- Béla Balázs
Béla Balázs (
4 August 1884 ,Szeged –17 May 1949 ,Budapest ), born Herbert Bauer, was a Hungarian-Jew ish film critic, aesthete,writer andpoet .He was the son of German-born parents, adopting his nom de plume in newspaper articles written before his 1902 move to Budapest, where he studied Hungarian and German at the Eötvös Collegium.
He is perhaps best remembered as the librettist of "
Bluebeard's Castle " which he originally wrote for his roommateZoltán Kodály , who in turn introduced him to the eventual composer of the opera,Béla Bartók . This collaboration continued with the scenario for the ballet "The Wooden Prince ".The collapse of the
Hungarian Soviet Republic underBéla Kun in 1919 began a long period of exile in Vienna and Germany and, from 1933 until 1945, the Soviet Union. György Lukács, a close friend during their youth, became a bitter enemy during the ordeal of theStalinist purges .In Vienna he became a prolific writer of film reviews. His first book on film, "Der Sichtbare Mensch" ("The Visible Man") (1924), helped found German "film as a language" theory, which also exerted an influence on
Sergei Eisenstein andVsevolod Pudovkin . A popular consultant, he wrote the screenplay forG. W. Pabst 's film of Die Dreigroschenoper, the object of a scandal and lawsuit byBrecht (who admitted to not reading the script) during production.Later, he wrote and helpedLeni Riefenstahl direct her first film, "Das Blaue Licht" (1932); she removed his name from the credits. One of his best known films is "Somewhere in Europe " (1947; "It happened in Europe", 1949 USA version; directed byGéza von Radványi ).His last years were marked by petty vexations at home and ever increasing recognition in the German speaking world. In 1949 he received the most distinguished prize in
Hungary , theKossuth Prize . Also in 1949, he finished "Theory of the Film" published posthumously in English (London: Denis Dobson, 1952). In 1958, the Béla Balázs Prize was founded and named for him as an award to recognize achievements incinematography .External links
* [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/balazs.htm Biography and list of writings]
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*gutenberg author | id=Béla_Balázs | name=Béla Balázs
* [http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/LitWiss/MedienWiss/Forsch/Telaviv/Riefenstahl-englisch.html Article on the relationship between Riefenstahl and Balazs]
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