My 20th Century [dir. Ildiko Enyedi]

At 2017's MAMI film festival, I saw Ildiko Enyedi's On Body and Soul, an engrossing narrative in which two individuals see each other as animals in a common Gaia dream world. The concept was lucidly unfolded in the narrative and the film ended upon a wonderful pivot, which left me wondering about the possible future for the characters. In my limited viewing window of that year's fest, it was one of the best experiences, eclipsing more name ventures like Hirokazu Kore-eda's underwhelming The Third Murder and Luca Guadagnino's overrated festival darling Call Me By Your Name.

Her first feature film, 1989's My 20th Century, which I just watched on the UK blu-ray, is less successful for me in terms of narrative flow and clarity of vision. It begins promisingly, taking us to the time when Thomas Edison had pioneered the electric bulb, bringing the light of the stars within the grasp of human beings. In a conceit that doesn't work for me at all, the stars function as a sort of Greek chorus commenting on and even calling out to the characters in the film. But right from the first frame the film has style in spades. Shooting in B&W, Enyedi uses several visual tricks associated with the silent film era. Remember, this was before Guy Maddin became famous for movies that paid homage to the years of vintage cinema.

Our first view of the main characters is when we see a woman (Dorotha Segda) delivering twin babies. There is a vein of humor in how this is depicted though; after her labor pains, she appears to discover the babies already swaddled in bedclothes just lying beside her. The twins are orphaned early and take to selling matches to survive (nod to Hans Christen Andersen's The Little Match Girl, which incidentally had been adapted several times in cinema's early days). They come across a young donkey who could be a spiritual cousin of the famous Balthazar from Robert Bresson's film. Later on, when lying asleep on the street, they are each picked up by a gentleman and carried to a different fate.

As adults, the daughters are also played by Dorotha Segda. They could be regarded as the two halves of a Freudian split. Dora is a calculative seductress and con artist, looking for men that will furnish her with luxuries in return for a good time. Lily is a naive emotionally rooted revolutionary, willing to die for the cause. In an early sequence, they are both aboard the Orient Express. Of course they don't meet here - Lily is huddled with the other third class passengers, while Dora is courted by well-heeled suitors in the deluxe dining car. But there is a moment when a tipsy Dora has a brief glimpse of Lily boarding the train; this precedes a similar scene in Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique.

For the longest time in the narrative our connection with Lily and Dora is through Z (Russian actor Oleg Yankovsky). Z is a gentleman of somewhat ambiguous standing. He is first taken up with Lily and makes aggressive overtures, for which he is roundly rebuffed. Later, on a luxury cruise, Z comes across Dora who he assumes to be Lily. Naturally, he is puzzled by her new persona. She in turn picks Z as a likely mark and propositions him for some cavorting; she even pinches money from his wallet. At a later point when Z meets Lily again, his behavior towards her is sneering, reflective of his judgement of her as a duplicitous whore.

The film even appears to make a smirking comment on this duality when we accompany Lily to a lecture by a self-important male philosopher. This speaker is at first hailed by the all-woman audience for endorsing the suffragette cause, but he soon dispels their enthusiasm by loudly repudiating the assumptions of intellectual equality between men and women. According to him, women are incapable of pure logic and philosophic purpose, their lives driven by feelings and physical desires. Academic Jonathan Owen, who contributes an essay on the film for the Second Run release, cleverly contrasts this declamation with the characters of Lily and Dora: Lily, who has aimed to live by a (revolutionary) doctrine appears to be questioning her own position (and we later see her softening her stance to Z). Dora on the other hand lives a life based on pure (selfish) logic, which probably places her higher as a philosophic creature in this man's estimation.

After some near-explosive events (a scene where Lily runs around with a lighted bomb brought to mind a similar moment from the Adam West Batman movie) the film returns to surreal territory when our lead characters run into a literal Hall of Mirrors; Balthazar's cousin re-appears here, not looking any worse for the 20 year gap, as does Edison.

I found myself heartily nodding to The Disapproving Swede's evaluation of the film as "too whimsical and literally all over the place". It's got some cracking moments, visual and thematic, and Dorotha Segda bats fine on all fronts with her triple role. But the kitchen sink approach led me to lose the emotional connection with the characters. In the end, it became more of an elaborate puppet show where the puppeteer's hands are all too apparent.

A few words about the Second Run blu-ray:

At the time of release (2017), this blu-ray proudly advertised its transfer as a "2K restoration from original materials, under the supervision of director Ildikó Enyedi and cinematographer Tibor Máthé". In general, it's a good transfer and the B&W imagery is often strikingly good, but there are also elements of film damage (I do not know if some of them are an intentional homage to silent era celluloid), grain resolution is less optimal than desired and the grayscale is compromised on account of what seems like black crush. The audio is Hungarian mono in lossless format, and sounds fine enough. Extras include a  more recent half hour interview with Ildiko Enyedi by Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, Duke of Burgundy) and the afore-mentioned booklet essay.

 In 2020, Kino Lorber put out their blu-ray, which was based on a newer 4K master. In screenshot comparisons the Kino release is easily the winner - it has a much better balanced contrast/grayscale range and grain is finer. It includes all the on-disc extras of the SR disc and throws in a director's commentary. So if you can play North American (region A) discs, this is definitely the better option. As I am unlikely to visit the film again, I shall not be upgrading.