Precursors

Film as we understand it today—the spread of “living photographs” and “moving pictures”—was preceded by numerous optical devices and fairground attractions. As early as the early modern period, picture showmen presented stories depicted on large painted images. They pointed to individual scenes with a stick while narrating or singing the events.

From the seventeenth century onwards, the laterna magica, or “magic lantern”, became increasingly widespread. Using lenses, it projected images painted on glass plates.

Travelling showmen gave religious, historical or humorous performances at fairs and inns. Shows featuring projected images of ghosts, skeletons, demons and other eerie figures could prove particularly popular, while the showman heightened the effect with sounds, smoke and darkness.

The early nineteenth century brought an increasing number of technological innovations that created optical illusions of depth and movement. In 1891, W. K. L. Dickson developed the Kinetograph, which made it possible to record moving images. Its companion device was Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, through which the recorded images could be viewed.

The symbolic starting point of film history is 28 December 1895. On that day, in the basement of the Grand Café in Paris, the Lumière brothers screened their short motion pictures before a paying audience.

“Living Photographs” in Budapest

The first motion-picture screenings appeared in Budapest as early as the spring of 1896. Short films were projected onto the wall of a building in Váci Street, while Animatograph shows were held in the winter garden of the Somossy Orpheum from April onwards.

The Lumière Cinématographe was presented at the Royal Grand Hotel in May, first to representatives of the press and then to the general public. Charles Moisson, a cameraman working for the Lumière company, also filmed scenes in Budapest. On 8 June, at Dísz Square in Buda, he recorded the mounted ceremonial units and decorated carriages of the Millennium procession.

Motion-picture screenings first moved from fairground booths to the stages of variety theatres and musical entertainment venues, but soon also appeared among the attractions offered by elegant coffee houses. In 1899, the Velencze Coffee House on Rákóczi Road became one of the city’s best-known and most important screening venues.

The Birth of Hungarian Film and Cinema

The birth of Hungarian film is associated with A táncz (The Dance), which premiered on 30 April 1901. Combining elements of fiction and documentary filmmaking, A táncz consisted of a series of staged scenes. It was presented at the Uránia Scientific Theatre—today the Uránia National Film Theatre—as a visual accompaniment to Gyula Pekár’s lecture on the history of dance. Béla Zsitkovszky’s moving images featured well-known actors and dancers, including Lujza Blaha, Sári Fedák, Emília Márkus and Gyula Hegedűs.

The example of the Uránia Scientific Theatre also demonstrates how film screenings and filmmaking developed hand in hand. What had begun as an occasional attraction gradually assumed an institutional form and became a regular pastime, supported by scheduled programmes and commercial networks. The medium slowly developed into both an independent art form and an industry.

Budapest’s first cinema, the Ikonográf, proved short-lived. It opened in 1896 in a former shop at 41 Andrássy Avenue as a venture established by the Sziklai brothers, but it failed to attract a sufficiently large audience.

Following the appearance of several smaller screening venues, the five-hundred-seat Apollo Projectograph Theatre opened in late 1906. As Budapest’s first stone building constructed specifically as a cinema, it demonstrated the growing popularity of the new form of entertainment. The Omnia, the Moving Picture Theatre and the Tivoli Picture Playhouse soon followed.

By the early 1910s, feature-film production had become firmly established in both Budapest and Kolozsvár.

During the final years of peace before the First World War, filmmakers primarily produced literary adaptations, popular folk plays, romantic dramas, comedies and historical films. Released in 1912, Ma és holnap (Today and Tomorrow) entered film history as the first Hungarian film to fill an entire evening’s programme. One of its directors was Mihály Kertész .

In Kolozsvár, theatre director Jenő Janovics organised regular film production. He recognised that the theatre possessed everything the new medium required: actors, sets, stories and a disciplined organisational structure. Although he was actively involved in filmmaking for only seven years, his workshop produced nearly one tenth of all Hungarian silent films.

One of the most significant works produced by Janovics’s workshop was the 1914 film A tolonc (The Undesirable), directed by Mihály Kertész and adapted from Ede Tóth’s popular folk play.

At the same time, moving-picture theatres became increasingly popular, while their infrastructure and operation also underwent significant changes.

Numbered seats, fixed starting times and premiere programmes enhanced the prestige of both films and the more sophisticated cinemas that were then beginning to appear. Larger “movie palaces”, with cloakrooms, staff and velvet seats, evoked the world of elegant theatres, while smaller screening venues continued to offer inexpensive and readily accessible entertainment.

Jenő Heltai , to whom the Hungarian word "mozi" is attributed, depicted the dangers of “parvenu” cinema-going in his couplet Dal a moziról (Song of the Cinema) , perhaps alluding to the operation of the so-called “bell cinemas”: 'Berta’s belly starts to swell! / That is what, that is what happens when a silly goose/ Goes too often to the cine-cine-cinema”

After the First World War: Losses and a New Era

The political and economic crises of 1918–1919 brought the momentum of Hungarian film production to a halt. In 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic nationalised the film industry and sought to use motion pictures as political, educational and propaganda tools.

Another severe loss of the period was the emigration of numerous talented filmmakers. Many continued their careers in Vienna, Berlin, London or Hollywood.

Sándor Korda and Mihály Kertész began their international careers in Vienna. Korda became a leading producer in the British film industry, while Kertész achieved success in Hollywood under the name Michael Curtiz.

Adolf Czuckor, born in Ricse and later known as Adolph Zukor, became one of the most influential figures in the Hollywood studio system as one of the founders of Paramount Pictures. Vilmos Fried, who was born in Tolcsva and became known as William Fox, founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915, the predecessor of the later 20th Century Fox.

Hungarian film production continued to produce numerous significant works between the two world wars. A dada (The Nursemaid), released in 1920, was an adaptation of Sándor Bródy’s play. Béla Balogh’s 1921 melodrama A megfagyott gyermek (The Frozen Child) portrayed post-war poverty and the world of grieving families.

Film historians regard Károly Lajthay’s Drakula halála (Dracula’s Death), released in 1923, as the first Dracula film. Now considered lost, the silent film is a unique relic of Hungarian film history and an important work from the early period of horror and vampire cinema. Béla Lugosi achieved worldwide fame in the title role of the American film Dracula (1931), directed by Tod Browning. His performance shaped the cinematic image of the refined, aristocratic vampire for decades.

In 1923, Pál Fejős presented his screen adaptation of Géza Gárdonyi’s novel Egri csillagok (Stars of Eger), which proved highly successful. One of the last significant Hungarian silent films of the period was Rabmadár (Prisoner Bird) from 1929, which featured an international cast and was produced for foreign distribution. Directed by Pál Sugár and Lajos Lázár, the film stood out for its expressive use of light and shadow and its unusual visual compositions.

Movie Palaces and Phonofilms

While film production struggled, cinemas continued to develop spectacularly. Opened in 1922, the Corvin Moving Picture Theatre—with its dome, towers and reliefs—expressed through its architecture the cinema’s rising status.

By the end of the 1920s, film had truly found its voice: sound was no longer provided by an orchestra playing in the cinema but by a synchronised soundtrack recorded alongside the images.

Yet cinema had never truly been silent. Films were accompanied live by a pianist, a small ensemble or the cinema’s own orchestra. The music followed the rhythm of the scenes, influenced the audience’s emotions and masked the noise of the projector. Because of the live accompaniment, the same film sounded slightly different at every screening. Nor did audiences necessarily sit in silence. They commented on what they saw, laughed aloud, expressed their outrage or loudly voiced their opinions about the characters and locations.

Hungarian sound film developed in several stages. Csak egy kislány van a világon (There Is Only One Girl in the World) was originally made as a silent film in 1929, but music, sound effects and a few spoken passages were subsequently added.

The first domestically produced, feature-length talkie in the Hungarian language was Lajos Lázár’s A kék bálvány (The Blue Idol) in 1931. It failed, however, to win over audiences.

Two months later, Hyppolit, a lakáj (Hyppolit, the Butler), starring Gyula Kabos and Gyula Csortos, became an enormous success. Its fast-paced dialogue drew upon the distinctive humour of Budapest, while the protagonist’s lines—“I even eat onions with onions” and “Me, in a sports kit? What am I, a footballer?!”—became popular catchphrases. They demonstrated that sound was not merely a technological innovation but also a defining instrument of storytelling and characterisation.

“More than ninety per cent of Hungarian silent films have been lost or may still be hidden somewhere…”, writes the National Film Institute. The film stock used at the time was flammable, fragile and quick to deteriorate. Prints wore out, were destroyed or were recycled as raw material.

Yet these films—whether lost or preserved only in fragments—are more than cultural-historical relics. They are exceptionally valuable records of the first decades of the twentieth century. They preserve both high culture and popular culture, together with the everyday gestures, locations and social customs of a vanished age, while also bearing the marks of the historical upheavals of the twentieth century.

Zs. V.

translated by L. G.

Sources:

• Kőháti Zsolt: Tovamozduló ember tovamozduló világban. A magyar némafilm 1896–1931 között. Magyar Filmintézet, Budapest, 1996.
• Tóth Eszter Zsófia: Egyszer volt, hol nem volt: a magyar filmgyártás hőskora 
• 120 éves a magyar film 
• Uránia Nemzeti Filmszínház –Történet
• A 100 éves Corvin mozi története
• 100 éve nyílt meg a Royal Apollo mozi