SF in Budapest - Film & Television

Dubbed TV and Films

nospam@example.com (SF) — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:59:00 -0700

Hungary is fanatical about dubbing all foreign films and TV programs Everything is fair game for a Hungarian voiceover team - American gangster movies, Desperate Housewives, Law & Order CSI, Spongebob, commercials for men's body spray - anything.

Most of these voiceovers seem to use the same people. The male that you hear so often, in particular, always sounds like the same guy - about 40, has a deep voice and has a very macho delivery.

It's often not appropriate. As Hungarian philosopher Zsa Zsa Gabor once said: "Macho does not amount to mucho." And especially so when the actor who is being dubbed is, say, a prissy 22-year old British popstar weighing in at around 130 lbs.

What I get a kick out of is when they dub famous American actors. You haven't lived until you hear fluent Hungarian coming out of the mouth of the late Bernie Mac.

RIP Bernie - your soul is safe in Heaven now that you have assumed the mantle of a Hungarian family man martyr.

Péter Bacsó

nospam@example.com (SF) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:05:00 -0700

Péter Bacsó has died at 81. The legendary director and screenwriter was best known for directing satires and dramas of the Rákosi-Satalinist excesses visited upon the average Hungarian during the dark years of the communist era.

A glance at Bacsó's career shows that he was much more than the one-trick pony director of cult film touchstones. Beginning as an assistant director on Hungary's first postwar film of importance, Valahol Europaban (Somewhere in Europe), he found work as a script editor and screenwriter in the early 1950s, moving his way up to director in 1960 with Útinapló (Travel Diary).

After a handful of directorial efforts in the 60s including Nyár a Hegyen (Summer on the Mountain, 1967), a yarn about a group who want to turn a former quarry's detention camp into an artist's colony, he made his signature work, A Tanú.

A Tanú a.k.a. The Witness is a broad farce that looks to have been produced on a budget comparable with a western cult film - though the production values created an atmosphere very much in tune with the surreal nature of the film. The story concerns a Hungarian everyman who, after a chance encounter with an old friend who has a prestigious position in the communist party, becomes a pawn in a Kafkaesque power game. He is given plum jobs in return for future obligations that will require him to be a witness against his old friend in a party show trial.

Coincidentally, the pacing, mood and deadpan humor of The Witness is much like that of a famous American underground comedy made in the same year, Robert Downey Sr.'s notorious Putney Swope. The humor of these films, very controversial in their respective countries upon release, is applied to their intended targets with all the subtlety of a fire axe tearing apart a roomful of cheap furniture. This is the charm of both of them, and why The Witness was banned by the government and unseen by the general public until 10 years after it's release.

Scene from Bacsó Péter's A Tanú (The Witness).
Protagonist Josef Pelikan (Kallai Ferenc) runs afoul of the authorities following one of his many project management opportunities.

Following the suppression of A Tanú, Bacsó resumed screenwriting duties to adapt Tibor Déry's novel for another film regarded as a Hungarian classic - Karoly Makk's masterwork, Szerelem (Love, 1971).

Bacsó remained prolific as a director into the 1980s, directing on average a film per year until drifting into TV work in the mid-90s. A standout from his later period is Sztálin Menyasszonya (Stalin's Bride, 1991), a period piece set in the Soviet Union circa 1937. The story concerns a mentally disabled woman who wanders into a rural Russian village and attracts the scrutiny of the local KGB by way of cruel a whisper campaign of the locals.

Into the 21st century Bacsó worked with he biggest stars of modern Hungarian cinema such as Szábo Gyözo in the comedy De Kik Azok a Lumnitzer Nővérek? (Who are the Luminitzer Sisters?, 2006).

So with the international situation intensifying, we raise a glass of 6 puttonyos to remember Bacsó Péter and to also remember: Life is not just cream cakes, comrade!

More Hungarian 80s TV Ads

nospam@example.com (SF) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 05:46:00 -0700

TIMEA

To make sure the loose women of Hungary looked as good as their counterparts in Rome and Paris when they hit the clubs, there was Timea. From this ad I assume that the powder cases came alive to provide a chatty commentary on how good you looked as you applied their products.

At first I didn't get the marching music until I realized, oh igen, they're in uniform. I am a little slow sometimes.

You Tube Link

KONTRAX

OK I'm cheating a little - this one is really from '91. But it gets an honorary place in 80s Magyar TV for the Trevor Horn-inspired sampling, the Bowie "Let's Dance" feel, and all those the Gary Numan pyramids.

You Tube Link

MUANYAG

More electronic disco madness from the 80s, for a company who made those cool Hungarian windows that open vertically or horizontally depending which way you turn the handle.

A little hard to groove to the music here, though, as the cues only last a few microseconds. Apparently the creative director only had 100 forints to spend on the zene. So it goes in a planned economy.

You Tube Link