DEATH RODE OUT OF PERSIA

An old man lies on his bed in his disorderly and gloomy apartment, a photograph of a young woman on the mirror above him. His need to get drunk is all he can think of. He ruminates over the poisonous effects of alcohol, but keeps on drinking. A writer, he hopes to be able to dash off a few “tipsy notes” if he goes out for more wine. He already has an idea for a story based on his own youth. It was summer. He went bathing at the lake and fell in love with the beautiful Krisztina in her polka-dot bikini. The fi lm now starts to alternate between the deserted drinker’s den and the shimmering heat of summer. Krisztina even introduced him to her mother, a hat-maker who set great store by respectability. Knowing she would be unhappy to learn he worked in a steel mill, he served her up some lies about a professional background and university career. But other bad habits eventually soured his relationship with Krisztina. A stickler for propriety like her mother, she exploded every time she caught him secretly drinking or smoking. His living went down the drain, and all his friends left Hungary after the uprising of 1956. He took to his bed and cultivated his vices. Looking at the ominous sheet of white paper in front of him, he feels he might be able to get his story down on paper, and tells himself that all good writers enjoyed a drink. But the hero of this modern variation on Joseph Roth’s “Legend of the Holy Drinker” is incapable even of holding a pencil, and drifts off into a wild and delirious erotic fantasy.