Blu-Ray BD50 / 1080p / 24fps / Region ABC
RRP: £19.99
Release Date: 27 May 2024
SRBD 047
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Zoltán Fábri’s beloved, striking film is a powerful love story set against the turbulent changes to rural life in 1950s Hungary. In her dazzling debut performance, the late, great Mari Törőcsik plays a young girl who falls for a farm worker, but is betrothed against her will to a wealthy man.
Gorgeous free-wheeling camera work combines with expressive editing and evocative use of music to powerfully convey the freedom love offers in the face of repression. This rich, beautiful film is widely considered one of the finest in Hungarian cinema.
Originally issued as part of our ‘Hungarian Masters’ set, Merry-Go-Round is now presented as a stand-alone release.
Second Run present Merry-Go-Round from a 4K restoration by the Hungarian Film Institute. Our region-free Blu-ray also includes an appreciation by renowned filmmaker István Szabó on the influence and cinematic legacy of director Zoltán Fábri, fascinating archival extras and a booklet with writing on the film by John Cunningham.
• Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta, 1955) presented from an HD transfer from the new 4K restoration created by the National Film Institute Hungary – Film Archive.
• Award-winning Hungarian filmmaker István Szabó on the influence and cinematic legacy of director Zoltán Fábri.
• Screen Tests: rare 1955 camera, rehearsal and make-up tests for the film.
• A short film on the history and restoration of Merry-Go-Round.
• Trailer.
• 20-page booklet writing on the film by author and Hungarian cinema specialist John Cunningham.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• Region Free (A/B/C) Blu-ray.
Directed by Zoltán Fábri
Screenplay - Zoltán Fábri, László Nadásy
Based on the novella In the Well (Kútban) by Imre Sarkadi
Cinematography - Barnabás Hegyi.
Lighting - Imre Bursi, György Németh.
Music - György Ránki.
Sound - György Pintér
Editor - Maria Szécsenyi.
Art Director - Zoltán Fábri.
Costume Designer - Alice Kölcsey
Production Manager - György Zomberyd
Main Cast
Mari Törőcsik - Mari Pataki
Imre Soós - Máté Bíró
Ádám Szirtes - Sándor Farkas
Béla Barsi - István Pataki
Manyi Kiss - Mrs Pataki
Merry-Go-Round is also included in our Hungarian Masters
Blu-ray Box Set. There are more gems of Hungarian and international cinema also available on Second Run.
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Voted by international critics as one of the ‘10 Best Hungarian Films of All Time’
“Merry-Go-Round is the pinnacle of Hungarian cinema”
István Szábo
“It resounds with love” Jean Cocteau
“The heroine of Zoltán Fábri’s marvellous film should have the prize for the Best Actress... This is the big prize winner.
This is my Palme d’Or”
François Truffaut, Cannes Film Festival 1956
“Merry-Go-Round is concentrated, lyrical... Most remarkable is the style which Fabri has brought to the direction of the film - one of extreme finesse, sophisticated in its emotional shading as it is delicate in its photographic tones. [...]
Above all, Fabri uses the cinema poetically, revealing deep, compelling emotions in a turn of the head, or in the grey image of a forlorn landscape”
Lindsay Anderson, 'Panorama at Cannes', Sight and Sound, Summer 1956
“In the way that it up-ended expectations of what was possible within a hitherto strictly circumscribed national cinema and went on to influence a whole generation of younger filmmakers, it's the equivalent of Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying (1957) in the Soviet Union, or Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds (1958) in Poland. If asked to name their greatest national filmmaker, a Hungarian cinephile is as likely to cite Zoltán Fábri as Miklós Jancsó”
Michael Brooke, Sight and Sound
“Merry-Go-Round is a more vibrant offering than the socialist realism that preceded it. Where directors might once have spied a vacuum for political slogans and insipid didacticism, Fábri is firmly committed to the human, couching his film within the sure-fire confines of a classic trope, of star-cross’d lovers” The Arts Desk