Why this 1967 war masterpiece refuses to let you pick a side
In short: Miklós Jancsó’s The Red and the White is a radical departure from traditional war cinema. By stripping away heroic narratives and central protagonists, the film captures the chaotic, mechanical brutality of the Russian Civil War, forcing viewers to confront the senselessness of combat without the comfort of emotional identification.
Commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik rise to power, the Soviet-Hungarian production was expected to be a celebratory account of the October Revolution. Instead, director Miklós Jancsó delivered a starkly anti-heroic vision set in 1919. The film follows Hungarian volunteers fighting alongside the Bolshevik Reds against the Tsarist Whites near the Volga River. Rather than focusing on individual arcs, Jancsó rejects standard genre conventions, often filming violent encounters from such a distance that the viewer cannot discern who has been killed or why.
This stylistic choice—often described as cold or mechanical—is intentional. By denying the audience a clear hero or a coherent narrative thread, Jancsó aims to mirror the confusion and meaninglessness of armed conflict. While the film was re-edited in the Soviet Union to appear more heroic for its 1967 premiere, it found lasting acclaim in the West for its visual ambition. Cinematographer Tamás Somló utilized black-and-white anamorphic widescreen to create elegant, balletic camera movements that would later influence the director's 1971 film, Red Psalm.
The film remains a challenging watch, famously difficult to follow due to its lack of traditional character development. Yet, for many critics and filmmakers—including Yorgos Lanthimos, who counts it among his favorites—this detachment is its greatest strength. By refusing to adopt the visual language of heroic war epics, Jancsó avoids the paradox of glorifying the very violence he seeks to critique. It stands as a testament to the idea that the most effective anti-war art is that which refuses to make the carnage look beautiful or purposeful.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Red and the White
- Also: The Red and the White
- Also: Wikidata — The Red and the White Rose · CC0
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