Banned for many years in the USSR, Hungarian director Miklos Jancso's masterful The Red and the White is a haunting, powerful film about the absurdity and evil of war. Set in Central Russia during the Civil War of 1918, the story details the murderous entanglements between Russia's Red soldiers and the counter-revolutionary Whites in the hills along the Volga. The epic conflict moves with skillful speed from a deserted monastery to a riverbank hospital to a final, unforgettable hillside massacre. The director of such Hungarian cinema classics as Silence and Cry (1968), My Way Home (1967), Jancso here creates what many believe to be his finest work. The Red and the White is a moving visual feast where very inch of the cinemascope frame is used to magnificent effect. With his brilliant use of exceptionally long takes, vast and unchanging landscapes and Tames Somlo's hypnotic black and white photography, Jancso gives the film the quality of a surreal nightmare. In the director's uncompromising world, people lose all sense of identity and become hopeless pawns in the ultimate game of chance.

RED & THE WHITE, THE CSILLAGOSOK, KATON (DVD MOVIE)

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And I'm glad I did.

The second viewing is a real eye-opener. This film is simply extrodinary. Everything that disoriented me the first time, became a feature the second time. "The Red And The White" is one of the most fascinating and unconventional films I have ever seen.

The story involves the attempts by both Red and White Russian armies to hold a monastery during the Russian Civil war. It is told through a series of seemingly simple tracking shots, long takes that pass gently and slowly over the endless Russian landscape. People pass through these frames, on horseback, running, walking, marching, some floating to their destiny -- some we recognize from previous shots but most we will never see again.

Most conventional narrative begins with a point-of-view -- a decription of an event, made relevant by the personal drama of one of the participants. Jansco avoids this almost entirely by using his long takes and graceful tracking shots to capture a geography within which these events occur. How we interpret the actions of those we see is up to us. We aren't participating, simply observing.

There is drama, but not in the conventional sense. Instead of the standard scripted conversations, we hear snippets of arguments: nurses who refuse to seperate their patients by army; a Hungarian who refuses to shoot prisoners; a General organising a massacre. If it wasn't for the flawless tracking shots and perfectly timed framing, I would think it was a documentary. In this world the camera seems indifferent to it's subjects, as if simply recording a series of events. The deaths of hundreds don't appear to be any more significant in the frame than the landscape itself; they are just faces who pass us by. Some of them (the soldier who captures the horse; the nurse who is trapped into cooperating, the soldier who leaps to his death in a masterful -- and rare -- moment of editing), we recognise. But we don't know them. None of them have names. While people in the foreground stand waiting for their fate to be decided, a hundred soldiers march across a distant hill, the cavalry charges, gunfire is heard; our attention is distracted by the actions of distant figures. When we look back to the forground the people are gone.

We don't know them, we will never see them again. But now Jansco's cold hearted camera has made us a witness.

It didn't occur to me until days later, but this is probably what a UN Observer feels like.

28 of 30 found the following review helpful:

Buy it nowFeb 22, 2002
By Charles S. Tashiro
Great films like "The Red and the White" stun and overpower us into forgetting every other movie we have seen. They don't cater to our prejudices, they don't flatter us into feeling good about ourselves. They refresh the art's potential and risk losing their audiences through their radical singleness of purpose. They transform experience, in short they make a *difference.*

Such works result from one person, usually a director, pursuing an idea with a fascistic insistence that nothing matters more than the film. This is one reason Hollywood so rarely creates great works. Studios with a vested interest in keeping audiences infantile force even the best directors to trim their visions. Hollywood's contempt for the audience makes it impossible for a Miklos Janscó, with his disregard for the rules of smooth construction, indifference to sympathetic characterization, hypnotically absorbing camerawork and pessimism about humanity, to work on the scale his epic conception requires.

Staged on a huge canvas, this dramatization of an obscure incident during the Russian Civil War may take place in the Soviet Union, but at one level exists only in the world created by the film itself. Questions of historical or geographic veracity are moot. What matters is the inexorable unwinding of a logic that reveals the casual brutality of human behavior. Yet while the action is grim, what makes the film so powerful is how *beautiful* it is. "The Red and the White" is full of haunting, unforgettable moments, such as a dance in the forest by nurses commandeered to perform for a White Russian officer, or the shots of mounted Red cavalry fleeing a White bi-plane, or the bitter irony of witnessing the execution of a Cossack for an offense far less serious than those we have seen him commit. All of these moments are exquisitely, but quickly staged, the camera gliding by almost indifferently, as if barely interested in them.

It is tempting to suggest that the DVD's producers are barely interested in them either, since the transfer is at best acceptable. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend that if you are even remotely interested in the film that you buy the DVD without hesitation. Quite apart from the likelihood that it will quickly go out of print, it is rare indeed to be able to support such singularly epic visions, to prove to anyone interested in listening that audiences can, in fact, respond positively when treated as adults.

8 of 8 found the following review helpful:

Vast and breathtakingFeb 05, 2004
By Stephen Taylor
Like Ingmar Bergman's amazing film "Shame" (produced in the same year as "The Red and the White", 1968), Miklos Jancso's masterpiece evokes the vast and breathtaking panaroma of civil war on a small scale. No crashing, thundering armies here, and no heroes -- just murder on both sides. No plot really, no easy resolution, no ideology -- just the tension and menace of a venomous snake uncoiling in the sun.

At the center of the movie is a group of Hungarian volunteers who have come to Russia to fight for the Bolsheviks, either in 1919 or 1920. Caught in an abandoned monastery by a battalion of the counter-revolutionary, pro-Tsarist White Army, the Hungarians are let loose, in an apparent gesture of mercy, then hunted down while they scramble along the banks of the Volga futilely trying to escape. No mercy is shown to anyone on either side. Some of the Hungarians eventually meet up with a Red Army battalion, which is wiped out in a quixotic, unforgettable mini-battle against the Whites along the river. From beginning to end, Jancso squeezes every last drop of "beauty" out of war. Moreover, his refusal to romanticize the Bolshevik struggle in the Russian Revolution led to this film being banned by the Soviets for years.

Visually, "The Red and the White" is absolute eye candy. Jancso's genius, like Bergman's, is that he recognized the value of silence. As E.E. Cummings put it, "Nothing can surpass the mystery of stillness." There are whole scenes of this movie where the crickets and the grass say more than the people involved. And arguably, the Volga is a major figure in the film, too, the spectacular and flowing symbol of Mother Russia, a snake more lasting than violence and one that will outlive every blood-letting combatant fighting along her banks.

A dreamy and labyrinthine masterpiece. Get it. Five stars.

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:

Excellent Portrayal of War as MadnessDec 12, 2004
By Oslo Jargo "I'm still an atheist, thank the Devil"
This is a beautifully shot and sparse film that is filled with long takes reminiscent of the Russian Tarkovsky. The topic deals with the Russian revolution and the madness it spawned in warfare, namely from the Hungarian point of view, whose volunteers numbered some 48,000. It is difficult to understand what motived each character, for people are shot indiscriminately, they are freed in just the same manner and that is the nature of battle in this intense artistic film. The ending is one of the most cinematic moments ever, for those looking for a film with battles, this is not it, it's more visual.....

3 of 3 found the following review helpful:

Non-nurturing and relentless.Mar 08, 2009
By Ted Byrd
The Red and the White has been listed on some film critics' lists of "hundred greatest films". While it is good to listen to voices of authority, I think many viewers might not see the rationale of such a standing. So I offer this review from the non-expert side of the fence. If you are trying to broaden your horizons by exploring foreign films and have been pleasantly surprised, as I have, at the impressionistic beauty and symbolism of such directors as Bergman, Kurosawa, and Tarkovsky, you may have also been surprised to find many of their films are relatively easy to understand and appreciate. I found The Red and the White, however, not to be one of those films that sings to you and strokes your sensibilities. On the contrary; if you come to this film expecting sensitivity,it is instead likely to be an abrasive experience. I think if you are prepared you can avoid an unpleasant surprise. Probably, most of the discomfort arises because we have been conditioned, especially by American movies, to expect a strong leading player to be featured in every film. This movie displays the antithesis of that notion to about the highest degree of any non-documentary film I've ever seen. Instead, what we see are groups of people in which no individual stands out markedly from the rest, and even those who do achieve a modest screen presence are apt to abruptly be executed without so much as a long sentimental goodbye. So you are continually disconcerted, in watching this film, with having no individual you can latch onto and identify with. To add to this discomfort, the action demands close attention, or you will become hopelessly confused about which side is doing what to whom. You need to get on top of this movie from the start, orient yourself, and pay close attention. Okay, so I'll admit I had to watch it twice to reach this happy state of observation. One thing that has been said about this film is that it is deeply anti-war, and it is. But there is also a bias against the counterrevolutionary White army. Both sides are not portrayed as being equally brutal. The Reds capture some Whites and make them undress. Just when you think they are going to be executed, the commander tells them to go home. The Whites capture some Reds, act as though they are going to give them a chance to go free, then massacre them. The White officers as a group have that arrogant Teutonic Knight look about them. The Cossacks under their command brutalize the civilian population. The Reds are egalitarian and down to earth. The White officers have a frivolous party in the woods where the nurses are made to waltz with one another for their amusement. This movie was commissioned to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, so this bias is really no surprise, and was probably obligatory. The power struggle between ideological, national, and ethnic groups is a continual theme, but one which might be missed unless you are able to follow the subtitles closely. It is always of utmost importance for those who hold the upper hand at the moment to establish the affiliation of their captives. Are you Russian? Are you Hungarian? Are you a Red? Are you a landowner? So, the essence of the action is not centered around individuals, but around groups of people who are valued according to their affiliation, not their individuality. Such is the leveling and degrading effect of ideology and warfare, and was probably an intentional message encoded within the historical reenactment of this battle of fifty years before. There are no intimate mood-inducing cinematographic(Whew! Is that really a word?) touches to let you feel you are participating vicariously in an exciting adventure. Much of the action takes place in shots that comprise a panoramic view of the countryside, with the human players looking smaller than life. In one battle scene, the soldiers are so far away, it reminds me of Icarus falling into the sea hardly noticed, in Breughel's famous painting. I think the director Miclos Jancso, while nominally showing the upright cause of the Reds against the corrupt and decadent Whites, found several ways to play a trick on his Soviet sponsors. For instance, a pretty young nurse who has befriended wounded Reds is forced under threat of execution by a White officer who is momentarily the conqueror of that little piece of real estate, to identify the Reds in her care. A moment later, a righteous young Red officer has the comely nurse executed. "There Is No Excuse For Treason!" he cries with zeal. A moment still later, this same officer and his small band of compatriots, singing some kind of Russian "Marseillaise" march against an overwhelming force of Whites and are all slaughtered. You can't help but think that if only this guy had bought it a few minutes earlier, the pretty nurse might still be alive. It must have stuck in the craws of the Soviet censors to see a Communist on film doing all the right ideological things but still looking like a horse's butt. Another device used in the film which seemed subtly subversive to me was that when a position changed hands, as happened numerous times, the new masters of that piece of ground seemed to appear out of thin air to put an end to the current reign. This seemed to emphasize the transitory and relative benefit of being in control, no matter whether you were Red or White. So, for all you prospective watchers, I hope this has been helpful. The first time I watched the film, I found it to be jarring and inaccessible. After thinking about it for a while and then viewing it again, I found it to be quite interesting.

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