fertilecelluloid Review of Nobody's Daughter

Nobody's Daughter (1976)

Ultra-realistic portrait of poverty and abandonment

[9/10 · 9 January 2009]

If Zsuzsa Czinkóczi, the seven-year-old lead of this harrowing Hungarian drama from '76, was competing for an Oscar this year against Mickey Rourke for his mighty performance in "The Wrestler", Miss Czinkoczi would romp it in. Her performance in "Nobody's Daughter" is beyond comprehension. I was moved to tears by this extraordinary girl's portrayal of an orphan in 1940's Hungary. Back then, the Hungarian government paid families a stipend to take unwanted children into their home. Of course, there was no vetting process to weed out couples totally unsuited to parenting, let alone adoption. We meet Csore (Czinkoczi), the doomed waif of the story, in a field of corn where she is trying to get a cow to return to its enclosure. When she follows the beast into the corn, she is picked up by a stranger and raped. Directors Laszlo Ranódy and Gyula Mészáros then cut to Csore returning home after the rape where, feeling disoriented, she takes a beating for being late and has her hand deliberately burned with hot coals by her cold, adopted father. As the weeks creep on, Csore is depicted as an abused child with an almost unbelievable resilience to tragedy. Because she spends the first half of the movie fully naked in dirty, cold, hostile surroundings, the line between the actress and the character appears non-existent. Such is the magic of truly great film-making. Eventually, Csore is abandoned by her adoptive parents and taken to an orphanage where she comes within a hair of being adopted by a caring, loving couple. A complication prevents this fortuitous transaction and Csore is sold once again to another abusive, impoverished, unhappy couple who already have other children. Once again, she is subjected to abuse and given inferior status within the house. When all seems hopeless, the sun shines for the first time on Csore when she befriends a kind, bearded old man who takes her under his wing and treats her with respect and dignity. The brief scenes of their happy times together are heart-wrenching for the stark contrast they represent. Unfortunately, the old man passes away, and Csore is alone once again. Climaxing with fury and tragedy, this ultra-realistic look at poverty and abandonment (by the state and the individual) is easily one of the most moving and grotesque portraits of inhumanity to man that I have ever seen. Only the coldest of hearts could not go out to poor Csore, a child whose plight and death felt so real to me and affected me for days. The message this left me with is that bringing children into the world should not be a right, it should be a privilege that one must prove they are worthy of. Unfortunately, reproduction is the easy part.