Narcissus and Psyche

Nárcisz és Psyché

Hungary

1980

261 Min

Color

1.37:1

Hungarian

Currently 4.5/5 Stars.
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SCR Gábor Bódy, Vilmos Csaplár, Vera Varga, Sándor Weöres

CAST Patricia Adriani, Udo Kier, György Cserhalmi, Éva Tóth, Dénes Ujlaky, Erzsébet Kútvölgyi, Zoltán Bonta, Hunor Bucz, Ingrid Caven, Nicole Coren, Dezsö Garas

SOUND István Sipos

Cannes (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), Locarno (International Competition): Ernest Artaria Award, San Francisco, Berlinale (Forum), Berlinale (Forum)

Synopsis

An experimentalist, film-poet, iconoclast, it is difficult to categorize Gabor Body. His work in the Hungarian cinema has attracted the attention of international critics and he won prizes and acclaim at several festivals for his first feature film, American Torso (1976) based on a story by Ambrose Bierce. Gabor Body was born in Budapest and graduated from the University there with a degree in history and philosophy. He is now in charge of the Experimental Section “Kx” of Mafilm Studios, Budapest and is working on the draft of an International Encyclopedia of Experimental Films. Body’s second feature, Narcissus and Psyche was shown at Cannes 1981 as part of the Directors Fortnight of new cinema. It is based on the writings of Sandor Weores, one of Hungary’s most distinguished leading poets. The “Psyche” of the title is the ageless, beautiful poetess Erzebet Longyay, a fictitious creation of Weores. Body has made her a timeless siren and follows her loves and adventures through the early 19th century to the middle of the 1930s, and during this period of 120 years the characters do not age. The “Narcissus” is the heroine’s poet-lover, Laszlo. The film is definitely a visual journey in which the spectator finds images of surprising originality and beauty. Body’s frame of reference, in addition to Weore’s poems, is also Nietzsche’s relationship with his lover, Lou Andreas Salome, and different romantic episodes in one’s daily life. He says that he has tried to make Narcissus and Psyche a myth, a myth of antagonism born of European culture, according to which men and women can only find their physical and intellectual liberty at the expense of others. “And in spite of 35 years of socialism, my generation is still living in this antagonism." —Albert Johnson, San Francisco Film Society

Director

Gábor Bódy

Gábor Bódy (30 August 1946 – 25 October 1985) was a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, theoretic, and occasional actor. A pioneer of experimental filmmaking and film language, Bódy is one of the most important figures of Hungarian cinema.

Bódy was born in Budapest, in an urban middle-class family. He studied history and philosophy at Loránd Eötvös University and later filmmaking at the Academy for Theater and Film Arts. During his university days he became an influential member of the Béla Balázs Stúdió (BBS). He made his first film A Harmadik (The Third) (a documentary about students preparing an adaptation of Faust on stage) in 1971. He established various experimental and avantgarde projects at BBS including the Film Language Series in 1973 and the K/3 experimental film group in 1976, reshaping the postwar Hungarian avantgarde film’s path.

In 1975 he completed his debut feature at BBS, which was also his graduation thesis film at the university. Amerikai Anzix… read more

Gábor Bódy (30 August 1946 – 25 October 1985) was a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, theoretic, and occasional actor. A pioneer of experimental filmmaking and film language, Bódy is one of the most important figures of Hungarian cinema.

Bódy was born in Budapest, in an urban middle-class family. He studied history and philosophy at Loránd Eötvös University and later filmmaking at the Academy for Theater and Film Arts. During his university days he became an influential member of the Béla Balázs Stúdió (BBS). He made his first film A Harmadik (The Third) (a documentary about students preparing an adaptation of Faust on stage) in 1971. He established various experimental and avantgarde projects at BBS including the Film Language Series in 1973 and the K/3 experimental film group in 1976, reshaping the postwar Hungarian avantgarde film’s path.

In 1975 he completed his debut feature at BBS, which was also his graduation thesis film at the university. Amerikai Anzix (American Torso) won the Grand Prize for best new filmmaker at “International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg” and the Hungarian Film Critics prize for best first film. The film which depicts the lives of Hungarian 1848 Revolution veterans in the American Civil War features Bódy’s experimentalism at the fullest. The whole film was re-edited using his own method called “light editing” in order to make it resemble a wracked silent film from the late 19th century.

His next feature Narcisz és Psyché was the largest-scale Hungarian production of its era. This epic production based on Sándor Weöres’s poetic work Psyché starred Patricia Adriani, Udo Kier and György Cserhalmi and exists in three versions: an original 210min two part version, a 136min version for foreign distribution and a 270min three part television version.

In 1980 Bódy began to work on the first international video magazine INFERMENTAL and managed to publish the first of 10 issues (plus one special issue) while on a residency at DAAD Berliner Küunstlerprogram in 1982. The series published featured a range of guest editors and in total included work from over 1500 artists from 36 countries and was published up to 1991.

After many frustrated projects Bódy managed to complete what was to become his final feature film Kutya éji dala (Dog’s Night Song). Bódy cast himself as the lead in this ambitious and influential feature which incorporated Super8 and video footage as well as a range of Hungarian underground punk bands of the time in order to a film “deeply rooted in the fundamentals of today’s reality.”

In 1985 Bódy died under sketchy circumstances. A later published information (2001) hints his earlier collaboration (1973–1983) with the Hungarian Secret Police, the III/III. Authorities of the time (Hungary was then considered a ‘satellite’ country of the Soviet Union) stated that he had killed himself. His widow instead preferred a charge of murder against certain unidentified parties. No official investigation followed and Bódy’s fate remains a mystery to this day. —Wikipedia

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