The film "Valahol Europaban" is a significant postwar Hungarian movie that was created by the journalist, writer, poet, scriptwriter, movie director, and film theoretician Béla Balázs. It was premiered in 1956 and has not lost its impact over the years, especially on a profound philosophical level. The film tells a story about children who have paid dearly for the cruel war games of adults outside of time.
At the time it was premiered, the movie was enthusiastically received by critics. The main roles were taken by streetwise boys of a children's group who created their roles improvisationally in close contact with a few professional actors. Their performance fits admirably into the mosaic of a very complex movie language.
Balázs's influence revealed itself, above all, in the introductory sequences: an air raid on an amusement park, seen in a montage of dramatic situations evoking the last spasms of war, where, undoubtedly, we discern the influence of classical Soviet cinematography. Shooting, the boy's escape, the locomotive's wheels, the shadows of soldiers with submachine guns, the sound of a whistle—the images are linked together in abrupt sequences in which varying shots and expressive sharp sounds are emphasized. A perfectly planned screenplay avoided all elements of sentimentality, time-worn stereotypes of wronged children, romanticism and cheap simplification.
The authors succeeded in bridging the perilous dramatic abyss of the metamorphosis of a children's community. Their telling of the story (the scene of pillaging, the assault on the castle, etc) independently introduced some neorealist elements which, at that time, were being propagated in Italy by De Sica, Rossellini, and other film artists. The rebukes of contemporary critics, who called attention to "formalism for its own sake," have been forgotten. The masterly art of cameraman Barnabás Hegyi gives vitality to the poetic images. His angle shots of the children, his composition of scenes in the castle interior, are a living document of the times, and underline the atmosphere and the characters of the protagonists.
The success of the picture was also enhanced by the musical art of composer Dénes Buday who, in tense situations, inserted the theme of the Marseillaise into the movie's structure, as a motive of community unification, as an expression of friendship and the possibility of understanding.
