Magasiskola (The Falcons). 1970. Hungary. Directed by István Gaál. Screenplay by Gaál, Miklós Mészöly, based on the short story by Mészöly. With Ivan Andonov, György Bánffy, Judit Meszléry, Sándor Nádai, Gyula Molnár. US restoration premiere. DCP. In Hungarian; English subtitles. 86 min.
A Hungarian classic by one of its most subversive filmmakers—and winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes—István Gaál’s The Falcons is political cinema at its best: a tension-filled parable of domination and cruelty set within the rigidly ordered world of falconry and against the backdrop of a repressive dictatorship. Cut off from civilization in the remote Hungarian steppes, a young man apprentices himself to a master falconer who trains the birds of prey to kill other birds that ruin crops. Brutally clever in the arts of deception and manipulation, the master rules the farm with an iron hand, yet he also introduces the boy to the beauty and elemental force of these birds in flight. Gaál’s film itself alternately soars and confines in its use of balletic camera movements and tightly framed compositions, color symbolism, and András Szőllősy’s complex musical score of bird screeches and electrical hums, which was inspired by his expertise in the work of the composer Béla Bartók. Eerily of the moment, The Falcons transcends its historical specificity—an austere and encoded protest against the Hungarian Soviet puppet János Kádár—to encompass all forms of state, paramilitary, or cultic oppression.
4K restoration by the National Film Institute of Hungary. The restoration was carried out using the film’s original image and sound negatives under the professional supervision of the NFI Film Archive at NFI FilmLab and Focus Fox Studio in 2020.