The Red and the white
(Blu-ray)

In Hungarian with English subtitles.

Director, Miklós Jancsó; screenplay, Georgy Mdivani, Gyula Hernádi, Miklós Jancsó; photography, Tamás Somló.

Tibor Molnár, András Kozák, Józef Madaras, Tatyana Konyukova, Krystyna Mikolajewska.

Commissioned by the USSR as part of its celebration of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, but subsequently banned in that country, Jancsó's haunting film is a critique of the evil and absurdities of war. Set in Central Russia during the Civil War of 1918, the story concerns a contingent of Hungarians in the International Brigade of the Red Army who collide with counter-revolutionary White Russian troops in the hills along the Volga. The epic moves from an abandoned monastery to a riverbank hospital to a final hillside massacre. The film is noteworthy for its fluid camera movements which probe the cinematic landscape and the black and white photography which imbues the film with a surreal quality.