Though based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 crime novella The Pledge (which was also the source for Sean Penn’s 2001 film of the same name), György Fehér’s Twilight plays more like an existential horror film than a noir or police procedural. Indeed, the ins and outs of the investigation into the mysterious murder of a child are of little concern to Fehér, who crafts a mood piece that’s keyed to the aura of dread and despair that grips a community in the wake of this and other similar murders.
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
- 2/15/2024
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
Though based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 crime novella The Pledge (which was also the source for Sean Penn’s 2001 film of the same name), György Fehér’s Twilight plays more like an existential horror film than a noir or police procedural. Indeed, the ins and outs of the investigation into the mysterious murder of a child are of little concern to Fehér, who crafts a mood piece that’s keyed to the aura of dread and despair that grips a community in the wake of this and other similar murders.
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
Set in a small, remote Hungarian town surrounded by vast hills and dense thickets of trees, Twilight exists in a sort of metaphorical purgatory. Throughout, the film’s spare black-and-white images, deliberate pacing, and glacial camera movements, coupled with the near-constant rumbling ambiance that dominates the soundtrack, brilliantly conjure how an unseen but ubiquitous evil haunts the townsfolk. Long tracking...
- 6/20/2023
- by Derek Smith
- Slant Magazine
Finally, an all-but-lost masterpiece lives again.
Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér, a protégé of his fellow countryman and master director Béla Tarr, died in 2002, but more than two decades later, his strange and stirring anti-mystery “Twilight” has been restored for the world to see.
You might recognize the story of a retiring detective pulled back in for One Last Job as he’s pushed to obsessive ends over a dead girl found missing in an ominous forest. “Twilight” is based on a 1955 novella by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt that itself was adapted by Sean Penn into the 2001 film “The Pledge,” starring Jack Nicholson as the wizened alcoholic private eye chasing a serial killer who may or may not exist.
In Feher’s “Twilight,” the detective is played by Péter Haumann, and he’s looking for a murderer known only as The Giant and who only seems to exist in scratch drawings...
Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér, a protégé of his fellow countryman and master director Béla Tarr, died in 2002, but more than two decades later, his strange and stirring anti-mystery “Twilight” has been restored for the world to see.
You might recognize the story of a retiring detective pulled back in for One Last Job as he’s pushed to obsessive ends over a dead girl found missing in an ominous forest. “Twilight” is based on a 1955 novella by Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt that itself was adapted by Sean Penn into the 2001 film “The Pledge,” starring Jack Nicholson as the wizened alcoholic private eye chasing a serial killer who may or may not exist.
In Feher’s “Twilight,” the detective is played by Péter Haumann, and he’s looking for a murderer known only as The Giant and who only seems to exist in scratch drawings...
- 5/31/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
With the great auteur Béla Tarr no longer directing movies, the newly restored Twilight, by one of his compatriots in the small Hungarian moviemaking community, arrives as the next best thing. Restored and taking its first stateside theatrical bow (beginning with a run in New York) 33 years after it first hit festivals, György Fehér’s existentialist crime drama is drawn from the same cinematic DNA as Tarr’s distinct body of work. This is not pre-chewed, easily digestible entertainment but patience-testing and austere, built with long takes and pared-down dialogue. Twilight is a procedural with little procedure and, by design, no satisfying answers. The mood it builds is soul-shaking.
Call it Twin Peaks without the jokes or the colorful characters — or the color. Shot in gripping black-and-white, the film unfolds in remote towns in thickly forested mountains where evil hangs in the air, and its narrative revolves around a murdered 8-year-old girl.
Call it Twin Peaks without the jokes or the colorful characters — or the color. Shot in gripping black-and-white, the film unfolds in remote towns in thickly forested mountains where evil hangs in the air, and its narrative revolves around a murdered 8-year-old girl.
- 4/20/2023
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Hungarian filmmaker György Fehér's seldom seen 1990 masterpiece, Twilight, gets a 4K restoration treatment by the Hungarian Film Institute and distributed by Arbelos. The LA-based distribution and restoration company is known for their 4K rerelease of such classics as Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie, Matsumoto Toshio's Funeral Parade of Roses, and Wendel Harris's Chameleon Street, as well as fellow Hungarian master Béla Tarr's Satantango and Damnation. Fehér, who only directed two feature films during his lifetime, was a close collaborator on a number of Tarr's films and shared similar aesthetics. Shot by Miklós Gurban (Werckmeister Harmonies), the film is composed entirely of some 50 long tracking shots. And it is stunning. A retiring police inspector (Péter Haumann) is called in to investigate the murder of...
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- 4/17/2023
- Screen Anarchy
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