As his 1981 film is rereleased, the director talks about his Oscar-winning fable about an actor’s Faustian pact with the Nazi party – and its new relevance
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t the 54th Academy Awards, in 1982, Chariots of Fire was imperial, and Katharine Hepburn broke records. Less remembered today is a darkly brilliant European film about a stage actor in Nazi Germany that went home from the ceremony with the best international feature prize. Mephisto, directed by István Szabó, was the first ever Hungarian film to do so.
“The moment took me by surprise,” remembers Szabó, 87, four decades later. “I didn’t expect it.” Visibly elated on the live broadcast as he took to the stage, Szabó today says that he “knew this award wasn’t just mine, but also Brandauer’s”, meaning the film’s electrifying lead actor, and the largely Hungarian crew “who contributed with their talent to the making of the film”.
Though 1981’s Mephisto was a landmark film in Hungarian cinema, it has largely disappeared. A DVD run in the early 2000s fell out of print, and the film has generally been overlooked by the major streaming platforms. This December, Second Run – in collaboration with the National Film Institute Hungary – have restored and rereleased Szabó’s masterpiece, along with its follow-ups Colonel Redl, an epic about a gay officer in the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Hanussen, a Nazi-era occult drama also featuring Klaus Maria Brandauer.
