#1147: TOTH, André de: Two Girls on the Street (1939)
TOTH, André de (Hungary)
Two Girls on the Street [1939]
Director/Writers
Commentary
None.
Introduction
By The Film Foundation World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese.
Excerpts
From a 1994 interview with de Toth.
Extras Rating (0-40):
Two Girls on the Street [1939]
Spine #1147
Blu-ray
The maverick Hollywood stylist André de Toth sharpened his craft in his native Hungary, where he directed five films, including this chic, dynamically paced melodrama studded with deco decor and jazzy musical interludes. Mária Tasnádi Fekete and Bella Bordy sparkle as upwardly mobile working women—one a musician in an all-girl band, the other a bricklayer—who join forces as they both try to make it in Budapest, supporting each other through changing economic fortunes, the advances of lecherous men, and the highs and heartbreaks of love. Kinetic camera work, brisk editing, and avant-garde imagery abound in Two Girls on the Street, an often strikingly modern ode to the power of working-class female solidarity.
79 minutes
Black and White
Monaural
in Hungarian
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2022
Black and White
Monaural
in Hungarian
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2022
Based on a play by Rezsö Török and Tamás Emod.
André de Toth was 26 when he wrote and directed Two Girls on the Street.
André de Toth was 26 when he wrote and directed Two Girls on the Street.
The Film
Another wonderful restoration, for which we can be thankful.
How many years have gone by when we have to wrestle with the morality of a film which depicts an attempted rape morphing into a love affair? Vica (Bella Bordy) is new to the big city, and finds a job in construction, a wonderfully friendly place for a young girl from the country … she hurts her leg, and and a co-worker soothes it, running his hand up her skirt.
She begs the big-shot Mr. Architect, Csiszár (Andor Atjay) for place to stay; the tool-shed, maybe. Trying to ignore her pleas, he finally grunts his approval. We soon discover that the tool-shed is right next to his late-night office, where he’s scribbling more plans. Leaving her door open, she undresses and he observes the procedure through shadows.
Without going into whether or not “she was asking for it” here in the 21st-century, he nevertheless attacks her. She is out in the rain.
So, too, is Gyöngyi (Mária Tasnádi Fekete). We met her earlier at a shotgun-wedding dinner, where she eventually dislodges the fact that she is pregnant to the horror of everyone at the table. She is disowned. [We later see a slightly horrifying scene of her abortion.]
She’s a talented violinist, however, and soon finds decent employment with an all-girls jazz band.
The two woman join forces and find a depressing place to live. When Vica (who is from the same town as Gyöngyi) learns of how she was disgraced, she writes to Gyöngyi’s father — pretty much extorting money from him.
The girls move into a stylish new apartment — built of course by Mr. Architect (but Vica can sense and even touch the masonry she carried up and down the wooden steps).
Gyöngyi — now dating Csiszár — seems to think she is “protecting” Vica from him, but Vica’s no dummy. She spirals into a depression — one of the most interesting parts of the film, where de Toth’s camera uses German Impressionism’s dutch angles and double exposures to great effect, and Szabolc Fényes’s score is very effective.
The final scene shows Vica and Csiszár at the top of one his new buildings under construction. If this were a film made today, she would have pushed him off …
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Seventy-six page booklet featuring an essay by Chris Fujiwara.
56
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Seventy-six page booklet featuring an essay by Chris Fujiwara.
“The lyrics of the theme song of Two Girls on the Street affirm the universality of betrayal, stating, in effect, that all is lies. ‘Save your breath,’ the song’s refrain, becomes a cynical password that circulates through the film. Performed first by the female orchestra, it gets taken up by a drunken customer, then, by two of the musicians in the dressing room; from there, it moves to the higher-class milieu of the nightclub to which Csiszár takes Gyöngyi. The resurfacing of the melody in the scoring of the final scene — mixed with the relentless string ostinato from the first construction-site sequence — casts further doubt on the happiness to which Vica seems to ascend at the fade-out.”
Commentary
None.
Introduction
By The Film Foundation World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese.
Excerpts
From a 1994 interview with de Toth.
Extras Rating (0-40):
Comments
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