A Tüz

A Tüz unfurls like a fever dream stitched from tinder and ember: a provincial town, already brittle with gossip, is ignited when Norbert Dán’s taciturn station-master pockets a single match, Tibor Lubinszky’s runaway apprentice steals a lantern, Ferenc Szécsi’s alcoholic notary misplaces a cigar, and Klára Peterdy’s reclusive embroiderer hoards paraffin under her floorboards. Their trajectories collide on the eve of St. Ivan’s fair, when a forgotten fireworks wagon—abandoned by a travelling cinematograph troupe—becomes the spark that devours half the settlement. Cinematographer Gusztáv Turán’s camera hovers above the blaze like a moth, then plunges into the inferno, singeing every pretence of bourgeois respectability. Children chase flaming kites across the rooftops; Camilla von Hollay’s baroness dances barefoot on molten cobbles, reciting forgotten folk hymns; Richard Kornay’s one-armed war veteran drags a piano into the square to accompany the crackle of beams. When dawn rises through smoke thick enough to carve, only scorched silhouettes remain—yet the survivors, ash-smeared and wordless, seem oddly newborn. József Pakots’s screenplay refuses redemption: the final reel lingers on Mária Regős’s mute orphan cradling a half-melted communion wafer, her gaze fixed on the horizon where the telegraph wires still glow red-hot.