Fábri 100 - Merry-Go-Round

Director: Fábri Zoltán

This being the year of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Zoltán Fábri, the 70th jubilee Cannes festival welcomed once again, this time in the classical section, his film manifestly renewing the language of Hungarian filmmaking, for the sake of which, in 1956, François Truffaut (the later leading personality of the French new wave, back then still a very young film critic) launched a minor revolution, insisting that this film and its protagonist, Mari Törőcsik, should have won the Golden Palm. Differing from the writer Imre Sarkadi’s short story with its focus on the enforcement of agricultural cooperatives, Fábri concentrated on the passion of love. Each and every shot of Merry-Go-Round is a visual event, a composition in its own right, an experiment by universal standards, while the brilliance of Mari Törőcsik, Imre Soós and Ádám Szirtes sets the highest standards to acting, and the dance consisting of 77 cuts has become an iconic scene of Hungarian film due to its ecstatic representation of the right of happiness, of the power of inner freedom. The complete 4K digital restoration of the film was performed in 2017.

Written by: Sarkadi Imre (novel)
Screenplay by: Nádasy László, Fábri Zoltán
Director of photography: Hegyi Barnabás
Music by: Ránki György
Cast: Törőcsik Mari, Soós Imre, Szirtes Ádám, Barsi Béla, Kiss Manyi
Genre: drama
Production: Magyar Filmgyártó ÁV
Format: black and white, 1:1.37, 4K restored

Awards and selections:
1956 Cannes Film Festival – In Competition
1968, 2000 Part of The Budapest 12 – One of Hungary’s Best Films
2017 Cannes Classics – Official Selection