Félix Máriássy

Born June 3, 1919, in Mikofalva. Hungarian film director.

Máriássy began working in films in 1939, first as a film editor and later as assistant director; he’ made several documentary films. In 1949 he made his first feature film, Anna Szabo, about the Hungarian working class. His most important works date from the 1950’s; among them are A Glass of Beer (1955), one of the first attempts in Hungarian cinema to break away from the oversimplification of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s and create convincing, many-sided characters of the common people; Spring in Budapest (1955, based on F. Karinty’s novel), which deals with the fate of people on the eve of Hungary’s liberation by the Soviet Army and with the diverse paths that led them to the detachments of the resistance; and Sleepless Years (1959), a chronicle of the life of a Budapest working-class district from the Revolution of 1919 to 1945. Máriássy also made the films Test Trip (1960), Cannon (1964), and Fig Leaf (1966). Since 1948 he has been teaching at the Institute of Theater and Motion Pictures in Budapest. He was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1956.