The director who brought a neighboring country the first Oscar in history explains his forgotten masterpiece after 43 years. “Collaboration does not necessarily require a dictatorship”

At the 54th Academy Awards in 1982, the film Chariots of Fire dominated the competition and actress Katharine Hepburn broke records. Almost forgotten today, however, is a brilliant European film about a theater actor from interwar Germany, which walked away from the ceremony with the award for best international film. “Mefisto”, directed by István Szabó, was the first Hungarian film in history to achieve this, writes The Guardian.

“The moment took me by surprise,” Szabó, now 87, recalled in an interview with The Guardian four decades later. “I didn't expect it,” he emphasized.

Visibly delighted when he took the stage to receive the Oscar statuette 43 years ago, Szabó says today that he “knew this award was not only his, but also Brandauer's” (a reference to the film's electrifying lead actor), as well as the largely Hungarian crew “who contributed their talent to the making of the film”.

Although Mephisto (1981) was a landmark film for Hungarian cinema, it has largely disappeared from circulation. A DVD edition released in the early 2000s was only sold for a short time, and the film was generally ignored by major streaming platforms.

But this month British distribution company Second Run, in collaboration with the Hungarian National Film Institute, re-released Szabó's masterpiece after restoring it, along with its sequels: Colonel Redlan epic about a gay officer in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Hansenan occult drama set in the Nazi era, in which the actor Klaus Maria Brandauer appears again.

What is “Mefisto” about, the title that brought Hungary the Oscar for the best international feature film

Mephisto tells the story of Hendrik Höfgen, an ambitious stage actor as the Nazis rise to power in Germany. It breaks away from its roots in left-wing theater to align itself with the fascist regime. “Höfgen is a very talented actor who wants to assert his talent at all costs,” says Szabó. “Stay center stage, in the spotlight.”

Friends and colleagues are arrested, killed, sent into exile. But Höfgen plunges more and more into collaboration with the Nazis, who appoint him director of the State Theater in Berlin.

All this is told through the extraordinary central performance of Austrian actor (later director) Brandauer, “who renders Höfgen's entire frustrated ambition, willful ignorance and fatal capacity for seduction in a performance as vivid and shocking as any in cinema history,” according to The Guardian.

In the interview with the British publication, Szabó paid a new tribute to the “extraordinarily talented actor” with whom he most recently collaborated on the film Final report (Final Report) from 2020. “For me, for us, it was essential to decide what to show in the foreground of Brandauer's secrets. What he reveals and what he hides,” says the Hungarian director.

The Hungarian director's film is based on Klaus Mann's banned book

Mephisto is based on the true story of Gustaf Gründgens, whose career skyrocketed when the Nazis came in with huge subsidies for the theater to mold it in their own image. Klaus Mann, son of acclaimed German writer Thomas Mann and Gründgens' former lover, wrote a devastating, barely disguised novel about the actor in 1936.

The novel later became the subject of a famous libel suit in the 1960s, resulting in the book being banned. Theoretically, the ban is valid to this day, although the novel Mephisto which also gave the name to Szabó's film is widely published.

Gründgens died in 1963 without ever publicly expressing remorse for his ties to Nazism. “But in Szabó's hands, Mephisto it becomes a universal work of art: specific and unclichéd about the politics of 1930s Germany, but also a larger Faustian parable about man's opportunistic complicity with evil,” writes The Guardian.

“History marches relentlessly through Central Europe,” he warns István Szabó

Given the rise of authoritarianism globally, it still has Mephisto lessons for the 21st century? “The desire for personal affirmation is a human trait that can create many positive values,” says the Hungarian director. “The problem arises when it is used in the service of a wrong ideology or policy, and a talented person allows himself to be exploited or even fights in support of those in power. This also exists in the 21st century and does not necessarily require a dictatorship. Business power is enough. Or another reason,” says the 87-year-old Hungarian director.

Asked about Hungary's 2026 parliamentary elections, which are expected to be the closest for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's ruling Fidesz party in its 15 years in power, Szabó declined to comment. “Of course I'm interested, like everyone else,” he answered curtly.

This year brought increased attention to Hungarian culture, with writer László Krasznahorkai being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, while Hungarian-British novelist David Szalay won the prestigious Booker Prize.

As for István Szabó's achievement, it was reproduced only once, decades later: in 2016 when the film Saul was (Son of Saul) by director László Nemes won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.

Szabó says he considers himself a Hungarian director, but that “it's important to emphasize the Central European existence in this context.” “History marches relentlessly through Central Europe,” he points out. In Szabó's work, this meant depicting the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Holocaust and the communist dictatorship in Hungary (in 2006, the director admitted to providing information to the secret police, which he said was part of an effort to save the life of a classmate).

His films Mephisto, Colonel Redl and Hansen have been released this month in a limited edition Blu-ray box that can be bought on sites like Amazon or eBay.