Indián történet

I finally purched a larger TV for my upstairs bedroom several weeks back, and then a week or two ago got around to picking up a Blu-ray player to plug into it. No 4K player yet; I don't have any discs in that format. Anyhow, one of the Blu-ray box sets I picked up recently is a four-disc set of some of the films of Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó, a name that I have to admit was completely new to me. I took out one of the discs and popped it in the player, ready to watch a short so that I'd have a quick review in the hopper for one of those days where there's also something else worth mentioning. That short was Indian Story.

As I said, I didn't know anything about Jancsó going into this, so I had no idea what to expect. The short has the visual look of a Ken Burns miniseries: much of the visuals are of stills that the camera pans over to give the illusion of motion, first of New York City and then of the Old (American) West, since the "Indian" of the title does in fact refer to American Indians/Native Americans. The movie was made in 1961 and is also referred to as a newsreel; apparently Jancsó made a bunch of newsreel-like movies at the beginning of his career. Of course, 1961 was not only during the Communist era, but also not long after the failed uprising of 1956 that was a reference of a couple of Hollywood movies, most notably The Journey which I don't think I've ever actually blogged about.

That date means there's definitely some propaganda. The short basically tells how Europeans went west, encountering the various Indian tribes who at first tried to consider the white man friendly. But as we know, the white man took over the whole continent, leaving the various tribes to reservations where they feel subjugated, nearly wiped out, and unable to hold on to their traditional culture. Jancsó definitely makes clear in the narration (I don't know whether it's his voice or a professional voiceover person and I don't think the credits mention it) that the western Europeans are the villain here, although there's not anything mentioned about Communism. So I can't help but think something like this was a "safe" subject for a director early in his career to do a short on. There aren't much in the way of non-Hungarian minorities in Hungary, so I don't think it could have been seen as an allegory to any sort of Communist mistreatment of ethnic minorities either.

Does it say anything about Jancsó as a director? I haven't watched any of the narrative films yet, so I can't comment on that. Eventually, I'll get around to the other movies in the set, at which point I'll have more to say. As for the physical nature of the set, something I like to discuss whenver I mention a new-to-me box set, it's in a traditionally sized Blu-ray case with separate spindles for each disc (four in all), although it's two inserts with spindles on either side of the insert. There are also brief liner notes courtesy of Martin Scorsese, and commentary audio for the features; again not having watched any of the features yet I haven't heard those and so can't comment on them.