Budapest Noir (2017) Reviews

• Very enjoyable modern Noir movie

  johnmaull2018-07-22

  This is a well-written, and well-acted movie that is beautifully shot. The plot, set in Budapest right before WWII, is an intriguing crime story that unfolds over the course of the movie and keeps you engaged. I loved seeing the re-enactment of Budapest in the 1930's.

• Convincing Noir Thriller

  Pairic2018-04-13

  Budapest Noir: Budapest, October 1936, dark, smokey, misty, it certainly has the feel of Raymond Chandler Noir but a tad colder. The Hungarian Prime Minister Gombos has striven to align Hungary with Hitler's Germany but now returns home in a coffin after dying in Munich. Anti-Semitism is on the rise and a Budapest City Square is named after Hitler. Gordon (Krisztián Kolovratnik) is a reporter on the crime beat rather than a PI but has many of the attributes of Philip marlowe. A young woman (Franciska Törocsik) is found dead on a street in the red light district, she has no means of identification apart from a Jewish prayer book. Gordon briefly encountered this woman before and is unwilling to just pass the death off as "just" the murder of a prostitute as the police are keen to do. Joined by his former lover, photographer Krisztina (Reká Tenki) he pursues the case with the determination of a detective rather than just a journalist. Krisztina is all too aware of the rising political tension and Anti-Semitism having just returned from Berlin. As the investigation continues Gordon is warned off by the formerly honest police chief Gellert (Zsolt Anger), he is beaten up by thugs, pistol-whipped by a mobster and Krisztina suffers similar indignities, for this case is bringing them closer to the higher echelons of Hungarian political and business circles.. In a scene reminiscent of Casablanca, Gordon beats up fascists in a bar who object to a "Jewish" song, he is involved in a car chase pursued by communists, yes, this is no ordinary murder. But he goes where the evidence takes him. The Budapest of 1936 is vividly recreated by director Eva Gardos along with cinematographer Elemer Ragalyi and set designer Pater Sparrow. Tight outdoor shots in present day Budapest avoid the necessity of CGI. Beautiful interiors have been crafted with an elite nightclub providing boxing matches between women over dinner and politicians playing cards upstairs, in a high class brothel women may be chosen from a pictorial menu. This contrasts with street corner card games and bare-knuckle boxing in the streets. Adapted from the eponymous novel by Vilmos Kondor, with the screenplay written by Andras Szeker. 8/10

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• Very moody, professionally executed enjoyable film

  arpadbeszedes2017-11-03

  Don't listen to some of the "professional" reviewers, this is a great film to watch. There is suspense, romance, humour and lots of atmosphere in this movie. Very nice images of 1930s Budapest and the interiors are great as well. Add to this excellent music, great acting, a not- too-complicated story, and there you have a start for a great evening with your spouse.

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• an authentic Hungarian film noir with a kosher twist

  alexdeleonfilm2017-12-01

  BUDAPEST NOIR BY ALEX image1.jpeg BUDAPEST NOIR is a murder mystery set in the German influenced Budapest of 1936 with Antisemitism on the rise. Superbly directed, acted, and beautifully lensed by master cinematographer Elemér Ragály. This is by far the Best Hungarian film of the year in what has been a very good year for Magyar cinema generally. In terms of genre the very first film of its kind from this country and an eye opener of the first order. Zsigmond Gordon (Krisztián Kolovratnik) is a tough scruffy unflappable investigative reporter for the biggest newspaper in Budapest in Horthy's increasingly fascist dominated Hungary. He specializes in murder stories but when a nameless hooker he met the night before is found dead on Nagydiófautca ("Big Walnut Street", the heart of the whorehouse district) and he starts following up on this "fait divers" which nobody else cares about or wants to know about he finds he is on to something far bigger than he bargained for. The mystery moves into high gear when the corpus dilecti disappears from the morgue. The coroner blithely consumes his fresh lunch amidst the freshly dead bodies as Gordon plies him with questions. Meanwhile his ex-girlfriend, Krisztina (who once gave him a very hard time, returns from Germany and plunks herself down in his apartment. Gordon has reservations about resuming the relationship but she's a very good photographer and good pictures are just what he needs to back up his investigation. Dialogue: He: (Cynically) "What happened. Didja give another guy a hard time in Berlin?" She: (Dryly) "Yeah. His name was Adolph and he had a little mustache under his nose". We soon gather that Krisztina's pictures showing the harassing of Jews got her into political hot water and she had to scram fast. However, she has received offers from Britain ... For the time being, since she is down and out, she is willing to work with Gordon to pay her way. The old flames are rekindled with a flourish of passion in a red dark room as critical pictures are developing and a rousing love scene ensues in the midst of all the noir anxiety and suspense. They are now a couple fighting crime together, but there is always an "if" in the air, because this is after all a film noir... with many surprising Jewish twists and turns (a Jewish ladies prayer book turns out to be a significant clue). This remarkable movie has the feeling of a Dashiel Hammet or Mickey Spillane thriller time-warped to the mid thirties in central Europe. Kolovratnik is outstanding as the tenacious reporter. So scruffy and noir to the core that he seems to be mouthing pure wisecrack English and could pass for Mike Hammer or Sam Spade if he were a gumshoe instead of a journalist. -- Inspired casting. This hitherto little known actor was born for the role. He won't be little known for long. All other roles are just as sharply etched, notably "Moochy" Zoltan as a restrained informer minus his customary buzzmeg vocabulary, and Kata Dobó as the flaming red-haired madame of an upscale brothel named "Les Fleurs du Mal". A fancy nightclub called The Ring features female boxers in a real ring as the Floor show. The owner is a wealthy coffee importer with high level connections in Berlin. Here the plot begins to thicken. Set pieces such as the frame-up of the hero are so smoothly handled they more or less ooze from the script. Period decor and reconstruction is letter perfect while those familiar with Budapest will recognize many locations even if slightly modified. The ending is a pure noir shocker which cannot be revealed here. Shrewd savvy direction by Éva Gárdos, a Hollywood industry veteran who directed the Hungarian American film "An American Rhapsody" with Nastassia Kinski and Scarlett Johansson in 2001, is impeccable. One wonders where she has been hiding all this time. Bottom Line: A perfect Hungarian film noir with kosher overtones but it took a Hungarian expatriate to make it! Splendid job. Ten stars are not enough.

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• Classic US film noir set in pre-Nazi Budapest.

  maurice_yacowar2018-05-22

  "It's Budapest, Ziggy." No, that line is not spoken here but it could've been. The echo, of course, of Polanski's Chinatown. Hungarian expat Eva Gardos brilliantly exercises the classic Hollywood film noir - but she sets it in 1936 Budapest. Normally the noir genre expresses America's postwar resignation, despair, cynicism, the nightmares of the political upheavals shadowed further by the cellars explored by the new psychology. It valourizes the fatalist isolation of the truth-seeking hero who is alone afflicted with terminal ethics. Taint contagious. By setting her revival of the genre in Hungary just before it submitted to the Nazis, Gardos reclaims the American genre as equally applicable to, perhaps even deriving from, the European culture. That did provide the genre's base in Existentialism as well as the harrowing revelations of WW II. The film may gain another element from her eye on America in its current chaos, abandonment of its traditional character and its corruption. She may suggest that Europe may now have to become what America has ceased to be. As Angela Merkel observed, Europe can't count on America anymore. So it has to slip itself into the philosophic, cultural and political structures America has vacated. So Gardos claims for Europe one of America's most iconic genres. Crime reporter Szigmund goes through the usual noir routine of working alone, bucking his boss's orders and some police charges, getting beaten up a few times, spurning some women, enjoying others but losing the one that counts. Down those garish mean night streets the man must walk alone. The quest takes the hero across the social spectrum. He confronts the government as well as street thugs. He visits boxing matches, first in a posh nightclub where both men and women fight each other, then in a lower scale alley venue. He traces his corpse back to a high-class brothel, aptly called Les fleurs de mal, where the pros lure their beaux into their lair. By the way, Szigmund also cracks as wise as the hardest boiled US dick. He and his sharp blonde photographer love could match Nick and Nora. Szigmund is determined to do whatever good he can, however small. He offers a coin to the hungry little daughter of the thug who just beat him up (and turns out to have killed the woman). Our hero's good deed only exposes the wider evil in that world: "I'm too young to do that," the baby-toothed girl explains, rejecting the coin. The kid's knowing and resignation are more chilling than her action would have been. Szigmund has an in with current police chief because he helped expose the corruption of his predecessor. That collaboration - and the chief's honesty - now pass their shelf-life expiry date. By solving the mystery of a Jewish prostitute's death he shines a brief light into the darkness about to break on the age. The plot pivots on the personal and global tragedy that grew out of Europe's antisemitism. The exact time is significant. The historic Hungarian prime minister Gyula Gombas, a latent Fascist, has just died and is being given an all-consuming state funeral. The death of an apparent whore would normally slip by unnoticed - except this one briefly connected with our hero and he won't let her death pass unmarked. The personal resolution opens into the international. The solution of the master is rooted in the antisemitism of the time. The girl left home because her father wouldn't let her marry her true love, a rabbi's son. That put her on the streets, then the brothel. But her father had his reasons. He knew the looming terror and the abiding danger, of being Jewish. Indeed his fortune and prospects for dealing with Nazi Germany hinge on this own conversion from the faith. The persecution of the Jews then - and some would add, arguably now - only led to the wider assault on other ethnicities, minorities, religions, and human rights in general. The assault goes beyond the Jewish woman and her father's death. Szigmund's photographer and lover Krisztina has just had to flee someone who objected to her photograph of the Jews assailed in Berlin: "His name was Adolph and he had a little moustache under his nose." In resistance, she's taking her work for an exhibition in London. In the last scene Szigmund's smokes-seller tells him he's closing his stand. He's a one-armed veteran of the last war, struggling to survive, too honest for politics, but he's a Jew. For that reason someone just threw a brick through his window. He has to leave. Szigmund tries to reassure him. After all, the reporter may know his crime world, his own conscience, the country's politics, perhaps even the noir conventions about to erupt in American cinemas. But he doesn't know the storm about to sweep from Berlin across Europe. So he tries to assure his frightened Jewish friend: "It's Budapest." That's where I came in.

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