Peter Bacso, The Witness (1969)

Before viewing Peter Bacso’s The Witness (1969) for the first time, I was skeptical as to how a film about Stalinist-era Hungary could be successfully made into a comedy that Hungarian audiences, which may have witnessed the harsh oppression first hand, would endorse. However, as I watched I was amazed by the success of the comic element despite the fact that there was nothing funny behind what was going on in terms of the reality that the comedy was commenting on. In its Satire of the Stalinist system, The Witness also functions to educate audiences who may be unfamiliar with this period in history, not by being factually accurate in terms of plot, but by over exaggerating the manipulation of reality performed by the government and the harshness of the regime in order to illustrate absurdity, ridiculous and incompetence. It offers a harsh critique in its humor.

The plot centers around Jozsef Pelikan and his family as he finds himself in and out of prison for upsetting the regime in each new office he is given. In an early scene, Jozsef’s daughter comes to visit him in prison and tells him that his life depends on whether or not the officials want to “make an example of him” for performing the illegal slaughter of their pig to feed the family (the discovery of which, while I will not speak on it here, was fraught with irony and ridiculousness). Since his old war buddy, Virag, has a plan involving Jozsef as key witness in an upcoming show trial, however, he is released from prison accompanied with the official statement that “there was no pig, there has never been a pig.” I point to these key comments by Jozsef’s daughter and the legal system itself because although they add an element of humor to the film they only do so because we recognize that under the Stalinist regime, similarly ridiculous, yet totally humorless situations did arise; it was a regime so terrifying because men’s lives hung in the balance in the whims of those in charge.

Virag consistently plants seeds in Jozsef’s mind that the minister Zoltan could have been a spy against them, since, “the suspicious thing about spies is that they aren’t suspicious.” He does this so that Jozsef will testify, though all involved are very aware that the trial is for show alone, the testimony scripted. After all, there must be the appearance that a fair trial has been given before condemning a man, even if everyone knows that the trial was not fair or honest. The trial itself presents a problem to Jozsef as he cannot get the story straight and eventually ends up betraying everything with a sudden bout of truthfulness only to find himself back in prison, awaiting execution by the end of the film. Jozsef states several times before his trial that “he is just an idiot.” This may signify that he does not want to be a part of the politics that allow a man to adopt the suspicions and abilities to easily fabricate stories against friends for the advancement of the self, as Virag is able to; he does not want to be smart in the ways of deception, he is too good hearted for the job yet goes along with the plot as start witness because he is still eager enough to please his superiors. He is a heroic idiot because he ultimately relies on truth and lives in the end, though by that point he seems more willing to die than continue to live a life in which everything is suspect.

At the end of the film, Jozsef is told that he will be rehabilitated and his reply is, “I’d rather be hanged.” He is no longer interested in being a part of the pomp and circumstance of the incompetent regime in their march toward socialism and triumph over imperialism. It is difficult to pin point exactly how The Witness became such a cult film in Hungary or why more has not been written on it. Perhaps the only way I can begin to describe the phenomena is to consider that satire both confirms the events of a given historical or contemporary period and, by showcasing them in an over the top, extreme way, work to scorn, out of a type of rebellion against it, a regime that was once so greatly feared because it suspected everything and because anyone, at any time could become “an example.”