My 20th Century
Entry updated 16 September 2024. Tagged: Film.
Hungarian film (1989; original title Az én XX. századom). Produced by Archy Dolder, Norbert Freidländer, Gábor Sarudi and Andrzej Schwartz. Written and directed by Ildikó Enyedi. Cast includes Péter Andorai, Paulus Manker, Dorota Segda and Oleg Yankovskiy. 102 minutes. Black and white.
Dora and Lilli are twin sisters (both played by Segda) who are born in Budapest in 1880 at the same moment that Thomas Edison (Andorai) is demonstrating his new Invention, the electric light bulb, in America. Later forced to sell matches in the street, the girls are abducted by separate men who decide which to take on the flip of a coin, and grow up to lead very different lives: Lili becomes an anarchist and campaigner for women's suffrage, while Dóra relies on relationships with rich men to keep her in the life of luxury to which she aspires. Both end up having a relationship with the same man, who does not realize they are twins, and are briefly reunited.
Mixing elements of sf and (far more prevalently) Fabulation into the historical narrative, My 20th Century won the Caméra d'or award for Best Debut Film at the Cannes Film Festival, but received only limited release and slipped into obscurity. It has since been revived and acclaimed as a significant work of Feminist sf, and is one of a handful of genre films discussed by Mark Cousins in his mammoth documentary Women Make Film (2018). Characters move across Time and space, voice is given to the Stars to assert their superiority over man-made illuminations, and there are asides such as a voice-over from a monkey in a Zoo describing how it was captured. What gives the film an sf feel is the way the lives of the characters are inextricably intertwined with the Technological developments of the time, including the birth of Cinema itself. Science is depicted as very much part of a male world which women must battle against, and the magical tone of the film is clearly intended to offer an alternative to the "rational" and sterile environment represented by most of the men. The luminous black and white photography beautifully conjures a fabulated world, though the level of whimsy is a matter of taste. [CWa]
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