“Collusion does not require dictatorship”: Istvan Szabó talks about Nazi actor’s masterpiece Mephisto | film

AAt the 54th Academy Awards, 1982, Chariots of Fire was an empire, and Katharine Hepburn broke records. Less remembered today is the wonderful European film about a theater actor in Nazi Germany who returns home after the ceremony with the award for Best International Feature Film. Mephisto, directed by István Szabo, was the first Hungarian film ever to do so.

“That moment took me by surprise,” Szabo, now 87, recalls four decades later. “I wasn’t expecting that.” Visibly beaming on the live feed as he took to the stage, Szabó says he “knew that this award wasn’t just for me, but for Brandauer as well,” the film’s exciting lead actor, and the largely Hungarian crew “who contributed their talent to the making of the film.”

Although 1981’s Mephisto was a landmark film in Hungarian cinema, it has largely disappeared. The DVD release went out of print in the early 2000s, and the film was generally overlooked by major streaming platforms. In December of this year, Second Run – in collaboration with Hungary’s National Film Institute – restored and re-released Szabó’s masterpiece, along with its follow-ups Colonel Riedel, an epic about a gay officer in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Hanussen, a Nazi-era mystery drama that also stars Klaus Maria Brandauer.

Mephisto tells the story of Hendrik Hofgen. Aspiring theater actor With the Nazis coming to power in Germany, Höfgen cuts himself off from his roots in the left-wing theater scene to ingratiate himself with the fascist regime. “Hofgen is a very talented actor and wants to confirm his talent at any cost,” says Szabo. “To stand in the middle of the stage, in the spotlight.” Friends and colleagues are arrested, killed, and exiled. But Höfgen delves deeper into the Nazis, who make him head of the Berlin State Theater.

All of this is told through the extraordinary central performance of Brandauer, the Austrian actor (later director) who captures all of Hofgen’s thwarted ambition, willful ignorance and fatal ability to seduce in a performance as vivid and shocking as any in the history of cinema. Today, Szabo pays tribute to the “particularly talented actor” with whom he recently collaborated in the final report for 2020. “It was important for me, for us, to decide what to show closely what of Brandauer’s secrets. What he reveals and what he hides.”

“Mephisto” is based on the true-life story of Gustav Gründgens, whose career soared when the Nazis provided financial support to the theater to shape it in their own image. In 1936, Gründgens’ former lover, Klaus Mann, wrote a scathing, thinly veiled novel about the actor, which was later the subject of a landmark libel case in the 1960s that led to the book being banned (on paper, the ban remains in place today, despite the book being widely published). Grundgens died in 1963 and has never publicly expressed remorse for his Nazi affiliations. But in Zaboo’s hands, Mephisto It becomes a universal work of art: specific and devoid of clichés about 1930s German politics, but also a broader Faustian tale about man’s opportunistic complicity with evil.

As tyranny rises around the world, does Mephisto hold lessons for the 21st century? “The desire for self-affirmation is a human trait that can create many positive values,” says the director. “The problem arises when it is used for the wrong ideology or policy, and the talented person allows himself to be exploited, or even fight to support those in power. This still exists in the 21st century, and does not necessarily require a dictatorship. The power of business is sufficient. Or any other motive.” Szabo deflects a question about Hungary’s 2026 parliamentary elections, believed to be the toughest for Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party during its 15-year term (“Of course I’m interested, like everyone else”).

This year has seen an increased focus on Hungarian art, with László Krásznahorkai receiving this year’s Nobel Prize in Arts and Literature. Booker Prize for Hungarian-British novelist David Szalái. Szabó says he considers himself a Hungarian director, “but it is important to emphasize the presence of Central Europe in this context. History moves relentlessly through Central Europe.” In Szabo’s work, this meant depicting the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Holocaust (Szabo explored his wartime Jewish upbringing in Budapest in films such as Sunshine and the Early Father ) and the communist dictatorship in Hungary (in 2006, he admitted to reporting to the secret police, which he said was part of an effort to save a classmate’s life).

Szabó is as pessimistic about cinema as directors in their 80s tend to be, but he praises Barnabas Toth’s 2019 film Those Who Remain, a lyrical film about life after the Holocaust, and Balint Semler’s controversial film Fekete Punt (Lesson Learned), a broadside against Hungary’s public education system. So far, the only other Hungarian film to match Mephisto’s Oscar-winning achievement is 2015’s Son of Saul.

Is Szabo’s future in cinema certain? “I can’t say whether I will have the opportunity to make another film,” the director says, noting that the “hard physical work” of directing is his main obstacle. “You have to go to a lot of people to talk to them, because you can’t scream over other people’s heads.”