Cinema
Deadly Spring
Halálos tavasz
László Kalmár · 1939
Synopsis
Doctor Egry Iván makes the acquaintance, by chance, of Ralben Edit, a young woman of good society, and a violent passion at once binds them. He would like to marry her; meanwhile, they meet in secret in an apartment rented in Buda, for Edit is engaged to Count Ahrenberg, with whom she does not break. Iván tries to detach himself from her. The gentle and upright Nagy Józsa could offer him another life, but his passion for Edit holds him.
Context
The film adapts the novel that Lajos Zilahy had published in 1922, and Zilahy himself wrote the screenplay. Shot at the Hunnia studios in Budapest, it was released on 21 December 1939. Karády Katalin has her first film role in it, which made her a diva. Two endings were shot, one intended for the Italian Catholic audience. The censors banned the film shortly after its release, and critics now count it among the Hungarian films noirs. In 1944 the Gestapo arrested and tortured the actress; in the last months of the war she saved children destined for execution on the banks of the Danube, which earned her the title of Righteous Among the Nations in 2004. Her films were banned in 1949; she left Hungary in 1951 and from 1968 ran a hat salon in New York.
Who it is for
A melodrama of 1939 about a passion that consumes a man, with Karády Katalin's first scenes on screen; no French release has been located.
Prizes and reception
A great popular success on its release, in Hungary and abroad, it is now counted among the classics of Hungarian cinema.
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