Márta Mészáros-Napló gyermekeimnek ('Diary for My Children') (1982)

This film describes Márta Mészáros’s traumatic childhood experiences recounted in a first diary that she dedicates to her children. She deeply analyzes Hungary’s post-Stalinist society and mixes criticism of the political system with the intimate experiences of girl faced with a world ruled by power and distrust. clavisfilms.com




Like Juli (Zsuzsa Czinkoczi), the new film's solemn, skeptical teen-age heroine of ''Diary for My Children,'' Miss Meszaros at the age of 5 migrated to the Soviet Union in 1936 with her father, a sculptor, who was later arrested and then officially disappeared. This new film begins with Juli's return to Hungary in 1947, in the company of her fearful grandparents, to live with her politically committed, Stalinist aunt, Magda (Anna Polony).




Though Juli, played with a kind of independent stoicism by Miss Czinkoczi, is the heart of the film, as well as its eyes and ears, it's Magda who is the most complex and interesting character. Once a young, fiery revolutionary who endured prison and torture, Magda survived to see her revolution triumph, after which, for what she considered the greater good, she shaped her principles to fit monolithic Stalinism. Though the movie never sentimentalizes Magda by suggesting that she would ever deny her life's work, as other Stalinists later did, the character, as written and directed by Miss Meszaros and played by Miss Polony, provides the film with its sorrowful tone.




Magda is not a stupid woman. It's one of the better ways in which the film works that it is through the reminiscences of one of Magda's former comrades, who becomes a victim of the Stalinist purges she supports in the late 1940's, that Juli comes to understand something of Magda's sacrifices in the name of the Communist Party and its revolution. To understand Magda, however, is not necessarily to like her. She is a fact of history. Miss Meszaros makes use of a lot of newsreel footage of the period, which is blended with her new material to create an unusually graphic picture of Hungarian political, cultural and social life in the late 40's.




All of the performances are good, including that of Jan Nowicki, who plays the disillusioned party worker whose imprisonment brings the film to its conclusion. Also good is the black-and-white photography of Miklos Jansco Jr., the son of the talented, extremely independent Hungarian director who has recently worked mostly abroad. New York Times




The semi-autobiographical "diary" series of films include Diary for My Children, Diary for My Loves, Diary for My Father and My Mother, and, last in the series, the prequel, Little Vilma: The Last Diary. In these films, Mészáros continues her quest to link the personal with the political by showing world events through the eyes of the women living through them. Though critics often call Diary for My Children the best of the group and many complain that the films grow weaker and blander with each installment, the diary series represents Mészáros's mostly deeply felt political dissent. The films follow the traumatic effects of Stalinism on Mészáros and her family. Especially in Little Vilma, which is both the last and the first film, seesawing from past to present, Mészáros explores the wide and often tragic gaps between ideals and realities, and between parents and their children.




Mészáros's films deal with realities usually ignored in Eastern European cinema: the subordination of women, conflicts of urban and rural cultures, antagonism between the bureaucracy and its employees, alcoholism, the generation gap, dissolution of traditional family structures, and the plight of state-reared children. In her unpretentious works, she creates a composite picture of life in Hungary today. filmreference.com