1945 (2017) User Reviews

Compelling, understated drama from Hungary about the aftermath of the Holocaust in one small village

[lotekguy-1 · 7/10 · 26 April 2018]

This subtitled Hungarian drama is highly reminiscent of one of Spencer Tracy's Oscar-nominated outings, Bad Day at Black Rock. When a stranger comes to a small town, people start assuming he's got a worrisome agenda, and they start scrambling to cover their guilty secrets. In this case, the small town is in post-war Hungary. Two Jewish men get off a train, carrying boxes, and trekking through the village. No one knows why they've come, and many have reasons to fear a return of the Jews who used to live there, before their properties were confiscated and redistributed when the Nazis sent them to the camps.

One man is guilt-ridden over his role in the incarceration of former friends. Others are hell-bent on keeping whatever they obtained, rather than having those former neighbors or their relatives recoup what was taken.

Like the Tracy film, this one is shot in black-and-white, and presented tersely, leaving room for viewers to fill in the spaces between the lines and actions. The absence of color, which I usually dislike, seems appropriate here, linking it to familiar newsreel and fictional depictions of the era. It also highlights the bleakness of life in the aftermath of all the horrors World War II wrought throughout Europe, on the battlefields and beyond. Living with one's inner demons can exact a toll on collaborators, as well as combatants.

There's not much action, and no archival footage. This one's all about the residents, the choices they made, and the varied consequences therefrom. A serious film for serious viewers. Although the specifics of the plot are rooted in the Holocaust and its after-effects, the responsibility and accountability of individuals in the midst of such political tides is a timeless and vital theme.

The Guilt

[konskara · 7/10 · 15 February 2019]

During wars, people do hidious crimes. At WW2 many decent, next door people like you and me, took advantage of the anti-jewish pogrom and stole their property. But the war ended in 1945, and some of them manage to return and reclaim their properties... what happened then? The guilt of course, that's what happened. I think it's the only Hungarian film i have ever watched and if you come across it, don't pass it by. Its a film worth seeing.

We Know What We Did Last Year

[JackCerf · 7/10 · 18 December 2017]

This subtitled Hungarian picture is definitely worth the time. Through the microcosm of one summer day in a single village, it looks back on the origins of modern Hungary at a moment of balance, when the pre-war fascist government had been destroyed by the war but the Communists had not yet seized power.

By way of background, American viewers should realize that before World War II Hungary had a fascist government, independent but allied with Nazi Germany. The Hungarian Army fought, not very effectively, in Russia. Until the Germans occupied the country in March 1944, Hungarian Jews were persecuted but not systematically exterminated. Once the Germans arrived, the government rounded up the Jews outside Budapest for shipment to Auschwitz. Between Christmas 1944 and February 1945, the Hungarians defended Budapest house by house against the Red Army alongside the Waffen SS, while Hungarian Nazis in the Arrow Cross Party roamed the city shooting every Jew they could find. Both Russians and Magyars regarded Hungary as having been conquered, not liberated.

1945 takes place on a single day, August 12, 1945. World War II in Europe has been over for three months; as the radio tells us in the background, the Pacific War is winding down with the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan. In a country village so remote that it's a mile walk to the railroad station, we meet the bullying, backslapping local Big Shot, his unhappy, drug addicted wife, and their son, who is marrying a pretty peasant girl that afternoon. The son runs the local drugstore. He's an upward match for the bride to be, who used to be engaged to a strapping but surly young peasant she hasn't quite left behind. Her jilted ex-fiancé, an Army veteran, seems to be taking seriously Russian promises of a new and better Hungary. This soon after the war, the occupying Red Army is definitely in evidence but doesn't have things nailed down yet, as the radio in the background broadcasts news about the upcoming multi-party elections.

Intercut with all this, at the station, two men dressed in black arrive on the morning train. The elder, white haired and bearded, wears a broad brimmed round hat and long coat; his younger companion a stubbly beard, cloth cap and short jacket. Their two large crates are unloaded from the baggage car; the manifest says they contain perfume and cosmetics. Three Red Army soldiers in a jeep watch impassively. All this throws the stationmaster into a dither. After failing to get through to the Big Shot on the phone, he tells the peasant waiting with horse and wagon to deliver the men and their baggage to town s-l-o-w-l-y, while he bicycles ahead. When he gets to town he excitedly tells the Big Shot, "They're back!"

The two men, of course, are Jews, though not individual Jews anybody recognizes. As they plod down the road from the station, their imminent arrival sets off a paroxysm of fear, guilt, recrimination and anger ricocheting through the village, fueled by the alcohol that the village men are constantly drinking. Nobody knows who these two Jews are, but everyone assumes that they have come back to claim the property of the local Jews deported about a year ago. The Big Shot, the stationmaster, the priest and the village policeman are implicated up to their necks. So are those villagers who looted the property of the deported Jews and were given their houses by the government. The Big Shot, in particular, seems to have gone out of his way to make sure that his one-time best friend, the Jew who owned the drugstore, got shipped off right away. The omnipresence of the Russians means the village elite can't solve this problem the way they'd like to. Instead, as they wait to find out who these two Jews are, what they want, and what's in those crates, certainties dissolve, truths are told, relationships collapse under the strain and hypocrisies are mobilized. I can't reveal more without spoiling the surprises. The Hungarian audience can fill in the blanks about what is going to happen to all these people once the Communists takeover overwhelms their petty concerns.

1945 reminded me of High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, in which Clint Eastwood played characters who may be real or may be the ghost of a murdered man, and whose arrival causes the local power structure to come unstuck. The two Jews are far less active than Eastwood's characters , but they have the same unsettling effect. Moreover, they seem in some respects unreal. They are both surprisingly healthy, strong and well fed for men who would have been liberated from the camps only three months before, walking the mile from station to village without difficulty. They speak only when spoken to by the locals. Their cargo ultimately seems as much symbolic as actual, and they silently board the evening train out at the end of the day, their work done. They are as much the locals' memory of a Jewish type ("hats and beards, they all look alike") as they are individuals.

I don't know what the director had in mind, but this is a plausible reading. In any event, while no admirer of the Soviets, he is far from nostalgic for the old Hungary that they overran and overthrew. I'm surprised that the picture could get made in Viktor Orban's nationalist, dictatorial, anti-Semitic Hungary.

Guesswork

[GManfred · 6 November 2017]

Almost to the end of "1945", writer/ director Ferenc Torok keeps the audience in the dark regarding the rationale of the players. It is a masterful screenplay, full of mystery and expectation, which makes the pacing seem sluggish. Gradually, however, the pieces and clues all fit together in this post-WWII story of past betrayal and cupidity.

The picture was shot in black and white and with an authentic feel of a 40's film. Torok assembled a cast of talented actors, most unknown outside of Hungary, and there is not an amateur performance among them. The star is Peter Rudolf who plays Istvan, the town clerk mainly responsible for what has befallen the town, as the two Hasidic men walk slowly into town with their 'cargo'. I am not going to tip off the reasons behind the plot, but "1945" may be the best film that has played on American soil this year. Be prepared to use your best powers of deduction as the tantalizing story unfolds, because this one will require all your concentration.

Not as compelling as that other recent Holocaust related movie from Hungary

[paul-allaer · 6/10 · 26 March 2018]

As "1945" (2017 release from Hungary; 91 min.) opens, we are reminded by the radio news anchor that it is "Friday, August 12, 1945, 10 o'clock", the day the US drops a second atomic bomb on Japan and WW II is all but over. In a remote Hungarian village, a man (we later learn he is the Town Clerk, in essence the Mayor) and his family are getting ready for the new day. It's a big day as his son is getting married. Meanwhile, a train arrives at the town's train station and getting off are two Orthodox Jews. They brought with them two large crates. The train stationmaster is alarmed for some reason, and dashes off to inform the Town Clerk. Why is the stationmaster alarmed? what does the Town Clerk do? and what is in those crates? At this point we are 10 minutes into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this movie is co-written and directed by Hungary's Ferenc Torok. He tackles a delicate time in Hungary's history, when WW II is ending, the Soviets are there to stay, and Jews are returning (at least those that were lucky enough to survive the Holocaust). It has the potential of being a terrific story and movie, and while the movie certainly isn't bad, neither is it great, For that, the story is brought too stilted and too acted (you can practically hear the director yell "and... ACTION!" as you watch the actors on the screen. Many horrible things were done to the Jews in and after WW II, and that needs to be exposed. But I'd rather see it done in a riveting movie, say Hungary's other recent Holocaust drama, the 2016 Oscar-winning "Son of Saul", which purely as a movie is MILES better than "1945", I'm afraid. Please note that, like "son of Saul", "1945 is shot in remarkable B&W.

"1945" premiered at last year's Berlin Film Festival, and now more than a year later, appeared out of the blue on a single screen for all of Southwest Florida. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at a few weekends ago was attended so-so (less than 10 people). If you are interested in WW II or the treatment of Jews at that time, I'd suggest you check out "1945" in the theater (unlikely at this point), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

Searing portrait of shared guilt and madness

[barkingechoacrosswaves · 9/10 · 13 November 2017]

In the immediate aftermath of WWII, the arrival of two Jewish men turns a small Hungarian village upside down. The whole village profited from the deportation and extermination of their former Jewish neighbors, and now everyone fears exposure and ruin.

The petty vindictiveness and corruption of the villagers is their own undoing. All sorts of dire consequences ensue at the merest whiff that the villagers might be forced to take responsibility for their wartime misdeeds. This panic of the natives almost borders on slapstick; it stands in sharp contrast to the methodical, dignified simplicity of the outsiders whom the natives fear.

Great photography, great editing, great acting, great story. I highly recommend 1945.

Guilt At Wars End

[iquine · 7/10 · 6 April 2019]

(Flash Review)

Let's say your town or city was trounced and occupied during WWII and you were forced to flee. At wars end, you attempt to return but some other regular people have assumed control on your house, possessions, businesses and your homeland. What would you do and where would you go? This is a lesser told fact of war that isn't portrayed too often in war movies and is the impetus for how this film's story begins. The community that has assumed control over this village is alerted to two original inhabitants returning and get really worried about what they will now do. So much so that the collective and personal guilt seeps out of them and throws their daily life into shambles even though the two original local's story is not told much. You only learn the current inhabitants were less than honorable to the original locals and blame from that flames other collective strife. The story was sort of vague and you didn't connect at all with the original locals but there was enough meat to make you think and wonder. The cinematography was outstanding and the pacing was appropriate.

Collective complicity

[Red-125 · 10/10 · 17 July 2017]

1945 (2017) is a Hungarian movie co-written and directed by Ferenc Török. It takes place in a remote rural village in Hungary, just after the German surrender.

Two orthodox Jewish men arrive by train in the village. Iván Angelus plays the father, and Marcell Nagy portrays his son. The men bring two large mysterious trunks with them. They have hired a cart to bring the trunks into town. They slowly walk behind the cart, without saying a word.

The Town Clerk, Szentes István, played by Péter Rudolf, appears to function as the Mayor. He is particularly ill at ease when the Jewish men arrive. However, every single person in town is worried. Why are the Jews here? Do they represent Jewish people given up to the Nazis, who have managed to survive the Holocaust? Will they want their confiscated property back?

Little by little, the town's terrible secrets emerge, and the story is not a pretty one. Everyone is guilty of complicity. Some are guilty of actively helping the Nazis find and deport Jews. The others did nothing to protect Jews. There's not a single hero among them. What happens next represents the plot of the movie, and it is powerful.

Another reviewer suggested that the movie resembles "3:10 to Yuma," or "Shane." I don't see it in either case. To me, the film is closest to "Bad Day in Black Rock." It may seem impossible that a film shot in rural Hungary shares a parallel story with a film shot in the Arizona desert. However, both films portray the days just after World War II, when hidden guilty secrets are revealed by the presence of a stranger (or strangers). Eventually, these secrets will fade away, but during those days they could still be brought to the surface. This is an incredibly powerful Holocaust film, although the Holocaust had ended when the movie began.

Of the 12 excellent movies we saw at the Rochester International Jewish Film Festival, I thought this one was the best. This movie has an excellent IMDb rating of 7.7, but I think it's even better than that. If there's one movie of the 12 about which I would say, "Absolutely don't miss it," this would be the one.

We saw 1945 at the excellent Little Theatre. As I stated above, it was part of the extraordinary Rochester International Jewish Film Festival. The RIJFF is over for 2017. However, some movies will be shown again in the next 12 months. If you live in Upstate New York, and you love movies, the RIJFF is where you should be in mid-July. Watch for it in 2018.

Excellent Idea, So-So Execution

[leporegregory · 7/10 · 23 December 2017]

Two unidentified Jewish men appear on the outskirts of a Hungarian town days after the end of WW2 in Europe. A cloud of anxiety, fear, guilt and remorse moves in over the townspeople as they struggle to cope with their complicity in the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation of their town.

This film deserves an award for the story it presents, if for nothing else. Two Jewish men arrive at the town rail station on the same day an important marriage is to take place, setting off a chain of events that incur chaos on a commune gripped by guilt. Some complied, some didn't, and some were forced to. Finger-pointing, backstabbing, and denial are all present as the Jewish men, walking on foot, get nearer and nearer to the town. The closer they get, the more the story heats up. All the pieces were there for this to be one of the best European films of 2017, but sadly it just doesn't deliver.

1945 presents a strong baseline, setting the stage within the first half half hour with nail-biting suspense. But it fails to go deeper, and character backstories, which are so important in a film like this, are never explored beyond the generalized conversations they have amongst each other. We never really get a sense of who did what. We might know someone complied, but why did they comply, how did they comply, who was arrested or killed at their expense? The viewer spends a lot of time guessing, attempting to piece together the puzzle by themselves, and the film never presents an answer.

If you find yourself moved by WW2 or the Holocaust , then you need to see this film. If those topics don't interest you, there's not much here to keep you engaged.

Startlingly Good

[lewisrobertedward · 10/10 · 29 July 2017]

Previous reviews have failed to take account of this film's "Sitz im Leben"-- the current situation in Hungary, where the Fidesz government under Orbán Viktor has played footsie with the broad swath of irredentist voters who continue to harbor anti-Semitic leanings. Hungary has not yet come to terms with its role in the murder of its Jewish citizens. For example, the recently erected monument to Victims of Nazi Aggression portrays Hungary as a Victim State, not as a willing cooperator in the execution of roughly 5% of the national population. But it was Hungarian officials that carried out the orders, not Germans. Hungarian officialdom and non-officialdom was more than willing to participate in the Holocaust, but they are loath to acknowledge any corporate responsibility.

A personal but illustrative anecdote. About seven years ago I was teaching at a gimnázium in a town not far from Budaptest and went to see the movie "Avatar" at a local theater over a weekend. The next Monday, as part of English conversation class, I told my students what I had done, that I had gone to thus and such theater to see the movie. The immediate response to my statement came from a student whom I had come to know as a pretty bright kid who was eager to learn. He said, "Oh yes, Jews own that theater."

Where the f*** did that come from? Over the past few years I have realized that it comes from the same deep-rooted inability of Hungarians to understand that their loss of territory after WWI and their continuing economic problems come not from their "enemies" (Jews above all, but Gypsies too) but from themselves and the same culture of self-deception and corruption that is depicted in this film.

Which film, by the way, is elegantly framed and carefully composed, is presented with almost stately precision, and which I highly, highly recommend.

A high quality western by hungarian hand........

[kashidomar · 7/10 · 27 October 2017]

Always like these western movies. They deliver such a different taste..a unique environment..a stylish set of actions with different artillery.. a bunch of heavy dialogues..over all a movie of high intensity and motions...

This movie is of no exception but it is a pure western set in the nature of hungarian soil. It is about a two strangers and their series of actions to override the current situation.

Not much western movies are made now a days. Some made are not pure western. Rather they are mixture. But this one is a pure western with all the heats and posture that we saw in great western movies.

Western hunters...you have to put this one in your watchlist.....

The most important Hungarian film of the decade

[alexdeleonfilm · 10/10 · 15 May 2017]

This is a film about collective guilt over ill-gotten gains. The film was directed by Hungarian ace, Ferenc Török, and is based on a recently published short story by Gabor T. Szanto entitled "Homecoming". It all takes place on a single day in mid August 1945 -- just days after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which we hear about on the radio shortly after the beginning of the picture --- thus placing it squarely in the context of major crimes against humanity.  But this is only the beginning of a tense summer day in a dusty backwater  Hungarian town that will take on overtones of High Noon and the Three-Ten to Yuma before the day is over ..

As the film opens an old fashioned train comes chugging into the station under a black cloud of smoke and two passengers, obviously orthodox Jews clad in black, emerge, one an elderly man with a white beard, the other his son. A crate belonging to the Jews is unloaded. The old man signs a form stating that the contents are perfumes. Fine and dandy. But what is really in them we will only find out later. Next ensues a slow somber parade to and through the entire town with the two Jews on foot trailing the horse and cart on which their mysterious cargo has been loaded ...

Next ensues a slow somber parade to and through the entire town with the two Jews on foot trailing the horse and cart on which their mysterious cargo has been loaded. As various townspeople watch from their windows alarm begins to spread that this may be merely the tip of the iceberg and when more Hungarian Holocaust survivors follow they will have to return their ill gotten goods and houses.

The chief alarmer is István Szentes, the town clerk who, we will find out, denounced his best friend a Jew by the name of Pollak, and took over his highly profitable drug store with forged papers to justify his ownership. (Actor Peter Rudolf, 77, incredibly compelling and outrageously cynical in the role --well worthy of a Hungarian Oscar!). One by one others, including the town priest are swept up in the general guilt ridden anxiety. Some are appalled by the dirty history of the town and have varying pangs of conscience. For, above all, this is a film about collective guilty conscience. Istvan's son Árpád who now runs the underhandedly acquired Pollak drugstore and is scheduled to be married that very afternoon, is so appalled by his father's callousness that he runs out on both the unwanted marriage and the unwanted business, and heads to the train station to catch the 3:10 back to Budapest -- hoping to start a new life away from all this internal rot and corruption.

"Bandy" Kustár, the town drunk, blabs in the local pub about the sins everybody knows about but would rather not know. Himself guilt ridden over his the fact that he allowed himself to be tricked into signing a document denouncing Pollák and turning the drugstore over to the town clerk he goes to the church in the middle if the day and asks the priest to grant him confession. But the priest has Jewish skeletons in his own closet and sends poor András off with ten Hail Mary's chiding him for daring to come to the house of God in drunken condition. Mrs. Kustár, a total conscienceless shrew (veteran actress Ági Szirtes, terrific!) scurries to hide expensive Carpets in her cellar, just in case these Jewish men in black start to make claims for restitution of their property. The central figure of all this panic is Town Clerk and drugstore owner Szertes István as portrayed with extreme negative verve by Peter Rudolf. The drugstore alone is the most profitable business in the town and he has the most to lose. Worst of all, his morphine addicted wife will have none of this hypocrisy and accuses him openly of betraying his best friend Pollak who was then sent to Auschwitz. András, the alcoholic husband of unscrupulous Madame Kustár hangs himself in the barn, dying a martyr's death for the sins of all. A climax is reached when the abandoned bride who would have become the daughter in law of Szertes vengefully sets the prized drugstore on fire. When Szertes runs to the church where a mass is being held for hanged András he is seen as the cause of all their problems and nobody is willing to help him put out the fire. The drugstore burns down.

Finally we arrive at the destination of the Jewish men in black whose mere presence has thrown everybody into panic mode. The Jewish cemetery at the far end of the town. At last, to the great relief of all, we find that their purpose here is not to make any restitution claims but rather to give the contents of their "Perfumery" cask a proper Jewish burial -- the cask contains rolled up Torahs and many baby shoes -- symbolic of the Jewish towns people who were taken away and murdered in Auschwitz. In a heart wrenching denouement Szertes, who is kind of an acting mayor, cynically assures the two Jews who have finished their mission that the town will forever preserve the memory of their lost Jews. And now we're back at the train station waiting for the 3:10 back to the capital. Son Árpád Szertes who fled the drugstore and ran out on his arranged marriage is there waiting to depart along with the men in black and we know he will never come back to his mentally diseased home town. PS: In the original story the baby shoes were Bars of German Soap!

Slow and beautiful

[htflat · 7/10 · 28 February 2021]

The cinematography is beautiful, the voices, the music (Szemzo Tibor!) are amazing. The storytelling is good, although I found the acting less authentic, although it is not bothering too much. Worth watching it.

No "shades of gray" in characterization of Hungarian villagers who betrayed Jewish neighbors before WW II

[Turfseer · 5/10 · 5 January 2018]

With a nascent anti-semitism now spreading throughout Europe, some may regard films such as Hungarian director Ferenc Török's post-Holocaust drama, "1945," as a valuable corrective to the flippant denialism concocted by those who once again seek to harm the Jewish people and deny their birthright. For those who know little about the Holocaust, a simplistic film such as this might be considered a rather worthy introduction to the enormity of the subject--a primer of sorts for a novitiate. But unfortunately a primer is not what's needed to introduce a narrative that encompasses a multiplicity of events that perhaps represent the greatest catastrophe in world history.

1945 is based on a short story by Gábor T. Szántó, a Jewish writer, who seeks verisimilitude of character through parable. His protagonists, the Samuels, two Orthodox Jews, an older Jewish man and his son, arrive in a small Hungarian town approximately three months after the Germans have been defeated and the occupying Soviet Army is only beginning to exert their influence over a hostile and indifferent populace.

The Samuels arrive at the train station carrying crates listed on the manifest containing perfumes and other sundry items. They enlist two locals to transport their possessions via a horse drawn cart, walking behind the cart through the town to the chagrin of the townspeople, worried that they've come to seek recompense for properties confiscated from the Pollaks, the most prominent pre-War Jewish family, presumably murdered in the Holocaust.

Unfortunately, the Jewish people here are no more than symbols of victimhood--mere props to explore the reactions of the townspeople and expose their chicanery and deceit.

Szanto's townspeople are a bad lot indeed and he's unable to introduce any "shades of gray" that might humanize his antagonists to make them a little more sympathetic and not so perfidious.

The main culprit is Istvan (Peter Rudolf), the town clerk who bullied Bandi, the town drunk, into accusing the Pollak family of imaginary crimes before the war, leading to their deportation and confiscation of their property (the home went to Bandi and his wife and a convenience store was signed over to Istvan's ungrateful son, who hates him). Also in the mix is Istvan's opiate-addicted wife who shares the son's contempt for the father.

As the Samuels slowly proceed with their procession through town, Istvan's son's wedding is about to fall apart. The son can no longer accept Istvan's plan to set up him up as a well-off bourgeois, via the ill-gotten gains of a convenience store that never belonged to the family. Meanwhile, his fiancée still has the hots for Jansci, a ne'er-do-well who earns the contempt of his neighbors by sucking up to Soviet soldiers.

It's all very predictable when Bandi hangs himself over his guilt for aiding Istvan and his plan to misappropriate the Jewish family's property. When Istvan son's fiancée burns down the convenience store, his neighbors (congregating at church), refuse to help him.

There are very few redeeming qualities here for the greedy townspeople, and only the saintly Jews are cast in a favorable light. The townspeople receive a further comeuppance when it's revealed that the Samuels only came to "bury" the belongings of their deceased loved ones who hailed from the town and died in the Holocaust.

1945 has some nice cinematography which highlights the perfidy of those who mistreated their Jewish neighbors before the onset of the war. It's a well-meaning story and makes the important point (albeit an obvious one), that the Jews were victims not only of the Nazis but their neighbors, who financially profited at their expense. Nonetheless, 1945 is a bit of a cheap shot as the antagonists are not really fleshed out, convincing or sympathetic enough as people guilty of contemptuous acts but also caught up in the cauldron of war and its debilitating aftermath.

masterpiece

[Kirpianuscus · 26 June 2018]

At the first sigh, a film for Central European public. Because it presents realities who are told by grandparents to nephews.

In same measure, a parable. About fear, shadows of past, reactions to a challenge.

The basic virtue - its minimalism. Two strangers, with two boxes, in a Hungarian village station. Preparations for a wedding. And the presence of strangers as basic menace. The tension. And the reactions. All seems perfect, from photography to the performances. But the great good point is the clash between minimalism and the chain of details from the circle around the mayor. Result - a masterpiece. Not only for artistic motifs. But for the admirable way to translate the essence of a world in clear manner.

Female Slavery & Property

[westsideschl · 6/10 · 12 January 2019]

The plot concerns two conservative Jews returning to their hometown shortly after WWII and the ethics of peoples, Hungarian in this case, who were complicit in the removal of their local Jewish population and possible confiscation of properties. So the Hungarians turn out not to be the nicest neighbors. I sometimes wonder why the usury ethos of capital accumulation as a social issue is never addressed in these & similar movies. Couldn't be the film's financing? Anyway, the issue that struck me is found in this statement from father to son on his upcoming marriage, "Don't be scared of a little peasant girl. Be hard on her at first, until you've got her tamed.", i.e. females valued similarly to livestock.

The Evasion of Conscience

[twray-89019 · 10/10 · 20 June 2018]

An unflinching portrait of the power of conscience and the human effect of its avoidance. The post-modern narrative of identity politics and Nietzschean and victim culture here vaporizes into the dustbin of history. Human choices matter. Memory matters. Morality matters. Selfishness and structural, political complicity therewith lead to social disintegration. As C.S. Lewis wrote, revenge is the predictable arc of human affairs. There is only one thing that breaks the cycle of material human history and that is forgiveness. Go. See. This. Film.

A western without heroes

[ayoreinf · 9/10 · 17 July 2017]

It's a brilliant story of guilt and buried secrets coming to the fore. Using the aesthetics of a western with direct borrowing from High Noon and from Sergio Leone, especially the waiting for the train scene in Once Upon a Time in the West. But in this case its used to point the complete absence of any real hero from the story. The most heroic act performed by any character in this movie is going away.

This story is a story about all consuming guilt, about petty jealousies and how sin is its own punishment. But above all it's a story of how the war doesn't end when it ends. And it's done with a very competent hand and deep understanding of cinematic media. A very good ensemble of actors, amazing cinematography, great story and superlative directing.

A masterpiece / Antisemitism & guilt after the Holocaust

[antoniatejedabarros · 10/10 · 1 February 2021]

This movie is a masterpiece! It depicts antisemitism and guilt after WWII really well. The cinematography, the music and the direction are really stunning. Bergman would have loved it. 10/10. Never forget. We remember.

A parable about human greed and cruelty.

[gailspilsbury · 10/10 · 1 November 2017]

Ferenc Török's 1945 takes place in a backward Hungarian village at the end of World War II, when liberating Russian soldiers are present. Based on Gábor T. Szántó's short story "Homecoming" and filmed in black and white with striking authentically, 1945 focuses on human morality and behavior. Two categories of people are juxtaposed to strengthen this study: the poor, undereducated rural community led by their abhorrent town clerk István, and two silent Jewish strangers who arrive by train to the town. The Jewish father and son, clad formally in black, hire a cart at the train station to transport their two sealed trunks to an unspecified destination. They choose to walk behind the cart, and the camera comes back to them often, reiterating their silent, dignified trek along the dirt road that leads to town. In contrast, the villagers who await them are already in a panic—which Jews are they and what have they come for? Knowing nothing about the strangers—other than the stationmaster's fast-spreading rumor that their trunks contain perfume—the villagers jump to the conclusion that their own futures are at stake. They obsess about their fate because of their individual and collective guilt about what happened to their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust. Their guilt dictates that only their role in the Jews' deportation can explain the visitors' arrival.

The townfolks' commotion and generally nasty relationships to each other contrast to the silent walkers, with the cinematography of the two worlds also in contrast: the empty natural landscape versus the village hubbub where everybody knows everybody else's business, including everyone's wartime betrayals and illegal possession of Jewish property. The film takes as its subject how human guilt cannot be suppressed, but rather with the slightest provocation erupts defensively, often with more lies, and causes destruction of various sorts. Some of the guilty parties have remorse, others not, but either way, their guilt ignites havoc and dire consequences.

The quiet pilgrims on foot see and hear nothing of this village chaos as they pass through the town en route to their destination. Their straight carriage conveys dignity and honor, in contrast to their counterparts staring at them through windows, or racing about to burn evidence of their treachery or to hide wrongly inherited valuables. The returning Jews have no need to communicate to the villagers, other than to hire a cart for their trunks. The villagers are invisible to them; they don't exist as moral beings. Even István's offered handshake is proof of their hypocrisy.

Finally, the villagers' panic comes to breaking point, and led by István they go to the Jews who have reached their destination and humbly ask what they have come for. The villagers' guilt and their fate must have answers.

What they then learn, whether or not the truth sinks into their unenlightened heads, is that the father and son have come for something far deeper than the material possessions the villagers are so distraught about. The villagers didn't care about the Jews in the early 1940s and they don't care now—their anxiety is about their own safety and comfort—at the expense of children and families, their own neighbors and friends, whom they helped to murder. At heart a parable—though the lesson is lost on the villagers, which is a lesson in itself—1945 treats audiences to fine cinematography by Elemér Ragályi and villager roles well-acted by Péter Rudolf as István, Dóra Sztarenki Kisrózsi as his wife, and József Szarvas as Mr. Kustár. Iván Angelus and Marcell Nagy play the Sámuels, father and son.

Bien, pero sobra. Good, but spare

[Andres-Camara · 5/10 · 25 November 2018]

¿A qué me refiero? Pues que es una película creíble claro, pero me sobra el todo el metraje de la boda, que no tiene interés para la historia. El problema es que ese tiempo la ralentiza y hace que decaiga. Está escrita de forma inteligente, aunque no bien llevada a la pantalla

Los actores están muy bien. Te crees la historia completamente

La iluminación hace que te vayas directo a ese año

El director no me gusta del todo. Si bien cuando se dedica al tema de la película la lleva bien, pero todo el metraje de la boda le sobra y no se da cuenta. No me gustan los planos que hace.

Si bien es una película que sirve para ver esa parte de la historia que no conocíamos pero que ha pasado en todo tipo de guerras y países.

What do I mean? Well, it's a clear believable movie, but I have plenty of all the footage of the wedding, which has no interest for the story. The problem is that this time slows it down and makes it decay. It is written intelligently, although not well taken to the screen

The actors are very good. You believe the story completely

The lighting makes you go straight to that year

The director does not like me at all. Although when it is dedicated to the subject of the film it takes well, but all the footage of the wedding leftover and does not realize. I do not like the plans he makes.

While it is a movie that serves to see that part of history that we did not know but that has happened in all kinds of wars and countries.

A tale with a lasting impact

[Gordon-11 · 6 November 2017]

This film tells the story of the arrival of two Jewish men in a quiet Hungarian town just after the Second World War. Residents react according to the ghosts of their past, creating a butterfly effect of a disastrous magnitude.

1945" is a beautiful black and white film. Every frame is well thought out. It fits the era of 1945, and enhances the haunting atmosphere of the film.

The story is captivating because it makes you think hard. It tells some aspects of the story through dialogues, but does not tell the entire story plainly. Viewers have to think and recreate the complete story, and that story is a haunting one that leaves a long lasting impact. It is a great film, and I'm glad I had a chance to watch it.

I cried for them

[mayamax-42763 · 10/10 · 29 January 2020]

A very powerful and moving drama. A perfect illustration of human greed. The cinematography of Ferenc Török's team is technically perfect, the authoritative script, well-made costumes and the highly suggestive musical outline. A description of how the infamities perpetrated in the course of life are paid at a high price, on the one hand the devastated Jewish people and on the other those who wanted to take advantage in the bloody period of the war and the territory of none of the material possessions without any mercy. In conclusion, everyone pays, without exception, those who have lost their loved ones in the death camps and those who have lost them for their cruelty. The movements of the camera, the perspectives, the points of view and the objects in the frame are of high school and the film is shot in a beautiful and very clean black and white. The ending is masterful and I think that in my mind the images of the black smoke of the train that can be combined with the lives killed in the crematoria of the Nazi prison camps will never be erased, I cried for them. Magnificent work of art.

Terrific film making

[matthew_hoh · 8/10 · 8 September 2019]

I found the direction, camera work, editing and score to be excellent. It moves methodically as the two men's movement from the train station to the destination in the post war village.

It has many of the same themes and elements as its Polish cousins, Ida and Civil War, although I found Ida to be more powerful and Civil War to be grander. Regardless this is terrific film making.

And for the reviewer below: the Jewish Sabbath runs from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, this film takes place during the day on Friday, so it's not the Sabbath.

Exquisite

[GenghisKelvin · 10/10 · 15 October 2019]

Moody black and white photography, immaculate period sets and costumes, exquisite attention to the smallest detail, slow pedestrian movement at 1945 pace, a bicycle ridden by the stationmaster, a motorbike and sidecar and a jeep are the only motorized vehicles seen in this quaint Hungarian village, the main vehicle focus is on a horse drawn cart which is central to the story. Cats, chickens and dogs complete the pastoral setting perfectly. Without a doubt a 10 for all aspects particularly the photography.