Könnyü Testi Sértés
Hungary,
1983, 85 min
Shown in 1985 / 1989
CREDITS
- dir
-
György Szomjas
- scr
-
György Szomjas, Ferenc Grunwalsky
- cam
-
Ferenc Grunwalsky
- cast
-
Máriann Erdös, Károly Eperjes, Péter Andorai, Edit Ábrahám, Vera Molnár
-
COMMENTS
Part of a six-film tribute in 1989, with György Szomjas in person.
Inspired by an actual event, Light Physical Injuries is a sardonic bedroom farce whose seriocomic situation illuminates a particularly Hungarian claustrophobia—the pressure cooker created by an acute shortage of housing and an inveterate abundance of bureaucracy, an unacknowledged class system and an often unyielding penal code. A feckless young worker stabs a pimp in a barroom brawl, is sentenced to 28 months in jail and returns to discover his wife has taken up with a somewhat more respectable clod. In part because the husband is still registered for the apartment, the three are forced to work out a split—a travesty of “socialist harmony,” when not an illicit ménage a trois. With typically rough-and-ready humor, Szomjas follows the ensuing war of nerves—a guerrilla struggle predicated on drunken outbursts, battles for control of the hot water, sexual harassment and phone calls to the police. A critical hit as well as a popular success, this lumpen Jules and Jim was groundbreaking for its frank sex and earthy slang. The film features two highly skilled performances—the charming hulk Károly Eperjes and the stolid sleaze Péter Andorai as the rival machos—and one remarkable self-dramatization, with the untrained Máriann Erdos playing the willfully capricious object of their affections.
—J. Hoberman
FACTOID #51
The first silent film screened at the Festival (now an annual tradition) was The Scarlet Letter (1924) by the great Swedish director Victor Sjöström, on October 24, 1968. The film’s star, Lillian Gish, was honored with an in-person tribute two days later.
