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A Pogány Madonna
The Pagan Madonna
Hungary 1980
produced by Lajos Gulyás for Budapest Játékfilmstúdió
directed by István Bujtor, Gyula Mészáros
starring István Bujtor, András Kern, László Bánhidi, Mária Goór Nagy, Ferenc Kállai, Gabi Pálok, Péter Benkö, István Kovács, Miklós Benedek, Ferenc Zenthe, Judit Hernádi, József Láng, Ferenc Némethy, Miklós Tolnay, Bertalan Solti, Károly Kovács, Ferenc Paláncz, Mari Szür, József Bars, Hugó Szerencsi, László Halász, Sándor Téri, István Szilágyi
written by István Bujtor, Balázs Fakan, Gyula Mészáros, music by György Aldobólyi Nagy
Csöpi & Kardos
review by Mike Haberfelner
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The Pagan Madonna, an invaluable gold-plated Madonna-like bust from 300
BC, is stolen from a monastery, and the place's night watchman is shot and
almost killed. Investigations take cop Dr Kardos (András Kern) to Lake
Balaton, to where quite a few too many of the suspects are on their
vacation ... and where his on-again off-again partner Csöpi (István
Bujtor) is the champion of the local sailing club. It soon turns out that
Csöpi, who's technically outranked by Kardos, is the much better
investigator, as he comes up with lead after lead ... but a few too many
leading to dead suspects. Then though he finds traces of blood of one of
the victims in Soltész's (István Kovács) car, who just happens to be
the new sailing partner of his best friend Csik (Ferenc Kállai). After an
extended carchase, Csöpi manages to capture Soltész, but Soltész won't
talk, and naturally the bust cannot be found in his possession. But
Csöpi's knowledge of all things sailing tell him where he could have
taken the bust by boat and where it could be hidden - and of course he's
right, only to suddenly look into the gunbarrel of Csik's wife, who's 30
years his junior, who has actually once been Soltész's girlfriend, who
has only married Csik for the facade, and who's of course still in league
with Soltész. Ultimately, everything ends happily though and all the
baddies get their just desserts ... The Pagan Madonna is
quite obviously inspired by the Bud Spencer-movies, that were extremely
popular in Hungary (and not only there) in the early 1980's, not only
because it has all the familiar ingredients - from the bearded and
slightly overweight reluctant hero to the comical fistfights to the rather
crude humour of the thing - plus, lead István Bujtor was the Hungarian
dubbing voice of Bud Spencer no less ... and yet, the film misses a few
too many marks to even live up to the charm of the already crude Bud
Spencer-flicks. Basically, lead character Csöpi is just too infallible
during the whole picture and has no really funny scenes besides his
fistfights, the right balance between the humour and the mystery aspects
of the story is never found, and the thing is only half as tense as the
story deserves to be. On the plus side, this movie gives some insight
into 1980's Communist Hungary (including fashion, style, cars, etc), and
at least the carchase scene is decently done, so the film is not a total
loss - but far from really interesting ...
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