1972匈牙利
Virâgvasârnap (Palm Sunday), followed by three works - Meztelen vagy (Legend About the Death and Resurrection of Two Young Men, 1971), Szarvassâ vâltfiük (Sons of Fire, 1974) and Vârakozôk (Expectation, 1975) - evocatively photographed by Janos Kende and in the same mode. These four films have caused more critical dissent than most others in recent Hungarian memory. They have some naturalistic elements, and, as in the œuvre of Jancso, they often centre around moments of historical crisis, but they also aim at a difficult blending of the real and the poetic. Petrie describes Legend About the Death and Resurrection of Two Young Men as "virtually a documentant of gypsy life and a conscious attempt to present this in the form of a myth",4 and Jeancolas finds Gyongyossy's early manner "charged with hyperbole". The dangers are evident: that the director will lose control of the links that need to exist between the actual and symbolic elements in his films, so that the narrative is fragmented and his work comes to seem a matter of style, not of content. To some extent, as with Jancsô, these dangers are countered by the beauty and newness of the films' images, and the weight of their subjects: Gyôngyôssy says that he is interested in "the problem of salvation",49 and returns to this topic in work after work. But although Gyongyossy's first two films are often admired, Sons of Fire, a metaphoric, almost visionary account of a prison break-out during the Second World War, and Expectation, a tale of the illusions of wartime and an eventual return to reality, have had a more mixed reception. Gyôngyôssy died in 1994.