The best Margit Makay’s movies

Karoly Makk's heartbreaking story of two unmarried sisters who cast wistful glances back at their lives, but still believe in hope and love, earned an Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1974. In this follow-up to the director's internationally acclaimed Love, Makk once again exhibits his extraordinary skills at drawing emotionally compelling performances from his talented female leads. Makk's film opposes the bleakness of the outside world with passion, love, and loyalty.

Faithful to his word, Michael Tímar, captain of the St. Barbara, becomes the guardian of Kondya, daughter of a Turkish aristocrat on the run. Later, he weds the grateful young Turkish girl whom he saved from the waters of the Danube. While skilfully managing his wife fortune, entrepreneur Tímar becomes an important wholesaler of wheat, and exports his products to Brazil. But his marriage of convenience proves a failure. He is torn between the demands of bourgeois civilisation, governed by money, and the ideal of freedom, consisting in living simply within nature. He then takes refuge by the side of the sweet Noemi on an island on the Danube.

Based on the novel of Mór Jókai. During the Hungarian independence war 1848-49 mother and her three sons trying to leave the road precisely designated by their conservative, stone-hearted father. The way-seeking and rivalry of brothers, Jókai's masterpiece, the cast, delightful scenes give an unforgettable experience.

This easy-to-take Hungarian drama is also known as Two Wishes. The prinicipal characters are a pair of juvenile delinquents, who may still be redeemable. The sullen duo is befriended by a kindly police inspector, who takes it upon himself to straighten out the boys. What follows cannot be termed surprsingly or innovative, though it is immensely satisfying. Of interest is the fact that a Communist-bloc film would admit to a delinquency problem in the so-called Worker's Paradise. Ket Vallomas was the Hungarian entry in the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.

The theme of the delightful Hungarian fantasy film "A Very Moral Night," made in 1977 and now playing at the Public Theater, could well be innocence, even if the action does take place in a bordello. It is a good bordello, so sweet and wholesome that it seems a place of pure beauty and Eden-like charm.

Fanny lives in the forest with her meteorologist mother. One day on her way across the forest to visit her grandmother and great grandmother, she has three encounters that will change her life forever: an apparently kind and gentle wolf, a city boy and an ornithologist who bears a striking resemblance to the father who long ago abandoned her and her mother.

Most of her colleagues take Mária, the new teacher to be a communist party-worker, only Irma and the drawing teacher Zoli treat her kindly. Mária starts working with great enthusiasm, and her class learns to love her in a short time.

The head of the nunnery is dying, and the members are divided in two groups as the election of the new head approaches. Led by Virginia, the younger nuns stand up for changing the strict religious dogmas and would like a modern school with genuine science, a bathroom to be built, and a freer spirit. Their candidate is sister Magdolna, who went to secular universities, too. The seminarists, led by Király Erzsi, also rebel against the older nuns' strict discipline and the depressed atmosphere of the institution. However, Magdolna does not want to stay involved in the fight because she is deterred by Virginia's sinful attraction towards her and the tools Virginia is using to gain victory at any price.

In 1944, Feri Margittai escapes from the front, but his mother sends him away from home.

Set in Paris (which looks more like Budapest), the story concerns a murder investigation conducted by one Judge Henri Tessier. The audience is led to believe that Robert Petrovich, estranged husband of Tessier's sweetheart Marion, is responsible for the murder.

This lavishly spectacular film focuses on the character of Lorinc Parcen Nagy from the 1200-page Tibor Déry novel interwoven with numerous autobiographical elements. Lorinc Parcen Nagy is the offspring of an upper middle class family, whose life is marked by two violent deaths: the suicide of his father and the slaughter of an innocent worker. He breaks with his family and his mother in disgust; she is of weak character, a person who abandoned her own husband. He is also unable to discover the right tone with his colleagues and his lover who is an illegal party worker.

Director: Imre Jeney