Australian Left Review
Article Title
Istvan Svabo
Abstract
Istvan Svabo’s Oscar winning film, MEPHISTO, was shot from the script he wrote with Peter Dobai from Klaus Mann’s novel. The cast featured Klaus- Maria Brandauer, Rolf Hoppe, Gyorgy Cserhalmi, Krystyna Janda, lldiko Bansagi, Karin Boyd, and Tamas Major, and Lajos Kottai was the camera person. Szabo’s previous film CONFIDENCE was premiered ih January 1980 and in February won a prize at the West Berlin Festival. Shown at the festival was another Szabo film, the West German production DER GRUNE VOGEL (The Green Bird), which has yet to be seen by Hungarian audiences. In this interview, first published in the Autumn 1983 New Hungarian Quarterly, Istvan Zsugan talks with Svabo.