Twilight
Directed by György Fehér
Written by F. Dürrenmatt & György Fehér
Starring Péter Haumann, János Derzsi, & Judit Pogány
Unrated
Runtime: 101 minutes

by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

My encounters with Hungarian cinema having been limited to the animated films of Marcell Jankovics, I wasn’t sure what to expect of György Fehér’s Twilight (aka Szürkület). I certainly hadn’t seen any Hungarian films from around when Twilight was originally released, in 1990, though I’d coincidentally watched Robert Sigl’s 1989 film Laurin (West German but filmed in Hungary with a predominantly Hungarian cast) only a week or so earlier. Despite my lack of definite expectations, I can’t imagine being anything but swept away by this film. Twilight is one of the most beautifully shot films I’ve seen in a long time and I found it utterly captivating.

The plot of the film is deceptively easy to sum up: an official comes to a rural community to investigate the murder of a young girl. The story behind that plot is rather more complicated. 

Twilight was adapted by Fehér from the work of Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Originally developed by Dürrenmatt for the film It Happened in Broad Daylight (Es geschah am hellichten Tag, 1958, dir. Ladislao Vajda), it was published that same year as a novella titled Das Versprechen (aka The Pledge) as Dürrenmatt was dissatisfied with the ending of Daylight forced on him by the studio. Both versions have been adapted multiple times since 1958, including in the 2001 film The Pledge starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn.

Das Versprechen came into being as an expression of Dürrenmatt’s frustration with the limitations of a “typical” detective story, and Fehér’s adaptation feels very much in that same spirit. It is a detective tale in only the broadest sense; the work of the actors seems almost incidental to what’s been recorded on film. In 1991, Fehér spoke on his intention with Twilight, saying:

"I want to show to what extent the search for justice stands in ridiculous contrast to the eternity of nature. Meanwhile, it is precisely this search that I am so fascinated by.”

In fact, though the film ostensibly revolves around Péter Haumann’s Inspector and his attempts to investigate a murder, the true (and perhaps only) star of Twilight is nature. The very first shot sets the tone perfectly, a long, smooth vertical pan over densely wooded hills as seen from above. When human characters populate the frame the camera tends to focus elsewhere, often filming them from a distance or through obscuring trees and branches. One of the most prominent visual motifs is a variation of the opening shot, a slow horizontal pan across a landscape which finds a character in the foreground only at the very end. It’s cinematography at its most mesmerizing thanks to director of photography Miklós Gurbán, who supervised the film’s recent restoration.

The length of scenes feels almost shocking by current standards and, even beyond that, the Mária Czeilik brings an idiosyncratic sense of timing to Twilight’s editing. It may be that my sense of timing as a viewer comes from a different cinematic tradition, but I suspect that Fehér and Czeilik were deliberately trying to keep the audience off-balance. Scenes with dialogue linger for what feels like ages on characters’ faces, cutting away just before they begin to speak or only after their unblinking eyes have me squirming in my seat. It’s a really powerful effect when juxtaposed with the languid pacing of the rest of the film.

This juxtaposition works in other ways, as well, highlighting the few scenes of real and anticipated violence. They happen well into the film, after I’d been lulled into a sense of comfort by the film’s pacing, and I found them genuinely disturbing. Crucially, I think, the scene I found most unpleasant to watch was filmed indoors, with no comforting backdrop of the natural world to soften or obscure its depiction of sexual violence. Although what is actually shown (between two adult characters) only gets as bad as some clumsy groping, and clothes stay in place throughout, it’s almost worse as a result.

I think Twilight could’ve easily done without that scene, and it could (justifiably) ruin the film for some, but that’s my sole complaint about this otherwise perfect film. Especially in a visual sense, it’s a cinematic work of art and I’m really thankful that this restoration is bringing it to life once again.