TRIBUTE TO A MASTER
MERRY-GO-ROUND
KÖRHINTA
Director: Zoltán Fábri
Hungary / 1956 / Black & White / 90' / Hungarian; Turkish subtitles
Screenplay: Zoltán Fábri, László Nádasy
Music: György Ránki
Cinematography: Barnabás Hegyi
Editing: Mária Szécsényi
Cast: Mari Törőcsik, Ádám Szirtes, Béla Barsi, Manyi Kiss, Imre Soós
Producer: György Zombory
Production Company: Magyar Filmgyártó ÁV
Set in a village undergoing profound social change, young and promising farmer’s daughter Mari Pataki is forbidden by her father to see her lover. For him, the only priority is the land and securing future wealth. He decides to marry Mari to another co-farmer, insisting, “Land marries land,” believing the old Hungarian farmers’ law to be unchangeable. Yet, the young lover overcomes all obstacles to win Mari’s heart.
Merry-Go-Round expresses with poetic force the triumph of love over rigid social expectations and traditions. The film, a major success at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, marked the beginning of Zoltán Fábri’s illustrious career.
Screened with the support of the Liszt Institute and the National Film Institute Hungary.
TRAILER
Zoltán Fábri
A leading figure of Hungary’s 'New Cinema', Zoltán Fábri helped open international markets to Eastern European films with his ‘Merry-Go-Round’ (1956), a colorful adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which was nominated for the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. Fábri’s ‘The Boys of Paul Street’ (1968) received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. He won the Grand Jury Prize at the Moscow Festival for ‘141 Minutes from the Unfinished Sentence’ (1975), the Grand Prize at Moscow for ‘The Fifth Seal’ (1976), and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival for the screenplay of ‘Requiem’ (1981).
Other notable works include ‘The Storm’ (1952), ‘Professor Hannibal’ (1956), ‘Darkness In Daytime’ (1963), and ‘The Homecoming’ (1983). Born in Budapest, Fábri studied theatre design at the College of Fine Arts and directing at the Academy of Theatre and Film Art. After spending much of World War II as a prisoner of war, he became a director at Budapest’s National Theatre and made his screen debut in 1951. He wrote the scripts and designed the sets for most of his films, and in his later years served as President of the Union of Hungarian Cinema and Television Artists.