Éva Palotai

The film takes place the Budapest Amusement Park in 1919, just before and during the proletarian dictatorship. After the outbreak of the proletarian dictatorship, both the former employee who returns from Russian captivity as a communist and the domestic philosopher spreading Marxists ideology regard the nationalisation of the Fun Fair vitally urgent. In this, the daughter of the owner of Orpheum Blau, Ilona, assisting most enthusiastically.

Blind luck ties the fate of two people together.

In this somewhat uneven political satire, good revolutionaries have overthrown a totalitarian state riddled with corruption on all levels when a truly naive bureaucrat (Boguslaw Linda) is placed on a jury that will judge the results of a history competition. Once on the jury, the young bureaucrat starts looking into the past himself and gets embroiled in a labyrinth. The past may well be unclear because recent leaders have certain facts that need to be kept buried. Filmmaker Janos Kovacsi borrows characteristics from revolutions in the Eastern European block (1950s-1980s) to create this post-revolutionary society with an idealist commander (Ferenc Zenthe) meant to lead them. A clue as to what happens next lies in the opening scene -- the funeral of the commander who has given his life for his cause. Ironically, Kovacsi undoubtedly faced censorship on this film. That would not only account for some uneven narration, but it adds a dimension of reality to the topic at hand.

Gruber is a normal 16-year-old growing up in Budapest in 1962, but he has a problem -- how does he get to know the opposite sex? At the Sunday afternoon dance classes the young "ladies and gentlemen" hold each other while dancing, and that makes the lessons worth something. Otherwise, the pianist's attention wanders and the orchestra does not exactly play with a single-minded dedication. In fact, everybody seems to have other things on their minds, except for the enthusiastic dance instructor and his ever-smiling assistant.

János Pilinszky explains his thoughts on the mechanism of thinking, seemingly banal things, faith, Simone Weil, and the scandal of the twentieth century.