István Szabó: Collected Works Blu-ray
HomeIstván Szabó: Collected Works Blu-ray
Posted October 24, 2025 08:03 PM by Webmaster
British label Second Run will release on Blu-ray István Szabó: Collected Works (1981-1988). The three-disc set is scheduled to arrive on the market on November 24.
Description: István Szabó is perhaps the most renowned of all Hungarian filmmakers, having made hugely successful, Oscar®-winning films across Europe and in Hollywood.
This Box Set uncovers the most creative and exuberant period of Szabó's Hungarian cinema, with a trio of exceptional films made in collaboration with actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, writer Péter Dobai and cinematographer Lajos Koltai: Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988). These films unravel the conflicts of history, society, and the individual. Each is an audacious, beautifully shot, and brilliantly executed tale of moral corruption.
These important and evermore powerfully relevant films are presented from stunning 4K restorations, and released for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK.
Mephisto (1981): Szabó's brilliant retelling of the Faust legend centres on a struggling but wildly ambitious actor in 1930s Germany who dispels his political qualms to revel in the adulation he craves. But success, inevitably, comes at a price... Widely acknowledged as Szabó's masterpiece, Mephisto is a haunting study in ambition, opportunism, and compromise.
Colonel Redl (1985): Set in the years before WW1, the film charts the rise and fall of the brilliant but unscrupulous Alfréd Redl, an ambitious young officer who becomes the head of the Austro-Hungarian Secret Police. Klaus Maria Brandauer's brilliant performance conveys the emotional complexity of a life destroyed by deceit and moral cowardice, as Redl becomes a prisoner of his own deceptions.
Hanussen (1988): Based on a remarkable true story, Szabó's third collaboration with Brandauer tracks clairvoyant Hanussen's rise in parallel with the Nazi regime to dark, mesmerising effect.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
Description: István Szabó is perhaps the most renowned of all Hungarian filmmakers, having made hugely successful, Oscar®-winning films across Europe and in Hollywood.
This Box Set uncovers the most creative and exuberant period of Szabó's Hungarian cinema, with a trio of exceptional films made in collaboration with actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, writer Péter Dobai and cinematographer Lajos Koltai: Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988). These films unravel the conflicts of history, society, and the individual. Each is an audacious, beautifully shot, and brilliantly executed tale of moral corruption.
These important and evermore powerfully relevant films are presented from stunning 4K restorations, and released for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK.
Mephisto (1981): Szabó's brilliant retelling of the Faust legend centres on a struggling but wildly ambitious actor in 1930s Germany who dispels his political qualms to revel in the adulation he craves. But success, inevitably, comes at a price... Widely acknowledged as Szabó's masterpiece, Mephisto is a haunting study in ambition, opportunism, and compromise.
Colonel Redl (1985): Set in the years before WW1, the film charts the rise and fall of the brilliant but unscrupulous Alfréd Redl, an ambitious young officer who becomes the head of the Austro-Hungarian Secret Police. Klaus Maria Brandauer's brilliant performance conveys the emotional complexity of a life destroyed by deceit and moral cowardice, as Redl becomes a prisoner of his own deceptions.
Hanussen (1988): Based on a remarkable true story, Szabó's third collaboration with Brandauer tracks clairvoyant Hanussen's rise in parallel with the Nazi regime to dark, mesmerising effect.
Special Features and Technical Specs:
- Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988) presented from 4K restorations by the National Film Institute Hungary - Film Archive, supervised and approved by cinematographer Lajos Koltai
- Four of István Szabó's short film works, newly remastered in HD by the National Film Institute Hungary - Film Archive: Variations on a Theme (Variációk egy témára, 1961), You (Te, 1963), Concert (Koncert, 1963), and City Map (Várostérkép, 1977).
- Istvan Szabó - The Director Answers: A video interview with Szabó.
- Remembrance of József Romvári: Filmmaker Sophy Romvári's tribute to her grandfather, the production designer József Romvári.
- Szabó's Central Europe: a look at the director's Hungarian films.
- Individual booklets each with new writing by Hungarian cinema experts John Cunningham, Peter Hames and Catherine Portuges, and journalist Stephen Lemons on the real-life Erik Jan Hanussen.
- Trailers.
- Hungarian and German audio options on all three Features.
- New and improved English subtitle translations.
- REGION-FREE
