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Mephisto
Directed by Istvan Szabo
Year: 1981
Country: Hungary
Language: German and Hungarian with English Subtitles
The 1981 Academy Award-winning Best Foreign Language Film MEPHISTO, by Hungarian master István Szabó, concerns a passionate but struggling actor (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who remains in Germany during the Nazi regime and reaps the rewards of this Faustian pact by finally achieving the stardom he has long craved. Sparkling new 4K restoration by the Hungarian Film Fund.
"There has been precious little incisive appraisal of the precise seductive allure of fascism, and certainly none to match that offered by Szabó's remarkable film."
"This film is a work of art. The film transmits its messages so forcefully that no one can remain unaffected."
"One of the greatest movie performances I've ever seen. A performance of electrifying power."
"Magnificent and distinguished. It's more than a mercy, it's a coup."
"Few have dared what Brandauer accomplishes: showing us a good actor responding to the same neurotic drive for the center of the stage, the immortalizing role. His is a great performance, nothing less."
"Mephisto is brilliant metaphorical filmmaking."
"Possesses an inner momentum and the film as a whole, with its dynamic leading performance, has an energy reminiscent of the films of Andrzej Wajda."
"A chillingly real experience."
"Mephisto excels at depicting the boiling-frog manner in which complacency allows extremism to take hold."
"Director István Szabó navigates a swooning historical landscape that threatens to consume his central figure, who turns in one of the great screen performances of all time. Brandauer embodies the tortured artist through a wildly vivid range that careens from hammy, operatic full-body gestures to the most subtle changes of expression at eyeball-level."
Cast
Klaus Maria Brandauer Krystyna Janda
Ildikó Bánsági
Rolf Hoppe
Peter Andorai
Crew
Directed by Istvan Szabo
