MBC Interactive Archive Project: 1960s
“The Eastern European New Waves”
THE RED AND THE WHITE (Csillagosok, katonák)
(Presented by the Miami Beach Film Society)
In this minimalist anti-war film, a faction of Hungarian soldiers on the side of the Russian Red army, led by a determined commander (Jozsef Madaras), fight against the pro-Czar white army in a remote Russian field near a dense wood along the Volga River. As the tide of battle ebbs and flows, a small group of compassionate nurses, including Olga (Krystyna Mikolajevska), do not differentiate between the sides, transporting all wounded soldiers to the nearby wood and treating their injuries.
With a stark style similar to that elaborated upon by Russian Andrei Tarkovsky, director Miklós Jancsó creates one of the most poetic anti-war films of all time.