'Eagles of Cairo': the Survival of a Movie Star in a Repressive Regime

El Pais

Lean Left

Factuality

Ownership

The relationship between the artist and authoritarian power finds its main and most frequent cinematic expression in the films of Hungarian director István Szabó. Mephisto (1981), based on the novel of the same name by Klaus Mann, was his most renowned approach to the theme, with its Faustian pact in which an ambitious theater actor, through sheer hard work, eventually becomes the leading figure in his art thanks to the favors of the Nazi hierar…