‘Elektra, My Love’, directed by Miklós Jancsó in 1975, is a not a film on the list, but as Jancsó is rapidly turning into one of my favourite directors I had to watch it. The film follows the style of ‘Red Psalm’ from 1971, the action taking place entirely on the Puszta grasslands near Kunszentmiklós and composed of only twelve unbroken shots. It tells the story of Elektra, a woman oppressed by the dictator who murdered her father and who foments a rebellion. Jancsó’s movies evolved over time, from the relatively conventional storytelling of ‘My Way Home’ and ‘The Round-Up’, through the transition piece of ‘The Red and the White’, to the conceptually abstracted form of ‘Red Psalm’ and now this film. The story is told through occasional bursts of stylised dialogue, offset by Jancsó’s characteristic pageantry and carefully choreographed crowds of extras and horses. The participants swirl past the camera as if in a zoetrope barrel, whilst the overall effect of the film is that of an experimental stage-play extended both visually and in terms of scale. The setting of the plain gives the mise-en-scene a depth that is both disconcerting and profoundly moving. Finally, the film closes with the jarringly anachronistic appearance of a red helicopter. This had two effects: firstly it tied the ancient story with the modern setting of Hungary, drawing the events into the present and turning them into a reinforced political parable. Secondly, it brought to mind Jacques Demy’s similarly dislocating use of a helicopter in the 1970 fairy-tale musical ‘Donkey Skin’. But perhaps I’ve just watched too many films.

Would I recommend it? It’s not a coherent or magical as ‘Red Psalm’, but gives a sense of where Jancsó is heading. I’d watch in a double bill with ‘Red Psalm’ itself, or a weird on with ‘Donkey Skin’.