Miklós Jancsó (; 27 September 192131 January 2014) was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. Jancsó achieved international prominence starting in the mid-1960s with works including The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, 1965), The Red and the White (Csillagosok, katonák, 1967), and Red Psalm (Még kér a nép, 1971). Jancsó's films are characterized by visual stylization, elegantly choreographed shots, long takes, historical periods, rural settings, and a lack of psychoanalyzing. A frequent theme of his films is the abuse of power. His works are often allegorical commentaries on Hungary under Communism and the Soviet occupation, although some critics prefer to stress the universal dimensions of Jancsó's explorations. Towards the end of the 1960s and especially into the 1970s, Jancsó's work became increasingly stylized and overtly symbolic. Early life Miklós Jancsó was born to Hungarian Sandor Jancsó and Romanian Angela Poparada. After graduation he studied law in Pécs, receiving his degree in Cluj in 1944. He also took courses in art history and ethnography, which he continued to study in Transylvania. After graduating, Jancsó served in World War II and was briefly a prisoner of war. He registered with the legal Bar but avoided a legal career. After the war, Jancsó enrolled in the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. He received his Diploma in Film Directing in 1950. Around this time Jancsó began working on newsreel footage and reported on such subjects as May Day celebrations, agricultural harvests and state visits from Soviet dignitaries. Career 1950s Jancsó first started directing films in 1954 by making documentary newsreels. Between 1954 and 1958 he made newsreel shorts whose subjects ranged from a portrait of Hungarian writer Zsigmond Móricz in 1955 to the official Chinese state visit in 1957. Although these films do not reflect Jancsó's aesthetic development, they gave the director the opportunity to master the technical side of film-making while also enabling him to travel around Hungary and see firsthand what was happening there. In 1958, he completed his first full-length feature film, The Bells Have Gone to Rome, which starred Miklós Gábor. In the film a group of Hungarian schoolboys are pressured to join the army by Nazi Germans and fight against the Russians on the eastern front. As the schoolboys begin to learn about and understand the Nazi regime, they reject the Germans offer. Jancsó now dismisses this early work. Jancsó then returned to documentary film-making, including a collaboration with