Húsz óra (1965)

This drama offers a comprehensive, authentic picture of roughly twenty years in an ordinary Hungarian village, beginning at the end of the Second World War in 1945. The fragmented narrative unfolds over a total of twenty hours, compressing into that time almost every kind of conflict characteristic of the era. A reporter arrives in a small Hungarian village to recall the events of the preceding decades. As the story progresses, the tragic events of autumn 1956 come to the fore for the journalist. Will it become clear what happened then, what led to it, and what can be uncovered nearly a decade later? In the course of this investigation—not in the criminal sense—images of the past and of the present in 1965 emerge in a mosaic, at first alternating rapidly and out of chronological order, while the principal and supporting characters appear. The story of four former farmhands began with the land distribution. Their example prompted many villagers to claim land. Those who resisted fiercely, afraid the landlord would return and take revenge, were forced to sign applications for land. After that, another peasant swore that he would never give up the land he had just received. In 1949, among the first in the country, they formed a collective farm, and Jóska became its chairman. In 1952, Varga Sándor, the party secretary and a State Security officer, nearly had a policeman shoot his former friend, Balogh Anti, who had left the party. Later, Jóska made a serious mistake when he had Kiskovács expelled from law school because of his father, a miserly and cruel kulak. In 1956, some of the villagers turned against the chairman. At the urging of the kulak’s son, Balogh Anti fired at Jóska as a member of a rebel group, but missed. The two men reconciled only after a long, impassioned argument and a brutal fight. Kiskovács, who served nine years for his actions after 1956, tells the reporter that he became an implacable enemy of the system and of Chairman Jóska. After the revolution, Varga wanted revenge for the injuries inflicted on him and the system. In a sudden but reckless outburst, he shot dead the innocent Kocsis Béni with his submachine gun through a closed door, as Béni was trying to calm him down. Chairman Jóska arrived too late to prevent the tragedy. At the sound of the gunfire, villagers gathered, and Jóska, unarmed, attacked the party secretary, who was horrified by what he had done. Varga knew there was no staying in the village after what had happened, and left. By the end of the twenty hours, the reporter understood that the memories, the bullet marks on the wall of the chairman’s office and on the Kocsis family’s door, and the emotional wounds still lived on in the villagers’ hearts.