A Great Story Concept That Was Poorly Executed.

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."-J Cocteau


Istvan Szaboo's 25 Firemans Street (1973) (Tuzolto utca 25) is a rather disappointing film for me. The filmmaker started with a great story concept, but poor execution of that story concept in the filmmaking process resulted in a very incoherent finished film, in my opinion. Although the film is composed of a lot of interesting scenarios, and interesting imagery, overall the film as a whole can only said to be a cinematic collage with no clear unifying theme, or unifying meaning. The only unifying element in the film for me was a pervasive feeling of despair, and hopelessness, but that in itself was not enough for a coherent basis for the film. This is a rather elaborate production, with many detailed settings, large coordinated casts of "extras", and much costume design, which overall must have made this film rather costly to produce. But the money would have been better spent on a screenplay that made more overall sense. Some ideas were not very well worked out, like the same character in different scenes that obviously spanned years, yet the character showed no apparent signs of aging. It was also difficult for me at times to put the collage of scenes that constitute this film in any chronological order. The filmmaker was apparently enchanted with an "experimental", or even "avant garde" style of filmmaking making, but using a more conventional approach in expanding, and executing the basic story concept would have probably resulted in a more coherent, and more comprehensible finished product.