Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls!
Infused with the spirit of rock ’n’ roll and rebellion, this music-driven counterculture snapshot unfolds to a near wall-to-wall soundtrack of late 1960s–early 1970s Hungarian psych and folk as it traces the odyssey of a young woman (Jaroslava Schallerová) who, on the eve of her marriage to a factory worker (Márk Zala), experiences a final moment of freedom when she runs away with a touring band. One of Mészáros’s most formally experimental works due to its minimal dialogue and almost proto-music video style, Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls! reflects the cultural sea change sweeping Europe at a time when traditional values were being shaken by a youthquake of individual self-expression.

DIRECTOR: Márta Mészáros. WRITTEN BY: Károly Bari, Péter Zimre. CAST: Jaroslava Schallerová, Márk Zala, Lajos Balázsovits. 1970. 84 min. Hungary. B&W. Hungarian. DCP.

Riddance
Mészáros explores class, gender, and generational conflict in Riddance, which stars Erzsébet Kútvölgyi as Jutka, a young factory worker who pretends to be a university student. The ruse retains the romantic interest of András (Gábor Nagy), a handsome young man from an upper-middle-class family, but when Jutka reveals her true background, their relationship becomes increasingly strained. In representing Hungarian society’s clashing attitudes and prejudices, Mészáros depicts a working-class woman’s attempt to overcome the perceived inferiority of her social status as well as her own familial dysfunction and feelings of inadequacy. Following Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls!’s portrait of youthful idealism, Riddance shows with somber compassion the complex societal and cultural barriers that separate the most hopeful of young lovers.