investigating detective doesn’t believe he did it. He finds a drawing done by the dead girl showing a black “giant” and his car that he thinks is a picture of the perpetrator. Hoping to draw in the criminal, he sets up a mother and her young daughter as “bait” in an abandoned petrol station … This film adaptation of oft-used motifs by Friedrich Dürrenmatt is as austere as the natural world where it is set. György Fehér’s fascinating black-and-white film, in which a detective moves in an ethical grey area, is made up of about 50 camera set-ups using ingenious tracking shots and pans. As in the work of fellow Hungarian Béla Tarr (who was an advisor on this film), Fehér’s narrative style expands time. It makes the detective’s persistent wait, which stretches over several seasons, transparent, before the film surprises us with an alternate ending.

The 35 mm print was provided by the National Film Institute - Film Archive.

Ticket prize: 3900 HUF

Director: György Fehér

Cast: János Derzsi, Péter Haumann, Kati Lázár, Gyula Pauer, Judit Pogány, Miklós B. Székely