Merry-Go-Round

In a Hungarian countryside caught in the middle of upheaval lives Mari Pataki, a young peasant woman. Her father forbids her from seeing the man she loves and, with his mind on the fields and on getting richer, decides to marry her off to an old but wealthy farmer he does business with. Land marries land, he says, as if that were the unbreakable law of the peasantry. But Mátéus, who works on the collective farm, has no intention of accepting it. Zoltán Fábri adapted Imre Sarkadi’s story "Kútban" and took the film into competition at Cannes in 1956, a turning point in the postwar opening of Hungarian cinema. Mari Törőcsik stood in front of a camera for the first time here, and the ride on the merry-go-round that gives the film its title made her famous overnight.