A TANÚ

Hungary 1949. The economy of scarcity affects also rural areas. Meat is rationed, but quickly sold out. So József Pelikán slaughters his domestic pig Dezső. That lands him in prison – for the first time, but not the last. It does not affect his ‘fairy tale’ career in the least. The party assigns him to be Hungary’s first orange farmer; later he is groomed to be the principal witness against his friend, a former minister.

Filmed as early as in 1969, the film found its way to the big screen only ten years later, shown only at two Budapest cinemas and film critics were at first banned from reviewing it. After its international première in Cannes, the grotesque parable about the absurdities of socialist life was sold to 32 countries. This year saw the screening of a 7 minute longer and digitally remastered version of this classic film, which in Hungary enjoys cult status especially for its dialogues. Many passages from the film were adopted into the Hungarian vocabulary. For instance, Pelikán tricks a Soviet general into taking a lemon for an orange: “The new Hungarian orange. It’s yellower, it’s sourer, but it’s ours.” JT