Acting
The "sleepless years" in this propaganda piece by director Felix Marlassy occur on Csepel Island, an island south of Budapest that is home to an armaments factory. The factory workers are shown being exploited by imperialists, capitalists gone berserk, and fascists, more or less in that exact chronological sequence. The heavy-handed approach does much to undercut the belief that when socialism finally takes over, the lives of the workers are brought up to a human level. In this instance, audiences might prefer a more nuanced and subtle statement, no matter what the message.
On New Year's Eve in 1956 the artist couple, the actor János and the dancer Viki are hastily packing. While they are waiting for the car, which is to take them across the border, their entire life is replayed in front of their eyes.
Marci is drafted from a typical block building in the 6th district in Pest. He says good-bye to Juli living in the same house, with whom they are both very much fond of each other, but neither of them makes a confession. Juli works in a factory, and with her friend Gizus she goes out in the evening for dancing and drinking. After a year, Marci comes back for holiday, he is full of love.
The protagonist of the story is Flora, a teacher who wants to teach in the village, in accordance with her vocation and her oath. Her beauty and purity bring her into conflict with the local authorities and with the landowning family of the countryside. Aware of her truth, she defies them, but can only count on the sympathy of the old priest. István Nagy Jr., the idle, dissolute landowner's son, falls in love with Flóra, and love changes him: he takes her side, exposing the lecherous hypocrites.
At Christmas Eve in 1944 the runaway Pintér and Gozsó get through the Soviet blockade around Budapest. Pintér intends to hide in a flat abandoned by his own relatives, but he finds his relatives called the Turnovszkys, who are hiding the Jewish Jutka as well. Love unfolds between Zoltán and Jutka.
Three people – a returned prisoner of war, his beautiful second wife, and the possessive, hunchbacked spinster who is his sister-in-law by his first marriage – are isolated in a little house under an extinct volcano, where each strives for personal happiness but is suffocated by their dependence on the others.
In 1905 Hungary, a young village woman has just undergone a marriage to the spoiled son of a man to whom her father is indebted, in order that the debt be cancelled, only to be spirited away by her true love, a young peasant, by whom she soon becomes pregnant. Together they attempt to find a way to buy up her father's debt and also pay for a divorce from her husband, against various odds.
Veronika, the niece of the parish priest of Glogova, came to the priesthood because of the death of her mother. While the priest was praying for a blessing in front of the cross in the field, a grey old man put an umbrella over the little girl. It is still believed in the village that St. Peter himself came to protect the little orphan from the rain. Years go by and Veronika grows up to be a beautiful girl, who falls in love with a law student from Pest, Gyuri Wibra. Interestingly enough, Gyuri - known to be the illegitimate son of the rich Gregorics - inherits only an umbrella from his father...
