Budapest Tales

An allegorical film set after the war. A group of people find a yellow tram overturned on the rails. All of them are homeless, all have come out of the war and have nowhere to go. They decide to right it and take it into the city, to its depot. The road is long. They push the tram, they advance by pushing, and others join along the way. As the crowd grows an order forms inside: some decide, some work, some hand out food. The roles change over time. Along the road there are people who fall in love, people who separate and people who die. What the tram means is never stated. Some read it as the story of postwar Hungary, some as an allegory of collective life, some as a travelling fable. The narrative is not realistic; it moves like a tale and its time is unspecified. Ági Mészáros, Maja Komorowska and Franciszek Pieczka are in the cast. István Szabó directed. The film competed at Cannes. An interesting production for anyone who likes European cinema and allegorical storytelling. For a viewer expecting a straight story, the film is deliberately unspecified and never says what stands for what.