Két Férfi a Városban

Két félidö a pokolban / Two Half Times in Hell - by Zoltán Fábri (1963)

On Hitlers birthday, the Germans decide to organize a soccer match between prisoners of war and Germans. They assign the task of organizing the team to a well known Olympics football player who demands for his team food and a chance to train. Although the organizer believes that soccer is sacred and does his best to train the team, he is tempted to escape along with the others, when they find an opportunity. They get caught, but the game takes place anyway. They play, hoping that they might get pardoned and not get executed in the end. However, they play too well and the enraged Germans execute them before the game ends.

From the pen of famed Hungarian novelist Peter Eszterhazy comes this erotic tale of passion and betrayal. Lili, a young gypsy girl, falls madly in love with a dashing salesman who introduces her to life’s sensual pleasures. When Lili discovers he is engaged to another, her life begins to spiral downward into unending sexual liaisons and an unsatisfying marriage. Eszterhazy wrote the novel under the pseudonym Lili Csokonai–the main character–so the story unfolds through her eyes, like an autobiography. The film’s complex weaving of flashbacks and memories perfectly captures Lili’s haunted perspective on her life as does Tibor Mathe’s beautiful cinematography.