Joining Film Fight, Hungary Tries To Go Hollywood describes recent efforts to build up Hungary’s film industry — and gives a bit of Hungarian film history:
In Hollywood’s early days, Hungarians helped build the movie business. Adolph Zukor founded Paramount, William Fox (born Wilhelm Fried) started 20th Century Fox, and director George Cukor blazed a trail from ‘The Philadelphia Story’ to ‘My Fair Lady.’ In Hollywood legend, a sign on one studio door once warned, ‘It’s not enough to be Hungarian, you have to have talent too.’
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Hungarians were part of a wave of Eastern European immigrants, many of them Jewish, who found success in Hollywood beginning in the early 1900s. Kept out of other occupations by prejudice, they were able to make their mark in a brand-new business: the exhibition of short films in storefront theaters called nickelodeons.Throughout the 1920s, Paramount’s Mr. Zukor and his rivals made trips to Europe, scouting for talent, such as Hungarian Michael Curtiz, who directed “Casablanca.” Hungary was among the European nations where a domestic film industry was already flourishing, partly through government support. Hungarian directors and writers benefited from training at formal film schools. Cinematography students were required to study painting, sculpture, classical literature and music.
Hungary’s film industry continued to thrive under Communist rule, with plenty of state-funded work. Vilmos Zsigmond, who studied cinematography at the Budapest Academy of Drama and Film went on to shoot “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “The Deer Hunter.”
But in the 1990s, the fall of communism and aging film studios sent the domestic industry into a tailspin.
Why is Hungary pushing film? Politics:
The European Union, which Hungary and the Czech Republic joined in May, tries to prevent its members from propping up industries with government aid that creates an uneven playing field. But films and television receive a “cultural exception” originally won by France to protect its heavily subsidized film industry. That has opened a rare door for government incentives and spurred a studio-building boom. EU nations now use the exception to compete for Hollywood action flicks as well as home-grown art films. Many countries also hope that movie exposure will boost their image, triggering tourist dollars.