These important and powerfully relevant films are presented from stunning 4K restorations, and released for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK.
Mephisto
István Szabó’s brilliant retelling of the Faust legend centres on a struggling actor in 1930s Germany who desperately desires to be centre stage. When a Nazi party official offers to make him a star, he pushes aside his political qualms to revel in the adulation he receives. But his success, inevitably, comes at a price.
Featuring a powerhouse performance from Klaus Maria Brandauer, Mephisto is a haunting study in ambition, opportunism, and compromise. This Oscar®-winning film is now widely acknowledged to be Szabó’s masterpiece.
Colonel Redl (Redl ezredes)
Set in the years before WW1, Szabó’s film charts the rise and fall of the brilliant but unscrupulous Alfréd Redl, an ambitious young officer in the Austro-Hungarian military.
From humble beginnings Redl climbs to become the head of the Secret Police but, compromised by his hidden homosexuality, he is manipulated into a series of treasonous betrayals. Klaus Maria Brandauer's brilliant performance conveys the emotional complexity of a life destroyed by deceit and moral cowardice, as Redl becomes a prisoner of his own deceptions.
Hanussen
After suffering a head wound in the last days of WW1, a soldier claims he can read minds and foresee the future. Adopting the name Erik Jan Hanussen, he sets himself up as a clairvoyant in a Berlin theatre. He predicts the rise of fascism and the election of Hitler as Chancellor, thus ingratiating himself with those in power.
BLU-RAY 3-DISC LIMITED EDITION BOX-SET CONTENTS
• Mephisto, Colonel Redl and Hanussen presented from 4K restorations by the National Film Institute Hungary - Film Archive, supervised and approved by cinematographer Lajos Koltai.
• Four of István Szabó's acclaimed but rarely seen short film works, newly remastered in HD:
Variations on a Theme (Variációk egy témára, 1961), You (Te, 1963), Concert (Koncert, 1963), and City Map (Várostérkép, 1977).
• István Szabó - The Director Answers: A video interview with the award-winning filmmaker.
• Remembrance of József Romvári: Filmmaker Sophy Romvári's tribute to her grandfather, the production designer József Romvári, with narration by Szabó.
• Szabó’s Central Europe: A look at Szabó's Hungarian films.
• Individual Booklets each with new writing by Hungarian cinema experts John Cunningham, Peter Hames and Catherine Portuges.
• Trailers.
• New English subtitle translations.
• UK premieres on Blu-ray.
• Region Free (A/B/C) Blu-rays.