Film Reviews

Posted: Sun., Dec. 31, 1978, 11:00pm PT

Angi Vera

(Hungary)

Objektiv. Director Pal Gabor; Writer Pal Gabor; Camera Lajos Koltai Editor Eva Karmento; Music Gyorgy Selmeczi Art Andras Gyurki
Veronika Pap Erzsi Pasztor Tamas Dunai Eva Szabo Laszlo Halasz Laszlo Horvath
A cool treatment of early Communist Party training of selected people to fit into various areas of the new socialist regime at its beginnings in 1948. [Based on the novel by Endre Veszi,] it is mainly about an innocent 18-year-old girl and her corruption by the hardline, puritanical, Stalinist outlooks of the day.

Vera, played with intensity by Veronika Pap, attacks the rundown methods of a hospital she works at during a party meeting. She is singled out and sent off to party school. Here she gets tied up with a rather hardlining older woman who has her even turning in an old worker who has confided to them why he took part in a strike.

She is enamored of a married teacher and finally goes to his room for an idyllic love scene. But thinking her mentor has seen her, she renounces what she did in a self-confession scene before the school.

The good playing, the perceptive direction (despite its lack of more dramatic sweep), and its theme make this film an engrossing look at the period.

(Color) Extract of a review from 1979. Running time: 96 MIN.

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