It is hard to talk about Jancsó's, The Red and the White because, first of all, there has been little written about it, and second, Jancsó participates in the task of creating a film that is devoid of meaning. The film engenders a some-what mystical experience because we respond viscerally, but we are denied objects of sentiment or obvious symbolic webs to organize. Instead, we can talk about what the film leaves out. Unlike The Shop on Main Street, The Red and the White does not hold our hand as we walk down the sign-posted street which leads to the revelation at the end, turning us into the director's disciples who spread the word, and of course, help. Nor is it a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey venture to will ourselves through muddy visual aphorisms, pasting our sentiments onto faces, to then await our hard-earned applause for having figured something out. Our intuitive responses are extracted by a more essential or mythological representation of tragedy and destiny. Jancsó makes it difficult to layer on formulas of genre X plus era Y with social issue B and A subtracted by C's bias, etc. to reach the assortment of meanings that each pseudo-mathematician prefers. This could be one reason that explains why so little has been written about the film. Such a mode can be quite an advantage to an artist attempting to provoke reaction on a more essential and humanistic level. Unfortunately, The Red and the White's universality didn't catch on when offered to the hands of the masses, unlike the paintings of Mark Rothko per se. According to Ian Johnston's review, Jancsó's films were more of a fad among critics in the 60s and 70s and he has since fallen into obscurity.
On to the film itself. The action is set primarily outdoors. The camera lens often considers vast landscapes including both sky and earth in its composition. In the opening scene, after a brief shot of text contextualizing the film, we see horseback riders charging in slowed motion. We know that two opposing parties are involved, the Reds (Soviet revolutionaries) and the Whites (counterrevolutionary czarists) but to which side the riders belong is indiscernible. The rest of the film leaves the distinction between the two sides ambiguous. In effect, there remains little room for contextual baggage to help us when choosing an enemy or hero. The following cut, as this film contains very few cuts, throws us into a sea of disconnected violence. A man is shot by another man, presumably because of the victim's Hungarian ethnicity, and he falls dead into a river. Moments similar to this, where indistinguishable men are killed by other indistinguishable men, are some of the examples of the film drawing out instant intuitive responses to drama.
Another scene shows a man staggering around in an open field with the towering acorn shaped roofs behind him. The camera is pulled way back from the moment and all we can make out is the imperative state of a stammering body in ecstasy.
Another version of trance-like rapture is the love between the beautiful nurse and the younger man. We see them interact in the clinic. They share a sensual moment following a voiced-over casual conversation without lip movements. The pretension of love professing is a trifle. The same kind of telepathic connection that The Shop on Main Street conveyed in the dream/heaven sequences can be noted here between the lovers. The encounter is something like a basic and essential recognition between two beings, but not in a removed fantastic place, like Kadar's version. It it happens right there in the clinic, mid-work day and among the sick; no vague idealized super-world that reaffirms individual conjectures of the unknowable that tend to clash, like the tragedy of Red and White (they say pink is the most irritating color to the human psyche). It functions sort of like a mysticism for the masses, bringing people together as we share instant recognition with a little help from Jancsó's film.
The concluding cut brings us back to the direct clash between the Red and the White. One cohort sings and marches towards the opposition, which takes the form of a great man-wall silhouette at the foot of a natural wall of hills. The singers shoot down a couple of men but are vastly outnumbered and all die within seconds when the shadowy men turn to face them, ammunition in hand. The camera places our eyes on the scene from the god-like perspective and we are at once divorced from the event but react on a deep level. The landscape is like the most sublime vaudeville demonstrating mother nature's talents. A chunk of peninsular land juts out into a sea. The hills become a closing eyelid as the shadowy men disappear behind them. This scene is so powerful that I almost begin to understand how hurricane Jancsó pummeled through the critical sphere only to be suppressed soon after. Maybe he'll make a comeback.
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