Those familiar with Attila Janisch will be happy to hear that his complete works are now available in a box set...however, only the three main features contain English subtitles. Four DVDs; three cases; one box.
DVD 1 (also available separately)
Árnyék a havon (Magyarország - 1991):
Shadow in the Snow (71') w/English/French/Swedish subtitles. Anamorphic 2.35:1 black/white
Starring Miroslav Baka known for his work in Kieslowski's "Short Film about Killing"
Extra features below do not include English subtitles
* Janisch Attila Portrait (documentary about his career)
* Separate Interviews - Janisch Attilával, Forgách Andrással, Miroslaw Baká (this last one is in English, made very recently but is less than 5 minutes long)
* Screen tests - Miroslaw Baká and Bacsa Ildikó (a little over 10 minutes with Miroslav doing most of his tests in Polish)
* Kisfilm - Kameravázlatok
* Filmographies
* Photo Galleries -- including very insightful behind the scenes shots of the director in action
* Trailers for the three films
* His first short film - Róbert és Róbert – (1981) (24')--with an early appearance of Udvaras Dorrotya
* Early short film - Lélegzetvisszafojtva – (1985) (53')
Shadow on the Snow (1991)
March 31, 1992
Review/Film Festival; On the Run in a Hostile Hungary
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: March 31, 1992
"Shadow on the Snow," the moody first feature film by Attila Janisch, a 34-year-old Hungarian director, evokes a wintry bleakness that is so concentrated it leaves a lingering chill.
Filmed in inky black-and-white, it traces the peripatetic movements of Sandor Gaspar (Miroslaw Baka), a grim young man who shuttles between a crude country cabin and a bare city apartment with his daughter, Rebecca (Zsofi Baji). From Sandor's phone calls to characters who remain mostly off screen, it is obvious that he is desperate for money. And with his sharp, vulpine features and air of generalized furtiveness, he stirs up suspicion and hostility wherever he goes. He also has a stormy relationship with a girlfriend, Agnes (Johanna-Kreft Baka), who exudes more fear than affection during their tumultuous encounters.
Sandor is the sort of sullen hothead who invites trouble at every turn. And sure enough it arrives one day while he is standing in line at the post office. A robber enters the building and secures a bag of cash but in the last second stumbles and drops his booty. On an impulse, Sandor picks it up and flees conspicuously through the streets.
The rest of the film becomes a cold-eyed study of paranoia that turns into grim animal terror. After cowering in his apartment, Sandor tries to cover up the deed in a series of panicky maneuvers. But when Agnes shows him a front-page story about the crime with a drawing of his face, he flees with Rebecca to the country, where he becomes the object of a relentless manhunt.
In the fiendish ways it toys with the audience and in its icy view of the human condition, "Shadow on the Snow" has a lot in common with the early films of Roman Polanski. It is particularly adroit in its mixing of chilly soundtrack music with clinking sound effects of everyday objects filmed in close-up to evoke a jittery suspense.
But "Shadows on the Snow" is suffused with a desolation that runs deeper than Mr. Polanski's cynicism. Except for his attachment to his daughter, Sandor seems virtually disconnected from a world peopled with taciturn automatons, all of them potential enemies. And as played by Mr. Baka, the character exudes a certain magnetism while commanding very little sympathy. The city he inhabits is a place of sterile apartment buildings and scarred industrial wastelands. The country cabin has the cheerlessness of an army encampment before the age of electricity.
For Sandor it comes as almost a relief to find himself tracked down like an animal by gun-toting policemen. Long before he chanced onto this fugitive path, he knew the world was nothing but a desperate dog-eat-dog chase.
DVD 2:
Hosszú alkony (Magyarország - 1997):
Long Dusk--70', w/English, French, Swedish subtitles, anamorphic, color
Based on Shirley Jackson story, 'The Bus', and starring Törőcsik Mari (Love, Weekend in Pest and Buda, Merry-go-round)
Extra features do not include subtitles:
* Portrait of the director documentary (I believe a repeat)
* Interviews with: Janisch Attilá, Forgách András, Törőcsik Mari, Csuja Imré
* Kisfilm - Kameravázlatok
* Filmographies
* Galleries
* Trailers
* Early short film - Zizi – (1983) (34')
DVD 3 & 4 (available as a DVDx2 set):
Másnap (Magyarország - 2004):
After the Day Before --112', anamorphic, color, w/English, French, Swedish subtitles
Extra features do not include subtitles:
* 'Making of...' film
* Interviews with participants
* Short film -- location shots
* Deleted Scenes
* Portrait of the director documentary
* Interviews with: Forgách András, Ujlaki Dénes
* Filmographies
* Trailers for all three features
* Early short film - A másik part – (1984) (36')
Variety's Eddie Cockrell reviews
here (along with a number of French reviews) including shots from the film:
PREMIERES CRITIQUES
A wandering stranger may or may not be involved with a brutal murder in the astonishingly unclassifiable thriller "After the Day Before." Magyar helmer Attila Janisch eschews linear narrative in favor of a kind of waking dream state that is cumulatively creepy and ultimately terrifying. This is uncompromising, risk-taking contemporary Euro arthouse filmmaking at its best, and as such will be in great demand at festivals. Less certain is pic's commercial fate in mainstream play, though brave distribs shouldn't tarry in tracking down a print: Word-of-mouth both yea and nay among upscale auds will be formidable.
This unsettling item, which Janisch says is about "the psychology of sin," summons feelings and images from work as diverse as Bram Stoker's "Dracula," the canon of experimental icon Maya Deren and Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."
Dressed in a vest, tie and gabardine raincoat in spite of the boiling hot weather, a stranger gets off a truck in the middle of a rock-strewn, yet verdant, countryside and accepts a dilapidated bicycle from the driver. The visitor is searching for his inheritance, the apparently abandoned Gruber farm. He has no map or point of reference to guide him, only a faded photograph in a cigarette case.
"Don't rely on people helping you here," someone warns him early on, and that turns out to be true. Remaining absurdly over-dressed and toting a battered valise, the newcomer soon encounters Romek (Denes Ujlaki), who is irate over an apparent rendezvous between a young girl (Bori Derzsi) and the sullen Simon (Sandor Czeczo).
As the oddly calm stranger embarks on a zigzagging two-wheeled odyssey back and forth across the landscape, things just aren't adding up. What's with the local woman who lodged him that first night, and her daughter who sneaks in demanding that he kill her? And the strange dreams he's having? The severed lamb's head? The rooms that appear to be torture chambers? The Billie Holiday tune that wafts across the fields? And, who is this murdered young girl everyone mentions?Time becomes suspended, then shuffled, then irrelevant. Shattering climax rejects gore but is most definitely not for the faint of heart.
Janisch has been down this provocative path before, having directed "Long Twilight" from Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Bus," in 1996. His first featurefeature since then, "After the Day Before" required, per helmer, several years of location scouting alone to come up with the sinister topography that plays a majormajor role in pic's mood of profound disquiet.
Pic's complex imagery, courtesy of Andras Forgach's script, is dense in its preordained inevitability but never predictable, despite a distinct loss of momentum at about the 80-minute mark.
Lead Tibor Gaspar, a provincial theater talent making a physically demanding first film, has the perfect face and head for the many reaction shots required. Thesp's frightening mix of wonder and terror lends credence to the entire story.
EDDIE COCKRELL (VARIETY)
