"Merry go Round" tells the timeless story of a young girl falling in love with another boy than chosen by her father. At this moment the same story in a slightly more complicated form is told in "The peasants" (2023, DK- and Hugh Welchman).
The merit of the film is however not in the story told, but in the way it is told. Only minimal use is made of spoken dialogue. Most of the emotions are conveyed by way of:
facial expression / close ups;
camera movements;
framing (are characters close or distant in space).
The film is slow paced and every scene gets the time it requires. Every scenes has his function in the plot, but to me two scenes did stand out.
In the first place the opening scene about the yearly carnival. The scene makes very clear that this is THE happening of the year in the otherwise quiet village, the youth making fun and the adults doing business. It is also in this scene that Mari (the girl) falls in love with Maté (the boy) while at the same time Sandor approaches her father about a marriage, laying the foundation for the rest of the film.
In the second place the dancing scene. On the last wedding before that of Sandor and Mari, Maté graps his change and asks his love (still a free girl) to dance. She agrees, ... and how. Much to the chagrin of Sandor the dance becomes ever more passionate, the camera moving along with the dancing couple. This (long) scene reminded me of the famous dancing scene in "Il Gattopardo" (1963, Luchino Visconti).
"Merry go round" was directed by Zoltan Fabri. He is a famous Hungarian director, two of his films being nominated for an Academy Award for Best foreign language film. Until "Merry go round" he was unknown to me. Being a film buff for more than 30 years I still discover new directors every couple of years. That's how rich film history is!
The film was released in 1956, which was also the year of the Hungarian uprising against the Communist rule. This made me wonder if there was some relationship between political activism and artistic freedom in movies the way we saw it in the Czech new wave. This is however not the case. Politcally the film is very correct in the Communist sense.
Lover Maté works for a collective and is for self determinatian in marital affairs.
Sandor and the father of Mari are free farmers. They are very conservative in marital affairs. They treat a marriage as a business oppurtinity ("Land marries land").
Only Mari has real character development. Loyal to her father at first, she finally stands up for her freedom.
Only approximately ten years after "Merry go round" did Hungarian cinema become innovative with directors such as Miklos Jancso ("The red and the white", 1967) and Istvan Szabo ("Love film", 1970).
The character of Maté was played by actor Imre Soos. He passed away a year later, only 27 years old. The circumstances surrounding his dead (he was found together with his wife) indicated a double suicide, but conspiracy theories never went away completely.
