Miklós Jancsó
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Miklós Jancsó (Vác, September 27, 1921) is a Hungarian film director and screenwriter.
He achieved prominence in the 1960s. His most important works include Silence and Cry, Red Psalm, and The Red and the White. His films are characterized by elegantly choreographed long shots and long takes.
[edit] Biography
After graduation he studied law in Pécs, receiving his degree in Kolozsvár (Cluj) in 1944. He registered with the legal Bar but avoided a legal career. He moved to the capital Budapest in 1946. He marries Katalin Wowesznyi in 1949; their two children are Nyika (Miklós Jancsó Jr., b.1952) and Babus (Katalin Jancsó, b.1955). He received his Diploma in Film Directing at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest in 1950. After divorcing Katalin Wowesznyi, he married film director Márta Mészáros in 1958. In 1959 he met Hungarian author Gyula Hernádi, who went on to collaborate on Jancsó's films until his death in 2005. In 1968 Jancsó met Italian journalist and script authoress Giovanna Gagliardo in Budapest; they moved to Rome, where he worked for nearly a decade, with short periods in Budapest. In 1980 he separated from Gagliardo and married film editor Zsuzsa Csákány in 1981. They had a son, Dávid, in 1982. Miklós Jancsó has been honorary scholar at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest since 1988, and was guest teacher at Harvard between 1990 and 1992.
In 1958 he completed his first full-length feature film, The Bells Have Gone to Rome. Jancsó's 1965 film The Hopeless Ones was his first major critical success abroad. Later important works from this period are the films The Red and the White (1968), Silence and Cry (1968) and Winter Wind (1969), whereby he fully developed his style marks: notably, sustained long shots and takes, bold camera motion and emphatic choreography and composition. He also directed several short films and documentaries, and worked as theatre director from 1971.
He was awarded Best Director for The People Still Ask in Cannes 1972. In 1973 he was awarded the prestigious Kossuth Prize in Hungary. He received awards for his life work in 1979 and 1990, at Cannes and Venice respectively. He continued to make successful films after the fall of Communism, most notably his trilogy The Lord's Lantern in Budapest (1999), Anyád! A szúnyogok (2000) and Last Supper at the Arabian Gray Horse (2001).
