From:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/movies/1945-review-ferenc-torok.html
By BEN KENIGSBERG
OCT. 31, 2017
Ferenc Torok’s lean, suggestive Hungarian feature, “1945,” shot in gorgeous, high-contrast black-and-white, is a Holocaust film built, consciously or not, on a reversal of the tropes of the western, down to ticking clocks that might as well be nearing high noon. The visiting men in black hats — a father (Ivan Angelus) and his adult son (Marcell Nagy) — aren’t villains out for revenge, but Orthodox Jews, who have come to the village at the end of the war. They are transporting trunks said to be filled with perfume or cosmetics. The purpose of their journey is obscure.
The two barely speak over the course of the film; the guilty villagers talk among themselves. “We have to give it all back,” the town drunk (Jozsef Szarvas) tells the clerk, Istvan (Peter Rudolf), believing that the strangers have a connection to the town’s deported Jews. Dismissing the concern, Istvan nevertheless understands that fear; he played a pivotal role in betraying the local Jews, a sin for which his opiate-addicted wife (Eszter Nagy-Kalozy) holds him in contempt. As the film slowly reveals how the village’s veneer of civility is built over a foundation of treachery, the darkened foregrounds suggest conspirators hiding in plain sight.
