Mattie the Goose-Boy

Matyi, a peasant boy, sets out to sell his geese at the fair. But Döbrögi, the lord of the district, seizes the geese and has his men beat the boy for objecting. Matyi picks himself up and makes a promise: he will pay that beating back three times over. To keep it he has nothing but his wits. Attila Dargay's film adapts the epic poem Mihály Fazekas wrote in 1804. It came out of the legendary Pannónia studio and is one of the classics of Hungarian animation. The telling was not pulled into state propaganda; in its place there is folk cleverness, the natural world and a cheerful mockery of authority. In the English version the lord's name became Blackheart. It runs seventy minutes and was made for grown-ups as much as for children.