László Bakó

Biography

Born beneath the wide skies of Sárközújlak on 21 November 1872—today the Romanian village of Livada—László Bakó grew up where the Tisza plain meets the Carpathians, a landscape that later seeped into the quiet gravity of his screen roles. Within six restless years he stormed Hungarian cinema, trading village folklore for flickering light: in 1918 alone he stalked through the misty marshes of *Az ingovány* and crossed oceans in *A Kivándorló*, then reappeared in 1921 amid the whirl of peasant wedding revelry in *Matyólakodalom*. Audiences recognised the same steady gaze—half-poet, half-laborer—whether he played lovesick exile or festive father. On 5 August 1928 the projectors of Budapest fell dark forever; Bakó died in the city that had first projected his face, leaving only those three surviving reels to keep his pulse alive.