Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Red and the White
1967 · Miklós Jancsó · The Red and the White on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch a man walk away with nowhere to hide. (camera)
The widescreen frame holds pale field running out to open sky, proving there is no wall, ditch, or treeline close enough to matter.
Payoff: The emptiness of the ground is doing the same work fear usually does in a war film. In the reading: espace quelconque. The reading calls this an any-space-whatever: a field emptied of shelter, a space of bare exposure.
Watch officers make prisoners dance in a birch grove. (staging)
Nurses are put into dresses and made to waltz under armed supervision, violence conducted as etiquette rather than as an obvious act of force.
Payoff: Two people turning in three-four time under a rifle is the whole power arrangement, with nobody explaining it. In the reading: the gest. The reading calls this a gest: a posture that is the relation itself, not a symbol standing for it.
Watch how few cuts the film uses. (cutting)
Farkas builds the film from an unusually small number of long takes, so each cut stands out as a deliberate event.
Payoff: Because cuts are so rare, you learn to notice each one.
Watch how quickly a man obeys when disarmed. (performance)
Actors are given no names and no backstory, only bearing to perform, how a body stands, moves, and complies under command.
Payoff: Watching how a body obeys turns out to tell you more than any line of dialogue could.
Listen for the complete absence of any music score. (sound)
Jancso works only with wind, hooves, boots, and shouted commands, so nothing musical ever prepares you for a death or comments on one.
Payoff: Without a score to guide your feelings, you're left responsible for deciding how to feel about each death.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the geometry, not the uniforms. Whoever holds the field at any moment is always visible in how the bodies are arranged.