American Torso

 

Amerikai Anzik – Hungarian tite

[American Torso – English translated title]

 

A 1975 Hungarian film production [Balázs Béla Stúdió (BBS)]

Producer:

Director: Gábor Bódy

Story: Ambrose Bierce

Screenplay: Péter Tímár

Cinematography: István Lugossy, Gábor Bódy, Péter Tímár

Music: Ferenc Sebö, Ferenc Liszt

Running time: 91 minutes

 

Cast:

Fiala János - Sándor Csutoros

Vereczky Ádám - György Cserhalmi

Boldogh - András Fekete

With: Jenõ Balaskó, László Benke, Gáspár Ferdinándy, Hornyánszky Gyula, Ferenc Jánossy, Ilona Keserû, Martha Lampland, György Sándor, Dénes Ujlaky, Eva Vandor,

János Béres, Keith Craine, István Császár, Gábor Deme, László Domonkos, Felföldi László (László Felföldy), Géza Gaul, Ed Hewitt, Mari Kiss, Ágnes Kreska, László Marczi, Méhes Lóránt (Lóránt Méhes), István Oswald, Pál P. Kiss, Ede Soltész, Éva Sugár

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.

Filmed at the Béla Balázs Studio, Hungary. The film commemorates the Hungarian emigration that occurred during the eighteen forties and shows the different fates that befell the three different characters: the rationalist, the fatalist and the romantic.

    American writer Ambrose Bierce’s materials were used for AMERICAN TORSO and the earlier French INCIDENT AT OWL CREEK. The production also culled material from Sándor Csoóri (poem), László Árvay & Gyula Kúné & János Fiala (diaries), Karl Marx (article), László Teleki (letter) to flesh out the script.

     Director Gábor Bódy created a special editing process that he called "light-editing", making the images look like they had been torn, aged and over-exposed so that they resembled a silent film that would have been taken in the late 19th century. Bódy pushed his experimentation and use of cinematic language as far as he could to achieve this.

The film was shown at the ERA New Horizons Film Festival, on July 26, 2005, in July in Wrocław, Poland.

    Too bad they didn’t get internationally known Hungarian actors John Bartha [János Bartha] (THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY) & Tom Felleghy [Tamás Fellegi] (BRUTE AND THE BEAST) to appear.

 

[Submitted by Michael Ferguson]