The Five-Forty

Most of her colleagues take Mária, the new teacher to be a communist party-worker, only Irma and the drawing teacher Zoli treat her kindly. Mária starts working with great enthusiasm, and her class learns to love her in a short time.

In 1963 in Tihany, somebody addresses the writer Gábor Náday. He is reminded of a night drive in 1944 that saved his life. Painful memories start coming to Náday.

In 1956, a crusading newspaper reporter covers the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Initially critical of the communists, the feature later espouses the virtues of social changes implemented since the invasion.

The story recalling the spirit of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king quarrelling with his approaching death, takes place in a cancer hospital in Budapest. Dávid, the young ethnography scientist resigned to his lot and is indifferent to his approaching death. His specialist reckons, however, that such a searching and stubborn mind with thorough knowledge of the nature of his own illness, will be able to fight death.

This easy-to-take Hungarian drama is also known as Two Wishes. The prinicipal characters are a pair of juvenile delinquents, who may still be redeemable. The sullen duo is befriended by a kindly police inspector, who takes it upon himself to straighten out the boys. What follows cannot be termed surprsingly or innovative, though it is immensely satisfying. Of interest is the fact that a Communist-bloc film would admit to a delinquency problem in the so-called Worker's Paradise. Ket Vallomas was the Hungarian entry in the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.

Adaptation of Mór Jókai's classic 19th century novel on Mihály Tímár, the captain of a commercial Danube ship in the 1830s, who finds unexpected fortune by meeting a Turkish aristocrat fleeing from his home country with his daughter Tímea. On their journey, they find an unknown island on the Danube, called the Senki szigete (the Island of No-one), a sort of earthly paradise, with only an old woman and her young daughter Noémi living on it.

Az Aranyember (The Man of Gold) was based on a novel by Jokai, at one time Hungary's foremost storyteller. Set in the early 19th century, the story revolves around Timar (Ferenc Kiss), a ferryman on a Danish tugboat. Rescuing the daughter (Marisa Kormos) of a Turkish nobleman from a watery grave, Timar is rewarded with the girl's hand in marriage. Now rich beyond his wildest dreams, our hero finds he is unsatisfied; it seems he has never forgotten his true love, flower girl Noemi (Anna Fuzes). Timar is forced to suffer mightily until he is finally permitted a tender reunion with the girl of his dreams.

A young woman is killed after falling off her horse. Fate then shows the grief-stricken father what his daughter's life would have been like had she lived, but it is not how he had hoped.

On 26th of August 1939 the Ocania1 steamboat leaves the New York harbour with the ex-spy Maria Holm on board. Now she is the owner of a dressmaker's showroom, but for just one last time is taking important documents to Europe for the sake of peace.

László Bagyoni is forced to flee because he published a newspaper in the small Szekler village without permission. His friend Bence Uz, who lives in the mountains, takes him in. The notary's daughter Leticia arrives in the mountains with a hunting party. Her fiancé, Jonescu, becomes jealous of Bagyoni and the trip ends in anger. Uz Bence, who has made money from the hunt, wants to marry his old lover, Julie, but she has already married someone else. At Bence's intervention, the notary cancels Bagyoni's sentence. Meanwhile, Julis' husband dies and she is left alone with the baby. Julis leaves the child in the care of Bence while she goes to the city to serve.

The outbreak of war ends the love of Mária and Endre. Mária is still expecting the return of Endre, father of Anna, her daughter, who was born while her father was away. The war is long over. A few decades elapse, and a letter is accidentally discovered in a post office building now under reconstruction.

Karoly Makk's heartbreaking story of two unmarried sisters who cast wistful glances back at their lives, but still believe in hope and love, earned an Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1974. In this follow-up to the director's internationally acclaimed Love, Makk once again exhibits his extraordinary skills at drawing emotionally compelling performances from his talented female leads. Makk's film opposes the bleakness of the outside world with passion, love, and loyalty.

Based on Confession, a play by Rose Meller. Elma Bulla repeats her stage role as a young woman who takes the blame for a theft which she believes was committed by her lover. The ungrateful jerk assumes that she did commit the crime, and further supposes that she did it on behalf of his romantic rival. Throughout the rest of the film, Bulla tries to revoke her confession, only to find that no one will believe her. Only when the genuine culprit is revealed is Bulla cleared and reunited with her sweetheart -- though if ever there was a man unworthy of her devotion, it is surely this one! Devotees of newcomer Elma Bulla were thoroughly satisfied with this screen version of her theatrical triumph.

Iván Berend works with all his skills in the coal mine he inherited from his father. Fate brings him to fall in love with the beautiful Evila, the daughter of one of the miners. A wealthy Viennese banker, Félix Kaulmann, then buys up the Bondavölgy coalfield for money, but he cannot acquire Iván Berend's mine for the time being. To defeat his opponent, he comes up with a cunning plan. He takes Evila with him to the Austrian capital, then opens the new mine, luring Berend's best colleagues to him with a little more money. But he doesn't count on one thing.

It is a muster parade in Sarajevo in honour of Ferenc Ferdinánd. Polgár Éva and baron Várnay Miklós, her fiancé and a hussar captain, are preparing together for the event. In the meantime, the woman meets Borisz Boronow, a Russian painter. They fall in love with each other.

The head of the nunnery is dying, and the members are divided in two groups as the election of the new head approaches. Led by Virginia, the younger nuns stand up for changing the strict religious dogmas and would like a modern school with genuine science, a bathroom to be built, and a freer spirit. Their candidate is sister Magdolna, who went to secular universities, too. The seminarists, led by Király Erzsi, also rebel against the older nuns' strict discipline and the depressed atmosphere of the institution. However, Magdolna does not want to stay involved in the fight because she is deterred by Virginia's sinful attraction towards her and the tools Virginia is using to gain victory at any price.

Five friends, a piano-player, an actor, a critic, a doctor and a banker meet again for a twentieth school anniversary in the countryside mansion of the piano player. But the sudden arrival of an attractive woman upsets their peaceful plans...

Ágnes, Vass and Kriszt run a sanatorium for consumptives. Fifi, daughter of the institute owner is also here, mortally ill. Feri, the ski trainer relieves her with his courtship every now and then from her boredom and distress.

Hotel Sunrise is a busy place. Male guests are, almost without an exception, in love with Mária, the directress of the hotel.

Buda is mastered by the Turks. Student Gábor and his companion flee a troop into the castle, just in the garden of Gül Baba. Gábor and Leila, the daughter of Gül Baba fall in love with each other. Ali pasha, who wants to marry the girl, has the two Hungarians caught in order to let them be executed.

About a man's disappointment in love, and this provides the foundation for the upcoming trial of a much more significant love. The scene of the fatal meeting, the bar, which is a kind of world-model, and its environment: a fort under siege, from where it's almost impossible to escape...

After even his seventh fiancée dismisses him, Pali, longing for marriage and four children, falls in love with a Siamese diseuse and decides to marry her.

Dr. Ádám Koltay flees the city. Although he is the darling of society, he has grown weary of the emptiness of social life. He tents in the pure, unspoilt world of the snow-covered mountains, but on his first day, an unexpected event occurs: he must save the life of a young girl who has fallen off a cliff. In gratitude, she offers him an invitation to join the hustle and bustle of a nearby noisy resort, but Adam steals a kiss from her instead. Eve vows revenge, ready to do anything to disturb his peace.

Faithful to his word, Michael Tímar, captain of the St. Barbara, becomes the guardian of Kondya, daughter of a Turkish aristocrat on the run. Later, he weds the grateful young Turkish girl whom he saved from the waters of the Danube. While skillfully managing his wife's fortune, entrepreneur Tímar becomes an important wholesaler of wheat and exports his products to Brazil. But his marriage of convenience proves a failure. He is torn between the demands of bourgeois civilization, governed by money, and the ideal of freedom, consisting of living simply within nature. He then takes refuge by the side of the sweet Noemi on an island on the Danube.

Csutak is just a pain in the neck, the little boy is even excluded from play by his mates. Vacation is spent lonely until one day he sneaks the woman haulier's old, shabby horse, a creature that would be better off in a slaughterhouse, out with himself. Possessing the animal is the key to the children's gang. They all try to find a place for the horse.

1938 screen adaptation of the 1904 musical version of the classic Hungarian fairy tale poem by Sándor Petőfi about the romantic adventures of Kukorica Jancsi and his beloved Iluska.

Pál Völcsöky comes home from Sweden to get his uncle's heritage, the castle. The valet, Joachim informs him that all members of the Völcsöky family have a right to spend two weeks of honeymoon here.

An older man wants to propose to a young woman. However, her family decides to form a plot so that she won't get engaged.

The millionaire grandson of entrepreneur Dénes Bartos is hired as a tutor. Gábor Horváth Horváth of Monori, a doctor, drops his Monori name and goes down to Bartos Castle as Gábor Horváth to earn money to become independent of his industrialist father. His apprentice Gyurika is not the cutest kid, it has to be said, but his sister Lilian is really beautiful... And that's enough for a romantic, peaceful film.

Pataky Elemér arrives in the capital as a victim in his niece's divorce case. Having to meet the lawyer dr. Orbói István is, however, an alibi in an effort to get away from his quarrelsome wife, and to have some fun at the same time. He takes the lawyer with him.

1920 in a mining town in the country-side. The team of children led by Ferkó Boda fish guns and a flag of Red soldiers out of the local lake.

Tibor Ákos, an intrepid and dreamy Hungarian count, embarks on an incredible adventure when he accepts the inconceivable challenge set by the eccentric Professor Sirius, who has invented a peculiar machine.