06 December 2008

Bisztrókirálynő (2003)

Another Hungarian short, this time picked out from the selection of Hungarian Short Films vol. 2. As with Márton Szirmai's Tripe and Onion the story, especially the funny turn at its end was the reason of talking about it, Márton Csillag's short is more interesting due its cinematic style.

What I really liked in Bisztrókirálynő ("The Queen of the Bar"?) is the way how the film combines the traditional, silent era's film language with the absolute contemporary set. Talking about the film language of the silent era, the film goes back to the first years' picture quality, gestures, acting, camera handling, framing, music (at least how and what we associate to the era), its speed and rhythm, etc. This mixture gives a special feeling for the viewer, especially for those, who have seen several silent movies from the very beginning of the film history. This feeling is nothing else but an encounter with our temporality, more precisely confrontation with the ephemerality of our view: today, in 2008 we see and feel this particular film's problems of the above detailed cinematic qualities, but these feelings are compensated with the knowledge on the early cinema's production standards and styles. We know how the early films looked like, how they were conveying information, how they handled continuity, how their actors had to overact, and so on.

Above the obvious practice reasons (the film was made for a film school) there is one important consequence: This confrontation and recognition is extremely essential for the reflexive nature of our viewing strategies and interpretations.

If you sacrifice 5 minutes for the film you'll see these usually exploited and ruined archaizing cinematic approaches* are working very well and elaborate in this try. One more thing: it's Hungarian, but don't afraid, Bisztrókirálynő is 99% silent (I mean the film:) without any dialogues.



* for example music video- and advertisement clips are exploiting the early style, where usually their focuses are on another values (the band, the image, the product, ...) than the recreation of the history of film style.

8/10