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The Passion (original title in Hungarian: Szenvedély) is an adaptation, probably the best one (the uploader’s humble opinion) of James M. Cain’s crime novel: The Postman Always Rings Twice. You might not agree with this but I’m sure it can be matched to Visconti’s Obsession or to the Bob Rafelson’s work preserving the original title of the book.
The Hungarian director György Fehér was a prominent director for television so this might be the cause he didn’t receive a wider acclaim. After the 1989 fall of the communism in Hungary he also made two films for the big screen. The second and the last one in his ouvre is the one in this torrent.
He was a friend of Béla Tarr, they collaborated in many films, for example Fehér was one of the producers of Satantango, Tarr’s monumental feature. And you might also discover Tarr’s name at the endtitles of this movie.

The connection between the two directors is also depictable in artistic ways. If you watch this and you saw some of Tarr’s work the resemblances will become evident.

Passion (1998) -- Gyorgy Feher.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2h 7mn
Size: 	2.49 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	960x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.667
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 600 Kbps
BPP: 	0.196
Audio
#1:  	Hungarian 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/310A38EAD96BC74/Passion_(1998)_–_Gyorgy_Feher.mkv

Language(s):Hungarian
Subtitles:English, French (muxed)

The post György Fehér – Szenvedély AKA Passion (1998) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja (Jesus Christ Horoscope, 1988) was made as the second film of a tetralogy. This time the theme is directly an agony of Communism. Cserhalmi plays a demonic-looking poet named Josef K (who, contrary to the author of Der Process / The Trial, has his surname spelt “Kaffka”) who in a black hat and a waving coat walks through different flats and hotels in Budapest and has unclear relationships with three women: Márta (Ildikó Bánsági) and ex-policewoman Kata (Dorottya Udvaros) are murdered in mysterious circumstances; Josef K himself then vanishes in the presence of a meteorologist, Juli (Juli Básti).

Meanwhile, a dreary group of nostalgic men recall Stalin in a luxurious restaurant. They recite Lenin’s texts, meet under black umbrellas and bury one of their fighting comrades. Collectively, they represent dark forces. Their actions, recorded by a videocamera, are parodically accompanied by revolutionary melodies adapted in the style of pop tunes. These are songs from Jancsó’s previous films, the same songs that steeled a nation about to plunge into a class struggle (“In the time of prehistoric man, oh…oh…yoho! / There were no poor or rich, oh…oh…yoho…”).

To a great extent, Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja is a film of quotations: we watch a documentary about an official visit of Nikita Khrushchev in 1958 on the TV, we listen to Lenin’s famous Letter to the Congress containing a critique of Stalin, Josef K tells how Mátyás Rákosi invited an ex-leader of the social democrats, Árpád Szakasits, to dinner in 1950 and let him be arrested, and we hear a disconcertingly long-term meteorological forecast. Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja keeps the grace of a period political “noir film” that testifies to the atmosphere of that short historical era when Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost already opened the questions of taboo past but the old guard of leaders and their security apparatus still had the power in Eastern Europe.

3.11GB | 1h 30m | 1920×1080 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/870D08FBFC40BD6/Jezus.Krisztus.horoszkopja.AKA.Jesus.Christ’s.Horoscope.1989.WEB.1080p.x264.mkv

Language(s):Hungarian
Subtitles:English

The post Miklós Jancsó – Jézus Krisztus horoszkópja AKA Jesus Christ’s Horoscope (1989) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.

4.38GB | 2h 26mn | 956×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/8D2CBE4A3B88E3B/Mephisto.1981.KL.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264-mat0.mkv

Language(s):German, Hungarian, English
Subtitles:English

The post István Szabó – Mephisto[4K Restoration] (1981) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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Austrian Klaus Schneider, who later comes to be known as Erik Jan Hanussen is wounded during World War I. While recovering in the care of Dr. Emil Bettleheim (Erland Josephson), the Doctor discovers that Schneider possesses empathic powers. After the war, with one friend as his manager and another as his lover, Schneider changes his name and goes to Berlin to perform in halls and theaters as a hypnotist and mind reader. His purported powers bring him to the attention of the Nazis which nurtures his fame and power – as well as his own troubles – to grow.

2.64GB | 1h 57min | 956×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/1F1FF253B0054A7/Hanussen_(1988)_-_BluRay_576p.mkv

Language:Hungarian
Subtitles:English, French

The post István Szabó – Hanussen (1988) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
There are times in “Mephisto” when the hero tries to explain himself by saying that he’s only an actor, and he has that almost right: All he is, is an actor. It’s not his fault that the Nazis have come to power, and that as a German-speaking actor he must choose between becoming a Nazi and being exiled into a foreign land without jobs or German actors. As long as he is acting, as long as he is not called upon to risk his real feelings, this man can act his way into the hearts of women, audiences, and the Nazi power structure. This is the story of a man who plays his life wearing masks, fearing that if the last mask is removed, he will have no face.

The actor is played by Klaus Maria Brandauer in one of the greatest movie performances I’ve ever seen. The character is not sympathetic, and yet we identify with him because he shares so many of our own weaknesses and fears. He is not a very good actor or a very good human being, but he is good enough to get by in ordinary times. As the movie opens, he’s a socialist, interested in all the most progressive new causes, and is even the proud lover of a black woman. By the end of the film, he has learned that his politics were a taste, not a conviction, and that he will do anything, flatter anybody, make any compromise.

“Mephisto” does an uncanny job of creating its period, of showing us Hamburg and Berlin from the 1920s to the 1940s. I’ve never seen a movie that does a better job of showing the seductive Nazi practice of providing party members with theatrical costumes, titles and pageantry. In this movie not being a Nazi is like being at a black-tie ball in a brown corduroy suit. Hendrik Hoefgen, the actor, is drawn to this world like a magnet. From his ambitious beginnings in the provincial German theater, he works his way up into more important roles and laterally into more important society.

All of his progress is based on lies. He marries a woman he does not love, because her father can do him some good. When the rise of the Nazis destroys his father-in-law’s power, he leaves his wife. He continues all this time to maintain his affair with his black mistress. He has a modest but undeniable talent as an actor, but prostitutes it by playing his favorite role, Mephistopheles in “Faust,” not as he could but as he calculates he should.

The obvious parallel here is between the hero of this film and the figure of tragedy who sold his soul to the devil. But “Mephisto” doesn’t depend upon easy parallels to make its point. This is a human story, and as the actor in this movie makes his way to the top of the Nazi propaganda structure and the bottom of his own soul, the movie is both merciless and understanding. This is a weak and shameful man, the film seems to say, but then it cautions us against throwing the first stone.

“Mephisto” is not a German but a Hungarian movie, directed by Istvan Szabo, the talented 44-year-old who has led his country’s cinema from relative obscurity to its present position as one of the best and most innovative film industries in Europe. Szabo, in his way, has made a companion film to Fassbinder’s “The Marriage of Maria Braun.” The Szabo film shows a man compromising his way to the top by lying to himself and everybody else, and throwing aside all moral standards. It ends as World War II is under way. The Fassbinder film begins after the destruction of the war, showing a woman clawing her way out of the rubble and repeating the same process of compromise, lies, and unquestioning materialism.

Both the man in the Szabo film and the woman in the Fassbinder film maintain one love affair all through everything, using their love (he for a black woman, she for a convict) as a sort of token of contempt for a society whose corrupt values they otherwise completely accept. The fact that they can still love, of course, makes it impossible for them to quite deceive themselves. That is the price they pay for their deals with the devil.
Roger Ebert

3.15GB | 2h 24m | 960×576 | mkv

http://nitroflare.com/view/5A3CAA6FC2C98B9/Istvan_Szabo_-_%281981%29_Mephisto.part1.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/2F4D4E51664BFCD/Istvan_Szabo_-_%281981%29_Mephisto.part2.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/DE6C99D95ADEF0C/Istvan_Szabo_-_%281981%29_Mephisto.part3.rar
http://nitroflare.com/view/D2CB5437D802F67/Istvan_Szabo_-_%281981%29_Mephisto.part4.rar

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English

The post István Szabó – Mephisto (1981) first appeared on Cinema of the World.