Meszaros turns Beat-inspired music-making into highly-sensual filmmaking in this work about rebellious Hungarian youths, romance and rock bands. 

---

---

I haven’t seen a film like this in a long time, where music not only intersects with cinema but as a result of their commingling, its form gets altered and becomes hazy, and I mean it in a good way. 

Some have regarded it as a long-form music video or a slice-of-life musical of sorts, but it is not easy trying to define it.  I think I would describe the experience of seeing it as akin to someone turning on the radio while the film is unspooling. 

One of the early works of Hungarian filmmaker Marta Meszaros, made after The Girl (1968) and Binding Sentiments (1969), Don’t Cry, Pretty Girls! is unlike anything she had done up till that point.  In a way, it’s a bold departure and continues her experimentation with telling stories through unique ways. 

Here, music plays an incredibly fundamental role as we follow several rebellious youths who work in a factory and find leisure in attending gigs by local bands during their free time. 

Much of the film is accompanied by their diegetic Beat-inspired music—there is even a scene where the musicians perform poetry through music. 

It may ultimately be a slight work but Meszaros’ ability to turn a ‘music film’ into highly-sensual filmmaking is probably its most impressive aspect. 

She finds sensuality in Jaroslava Schallerova (who’s known best in her titular role in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, also released in the same year) whose face and eyes evoke pure sexual tension, particularly in her scenes with a young cellist whom she is infatuated with. 

She is, however, about to be wedded in an arranged marriage, and here Meszaros poses the question about the freedom to love, and the choices a woman has to make in a conservative Hungarian society. 

Grade: B+

---