Watching Tavasz a viharban was a weird, grainy trip through time

If you have an hour to kill and don't mind squinting at a screen that looks like it was dragged through a hedge, Tavasz a viharban is actually worth a look. It is definitely for the people who like the 'vibe' of old, flickery archives and don't care about 4K resolution. If you need explosions or fast talking to stay awake, you will probably hate this movie within five minutes. 😴

I found myself watching Mór Ditrói’s face more than anything else. He has these eyes that look incredibly heavy, like he hasn't slept since the 1800s. There is a specific moment where he looks at a window and you can tell he's supposed to be worried about a storm. But the window is so small it just looks like he is staring at a wall very intensely.

The acting is that classic silent style where every emotion is dialed up to eleven. When someone is sad, they don't just cry, they basically collapse into their own furniture. It’s a bit like The Masks of the Devil but without the Hollywood budget to make the sets look fancy. These sets look like they might fall over if someone sneezes too hard.

Ferenc Pataki is also in this, playing a character who seems to spend most of his time looking confused. I think he was supposed to be deep in thought, but he mostly looks like he forgot where he parked his horse. It made me laugh a little, which I don't think was the point, but I liked it anyway.

There is a scene with a letter that goes on for a long time. Too long. The camera just stays on the paper and you have to read the handwriting, which is not easy when the film is this old. I actually had time to check my phone and the letter was still there when I looked back up. ✉️

The way they filmed the outdoors is what really caught me though. You can see the wind whipping through the trees in a way that feels very real and unpolished. It’s much more grounded than something like Bluebeard of the Jungle which feels totally fake. In this one, you can almost feel the dampness of the Hungarian countryside through the screen.

Kálmán Zsabka wrote this, and he clearly has a thing for dramatic entrances. Every time a new character walks into a room, they pause at the door like they are waiting for applause. It gives the whole thing a very theatrical feel, like you are watching a play from the back row of a dusty theater. Some of the cuts are a bit janky too, where a person is on one side of the room and then suddenly they are on the other side.

I noticed a dog in the background of one shot that looked like it didn't know it was in a movie. It just kind of wandered across the dirt path and looked at the camera for a second. That little mistake made me like the film more because it felt human. Real life is messy and this movie is definitely messy.

Anna Zs. Nagy does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the 'storm' part of the title. She looks perpetually terrified of the clouds. Her performance is exhausting to watch because she is always so tense. I hope she got a nice break after they finished filming.

The lighting is pretty hit or miss throughout the whole thing. Sometimes half of a person's face is just gone in the shadows. It’s not 'cinematic' lighting, it’s just 'we only had one lamp' lighting. But honestly? It adds to the spooky, old-world atmosphere of the whole experience.

I wouldnt say this is a masterpiece or anything. It’s just a weird little window into how people used to tell stories before everything got so complicated. It’s slow, it’s grainy, and the plot is basically just a series of people being stressed out in nice hats. 👒

If you're looking for something to put on in the background while you do something else, this isn't it. You have to really look at it to understand what's happening. But if you want to see what 1918 felt like in a Hungarian film studio, give it a go. Just dont expect a happy ending where everyone dances.

It’s better than some of the other stuff from that era that tries too hard to be 'art.' This just feels like a bunch of people trying their best to make a drama with what they had. And what they had was a lot of wind and some very intense actors. 🌪️