25 Fireman Street (1973) DVD

Comic, melancholy, ribald and hallucinatory, 25 Firemans Street is both a groundbreaking entry into the New Hungarian Cinema of the seventies and a timeless, intoxicatingly rich moviemaking triumph. Director Istv+ín Szabo (Mephisto, Sunshine) masterfully evokes everything from Borges to Bru+¦el to Proust as he freely blends rich characterizations with visionary surrealism and kitchen sink realism. On one hot summer night, the residents of a Hungarian apartment house slated for demolition restlessly revisit their haunted pasts as they face an uncertain future. In a gently turning kaleidoscope of dream imagery, regret-laden nostalgia and painstakingly intimate detail, the looming wrecking ball pales in significance to the accumulated experience each dreamer revisits. Pre-war prejudice, occupying Nazis and Stalinist deprivations all come and go as each tenant's backward glance yields moments of aching sensuality, infectious exuberance and catastrophic loss. Through an affirming cascade of poetic wanderings through lives lived to the fullest, 25 Firemans Street plots a personal map of Hungary's fortunes from Hapsburgs to the Soviets. Conjuring up a canvas of recent Eastern European history to create a tapestry of personal histories shaped by war. Combining sure-handed storytelling with visual enchantment, 25 Firemans Street marries the whimsically ethereal with the tragically concrete. Presented here for the first time on DVD, Kino On Video proudly offers an unforgettable cinematic nocturne that has remained as inspiring and innovative as it was upon first release in 1973.