The Witness

THE WITNESS - original, uncensored version

color, Hungarian film, English subtitles, 108’, 1969

(The Witness - in Hungarian with English subtitles)

directed by: Péter Bacsó

starring: Ferenc Kállai, Lajos Őze

***Not recommended for children under 12.***

The Witness has become a symbol of the socialist dictatorship in recent decades. After its production, it was locked away in a box for ten years, and was only screened for the first time in 1981 - in Cannes - and then shown in Hungary and in thirty-two other countries.

The filming - the series of stoppages, the cutting of individual scenes and the additions - was a typical compromise between power and art in the late sixties. The original version is five minutes longer than the version shown in ’81 and finally distributed. A darkroom scene referring to László Rajk can be seen in it, and the conversation is also more extensive, where the thousand-year stability of the church is contrasted with the newly born communist system. This version did not include the tram scene that ended the distributed version and took place several years later, which the director inserted at the end of the film in 1969 on the orders of the censors.

Based on the only remaining uncensored copy, it has now been possible to reconstruct the original version with the help of digital technology. The cut parts – several of which had their original negatives recovered from the Mafilm warehouse – were fully inserted into the film by the Filmlabor and “added” to the restored material of the version known to everyone.

“The Witness is like Kafka, Orwell, Pinter and Hašek (Švejk, a good soldier) all joined together… The way the nightmare of bureaucracy, mixed with the motifs of Big Brother, manifests itself from the state executive machinery towards the clumsy József Pelikán, is not humorous but sinister, elusively ambiguous.” (Alex Keneas, Newsday Garden City, July 14, 1984)