The Girl
The first Hungarian film directed by a woman, Márta Mészáros’s debut feature is an assured expression of many of her recurring themes: broken families, relationships between parents and children, and the search for stability in an uncertain world. Erzsi (Kati Kovács), a young woman living in an orphanage in Budapest, sets out to reconnect with her birth mother (Teri Horváth), a quest that leads her to a small town where Erzsi’s modern, urban sensibilities clash with the conservative, provincial attitudes of the woman who brought her into the world but with whom she has little else in common. Laced with the feminist concerns that would become a hallmark of Mészáros’s work, The Girl is a minutely observed portrait of a woman searching for where she came from in order to figure out where she is going.

DIRECTOR: Márta Mészáros. WRITTEN BY: Márta Mészáros. CAST: Kati Kovács, Teri Horváth, Ádám Szirtes. 1968. 90 min. Hungary. B&W. Hungarian. DCP.

Binding Sentiments
Family ties become a trap from which a woman struggles to escape in Mészáros’s quietly devastating sophomore feature. Following the sudden death of her prominent politician husband, middle-aged Edit (Mari Törőcsik) finds herself plunged into an existential crisis, caught between her desire for independence and the machinations of her elder son István (Lajos Balázsovits), who seems intent on controlling her life just as his father did. In the middle of it all is István’s young fiancée Kati (Kati Kovács), who gradually realizes that she may be repeating Edit’s mistakes. Though Binding Sentiments is rare among Mészáros’s works in its focus on a wealthy, rather than working-class, milieu, it strikingly illustrates how the predicaments of patriarchy affect all women.