Árvácska (1976)

Directors:

László Ranódy
Gyula Mészáros (co-director)

Writers:

Judit Elek (writer)
Zsigmond Móricz (novel)

Release Date:

4 March 1976 (Hungary)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

An orphan girl suffers abuse from her adopting parents.

Plot Keywords:

Orphan | One Word Title | Child Abuse | Child Nudity | Fire

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Zsuzsa Czinkóczi	...	Csöre
Anna Nagy	...	Kedvesanyám
Sándor Horváth	...	Kedvesapám
Marianna Moór	...	Zsabamári (as Moór Marianne)
József Bihari	...	János Csomor (as Bihary József)
Ila Schütz	...	Zsofka
Ádám Szirtes	...	Szennyes József
Piroska Molnár	...	Anna
József Madaras	...	Kadaros István
Gyöngyi Bürös	...	Egy asszony
Tibor Molnár	...	Egy férfi
Flóra Kádár	...	A feleség
László Szacsvay	...	Fáradtarcú
Mária Dudás	...	Szikár nõ
László György	...	A fekete férfi

Also Known As:

Nobody's Daughter (USA)

Runtime:

83 min

Country:

Hungary

Language:

Hungarian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Unrated

Company:

Budapest Játékfilmstúdió

Haunting tale of an impoverished society and it's neglect of a child.

In our world it is often children who suffer most egregiously when poverty claims a land.

French fairy tales of children being abandoned in woods when poor families could no longer feed themselves are based on true examples of abandonment. Examples exist from England and nearly every other country with written histories and where impoverishment has claimed lives and yes, when such conditions have eaten away the veneer of humanity, personal values, and selflessness.

Nobody's Daughter explores the depths of one such suffering child. This Hungarian movie graphically portrays the brutal cruelty of people in her life who were in their own battered way, considered otherwise good.

Zsuzsa Czinkóczi portrayed 6 year old Csöre as a nude child orphaned by circumstances. Her acting was a superb testament inasmuch as she is a child herself of course, and by even limited imagination we can hope that any other child impoverished or not may have some equal gift to offer mankind, if only given the chance.

Csöre in the film is viciously raped by a large man, grotesquely burned by other callous adults who occasionally feed her, later savagely beat by a foster mother and ... well, there is more but it's not my goal here to recant the movie in it's entirety, only to suggest to those caring viewers who are interested in reality as it existed in recent history, and in reality as it exists in other parts of today's 'modern' world, this film will provide you with much food for thought. It has me. My family and I were nearly in tears, breathless at the savage indifference to Csöre's personal feelings and physical tortures of her day-to-day's existence.

Nobody's Daughter is not about as one other reviewer said, "a nude girl running about...", for that is only the typical hypocrite knee-jerk utterance, or the pretentious puritan's silly thoughtless whisper, or a shallow view from a cretin's perspective.

Nay, this film should be recommended viewing for people embracing the idea of foster parenting, or for social workers in any country on earth, and for United Nations personnel who deal with the occurrence of poverty-based neglect of Earth's most valuable resource...our children.

Finally the moral Nobody's Daughter should graphically indicate to us all is that to abandon or neglect even one child on this planet is to abandon our hopes and dreams entirely.