Focusing on Hungarian film director Miklós Jancsó (1921-2014) and tracing the development of his thinking, as evidenced by the formally
distinctive and politically charged body of work that he built over 50 years, the essay investigates issues related to international cinematic modernism, its various national versions, its late-1960s political vanguard and the particularities of Jancsó’s contribution to this vanguard from his position as a filmmaker in an officially Socialist country