Though based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 crime novella The Pledge (which was also the source for Sean Penn’s 2001 film of the same name), György Fehér’s Twilight plays more like an existential horror film than a noir or police procedural. Indeed, the ins and outs of the investigation into the mysterious murder of a child are of little concern to Fehér, who crafts a mood piece that’s keyed to the aura of dread and despair that grips a community in the wake of this and other similar murders.
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
- 2/15/2024
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
Though based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 crime novella The Pledge (which was also the source for Sean Penn’s 2001 film of the same name), György Fehér’s Twilight plays more like an existential horror film than a noir or police procedural. Indeed, the ins and outs of the investigation into the mysterious murder of a child are of little concern to Fehér, who crafts a mood piece that’s keyed to the aura of dread and despair that grips a community in the wake of this and other similar murders.
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
- 6/20/2023
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
Finally, an all-but-lost masterpiece lives again.
Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér, a protégé of his fellow countryman and master director Béla Tarr, died in 2002, but more than two decades later, his strange and stirring anti-mystery “Twilight” has been restored for the world to see.
You might recognize the story of a retiring detective pulled back in for One Last Job as he’s pushed to obsessive ends over a dead girl found missing in an ominous forest. “Twilight” is based on a 1955 novella by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt that itself was adapted by Sean Penn into the 2001 film “The Pledge,” starring Jack Nicholson as the wizened alcoholic private eye chasing a serial killer who may or may not exist.
In Feher’s “Twilight,” the detective is played by Péter Haumann, and he’s looking for a murderer known only as The Giant and who only seems to exist in scratch drawings...
Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér, a protégé of his fellow countryman and master director Béla Tarr, died in 2002, but more than two decades later, his strange and stirring anti-mystery “Twilight” has been restored for the world to see.
You might recognize the story of a retiring detective pulled back in for One Last Job as he’s pushed to obsessive ends over a dead girl found missing in an ominous forest. “Twilight” is based on a 1955 novella by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt that itself was adapted by Sean Penn into the 2001 film “The Pledge,” starring Jack Nicholson as the wizened alcoholic private eye chasing a serial killer who may or may not exist.
In Feher’s “Twilight,” the detective is played by Péter Haumann, and he’s looking for a murderer known only as The Giant and who only seems to exist in scratch drawings...
- 5/31/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
With the great auteur Béla Tarr no longer directing movies, the newly restored Twilight, by one of his compatriots in the small Hungarian moviemaking community, arrives as the next best thing. Restored and taking its first stateside theatrical bow (beginning with a run in New York) 33 years after it first hit festivals, György Fehér’s existentialist crime drama is drawn from the same cinematic DNA as Tarr’s distinct body of work. This is not pre-chewed, easily digestible entertainment but patience-testing and austere, built with long takes and pared-down dialogue. Twilight is a procedural with little procedure and, by design, no satisfying answers. The mood it builds is soul-shaking.
Call it Twin Peaks without the jokes or the colorful characters — or the color. Shot in gripping black-and-white, the film unfolds in remote towns in thickly forested mountains where evil hangs in the air, and its narrative revolves around a murdered 8-year-old girl.
Call it Twin Peaks without the jokes or the colorful characters — or the color. Shot in gripping black-and-white, the film unfolds in remote towns in thickly forested mountains where evil hangs in the air, and its narrative revolves around a murdered 8-year-old girl.
- 4/20/2023
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Upon completing duties as a debut screenwriter, Friedrich Dürrenmatt celebrated a job well done by promptly rewriting the whole thing. The Swiss playwright and novelist had bent to studio demands and relinquished control of his script, It Happened in Broad Daylight, to Hans Jacoby, a veteran Hollywood writer who knew what studios wanted and gave it to them. Dürrenmatt collaborated with Jacoby and turned in a by-the-numbers detective story where clues lead to the perp and justice was served. But he didn’t believe in it. He had come from the traditions of Brecht’s epic theater and German philosophy, neither of which promise happy endings. So he rewrote his screenplay into a short novel, The Pledge, the new opening of which introduces a crime writer who’s instantly berated for his predictable, unrealistic garbage. Now the characters reenact It Happened in Broad Daylight‘s story only to discover even...
- 4/19/2023
- by Z. W. Lewis
- The Film Stage
Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér's seldom seen 1990 masterpiece, Twilight, gets a 4K restoration treatment by the Hungarian Film Institute and distributed by Arbelos. The LA-based distribution and restoration company is known for their 4K rerelease of such classics as Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie, Matsumoto Toshio's Funeral Parade of Roses, and Wendel Harris's Chameleon Street, as well as fellow Hungarian master Béla Tarr's Satantango and Damnation. Fehér, who only directed two feature films during his lifetime, was a close collaborator on a number of Tarr's films and shared similar aesthetics. Shot by Miklós Gurban (Werckmeister Harmonies), the film is composed entirely of some 50 long tracking shots. And it is stunning. A retiring police inspector (Péter Haumann) is called in to investigate the murder of...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 4/17/2023
- Screen Anarchy
Before Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson’s romance for the ages––and before there was Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, and Reese Witherspoon’s 1998 neo-noir––there was Béla Tarr collaborator György Fehér’s gem Twilight. The Hungarian drama, virtually unseen since its 1990 premiere at Locarno Film Festival, has now received a 4K restoration and will begin its first-ever U.S. run at Film at Lincoln Center starting April 21. Ahead of the Arbelos release, the new trailer has arrived.
Shot by Miklós Gurbán (Werckmeister Harmonies), who supervised the restoration by National Film Institute – Hungarian Film Archive and FilmLab, supervised by Gurbán, here’s the synopsis:” After discovering the murdered body of a young girl deep in a mountainous forest, a hardened homicide detective pushes himself to increasingly obsessive ends in his quest to catch the serial killer – known only as “the Giant”—responsible for the crime.”
“I want to show...
Shot by Miklós Gurbán (Werckmeister Harmonies), who supervised the restoration by National Film Institute – Hungarian Film Archive and FilmLab, supervised by Gurbán, here’s the synopsis:” After discovering the murdered body of a young girl deep in a mountainous forest, a hardened homicide detective pushes himself to increasingly obsessive ends in his quest to catch the serial killer – known only as “the Giant”—responsible for the crime.”
“I want to show...
- 3/31/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Arbelos, a Los Angeles-based boutique film distribution company, has acquired North American rights to the new 4K restoration of Béla Tarr collaborator György Fehér’s landmark but long unseen Hungarian masterpiece “Twilight” (“Szürkület”). The restored version of the film world premiered in the Berlinale’s Classics strand on Monday. Hungary’s National Film Institute handled the sale.
Fehér, who made only two theatrical features, shot the black-and-white film at the end of the 1980s. Based on the crime novella “The Pledge” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, it is the story of a retired detective who uses a girl as bait to try to catch a serial killer.
The 4K restoration, using the original 35mm camera negative and magnetic sound tapes, was carried out at Hungary’s National Film Institute. The color grading was supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Miklós Gurbán.
The film premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in...
Fehér, who made only two theatrical features, shot the black-and-white film at the end of the 1980s. Based on the crime novella “The Pledge” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, it is the story of a retired detective who uses a girl as bait to try to catch a serial killer.
The 4K restoration, using the original 35mm camera negative and magnetic sound tapes, was carried out at Hungary’s National Film Institute. The color grading was supervised by the film’s cinematographer, Miklós Gurbán.
The film premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival in...
- 2/23/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
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