Sirius (1942) (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Dezső Ákos HamzaRelease Date(s)
1942 (November 11, 2025)Studio(s)
Magyar Írók Filmje RT (Deaf Crocodile Films)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
The Hungarian film Sirius (aka Szíriusz) may not be familiar to most Western audiences, and yet in the great cycle of influences, it’s a forgotten link in a chain that leads from A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur’s Court and The Time Machine to Time After Time, Somewhere in Time and Back to the Future. There’s truly nothing new under the sun, and whenever a film is released that seems like a breath of fresh air, it has always taken at least some of that oxygen from the cinema, literature, and theatre that preceded it. Back to the Future’s mad scientist with a time machine didn’t come out of nowhere (although the DeLorean was a relatively novel twist), nor did Somewhere in Time’s star-crossed romantic fantasy. In the latter case, it was based on Richard Matheson’s 1975 novel Bid Time Return, although even Matheson borrowed the concept of time travel via hypnotic suggestion from Jack Finney’s 1970 novel Time and Again (and both of them arguably drew from J.W. Dunne’s philosophical and metaphysical musings in the 1927 book An Experiment in Time). And all of them borrowed from Mark Twain, at least indirectly. In the never-ending cycle of influences, it can be challenging to locate anything that qualifies as a prime mover.
Yet the forgotten link in that chain is still Hungarian director Dezsõ Ákos Hamza’s 1942 romantic fantasy Sirius, which uses the concept of time travel as a way of setting up a star-crossed romance that spans the centuries. (It even offers a mad scientist who builds a time machine and ropes a younger man into taking it for a spin.) Yet Sirius wasn’t really born in a vacuum either; instead, it’s an adaptation of a novel by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Herczeg, as well as the subsequent theatrical adaptation by Imre Földes. Hamza entrusted his own adaptation to screenwriter Péter Rákóczi, who delivered the following story:
Count Tibor Ákos gróf (László Szilassy) responds to an advertisement from Professor Sergius (Elemér Baló), who has promised an enormous dowry to whoever marries his daughter Rózsi (Katalin Karády). Needless to say, suitors are lining up at his door, but there’s a hitch: Sergius wants his daughter’s intended to join him in testing out the time machine that he has built. Conveniently, the Count has just returned from a costume ball and is still dressed as an 18th century Hungarian Hussar, so he suggests traveling to that time period. The professor drops him off in the past and gives him eight hours to explore, warning him not to do or say anything that could alter the future. But the Count is a true maverick centuries in the making, and he immediately starts causing issues during an era in Hungarian history when it was still under the control of the Hapsburg Empire. He also falls in love with opera singer Beppo Rosina (Karády), and even more problematically, that sets him on a collision course with his own great-grandfather. Professor Sergius eventually returns to extricate him from this mess, but was it all just a dream, and how does that affect the Count’s future with Rózsi?
Sirius was produced during a time in which Hungary was under the cultural control of fellow Axis power Germany, and Hamza doubtless took great pleasure in filming the Count bristling at Austrian influence in 18th century Hungary. Sirius can read as a thinly-veiled critique of Nazi influence on Hungary in the 1940s, and yet for anyone who isn’t steeped in the minutiae of Hungarian history, all of that tends to be lost with the passage of time. So, what’s left for modern viewers is time itself—and it’s the time travel story in Sirius that still resonates today. Instead of the staid and somewhat stodgy storytelling in Somewhere in Time, it offers a swashbuckling romantic adventure that’s equal parts Mark Twain, Errol Flynn, and Brief Encounter. There’s even a touch of The Wizard of Oz to the proceedings (although that’s best left for viewers to discover for themselves). Sirius has something for everyone regardless of their familiarity with Hungarian history.
There’s a damned good reason why authors and filmmakers keep returning to the time travel well as a storytelling device: riddled with paradoxes or not, it still works like gangbusters on a dramatic level. Yet Sirius provides another lesson that not even Richard Matheson and Jeannot Szwarc learned with Bid Time Return and Somewhere in Time: the passage of time can never get in the way of true love. In that respect, the real spiritual heir to Sirius may be Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time. Meyer may have literalized H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, but the romance in his film was pure Sirius. There’s always a way to transcend time and cultural differences, at least in the realm of fantasy filmmaking, as Sirius clearly demonstrates. There may not be a prime mover in the great circle of influences, and Sirius had plenty of influences of its own, but it’s still a step in the chain (or perhaps an arc in the circle) that’s worthy of recognition.
Cinematographer Rudolf Icsey (credited under his given name as Icsey Rezsô) shot Sirius on 35mm film using spherical lenses, framed at 1.37:1 for its theatrical release. This version is based on a 2024 digital restoration performed by the National Film Institute Hungary – Film Archive and Film Lab, based on 4K scans of a surviving nitrate film print (Deaf Crocodile’s restoration notes incorrectly state that it was the nitrate negative, but sadly that’s long gone at this point). Icsey passed away forty years ago, so grading was supervised by Hungarian cinematographer András Nagy. The resulting image is virtually spotless, with perfect grayscale and contrast, even if shadow detail is inevitably a bit lacking due to the generational losses from the source element. While it’s a little soft overall compared to what modern film stocks are capable of resolving, every bit of detail that can be wrung out of a vintage nitrate film print is on display. Thanks to the usual impeccable encoding by David Mackenzie at Fidelity in Motion, there’s not even the tiniest of compression artifacts to be seen. Sirius isn’t eye candy by modern standards, but it’s gorgeous nonetheless, and all of its sumptuous design work has been preserved beautifully here.
Audio is offered in Hungarian 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with removable English subtitles. Audio restoration for Sirius was performed by Bőhm Sound Design Studio using their CleanFilmSound technology, which involves scanning an image of the original optical soundtrack and working in the digital domain directly from that image, rather than the traditional way of outputting optical tracks as an analogue audio signal and then digitizing that. Any damage, defects, or other extraneous elements that would normally result in crackling, pops, or hiss are then removed from the image prior to converting it into digital sound files, which results in pristine sound without having to apply much noise reduction or any other postprocessing. And those results do speak for themselves in this case. While the overall frequency response is understandably somewhat limited, Sirius sounds wonderful in this new restoration: clean, clear, and with no significant noise, distortion, or other artifacts to mar the experience. The music by Tibor Polgár benefits the most, sounding much more robust than music in many other films from the era.
The Deaf Crocodile Films Limited Deluxe Edition Blu-ray release of Sirius includes a 60-page booklet featuring essays by Rolf Giesen and Walter Chaw, as well as production photographs, restoration notes, and some notes about the behind-the-scenes film included in the extras. Everything comes housed in a rigid slipcase featuring new artwork designed by Beth Morris (there’s also a J-card slipcover). The set limited to 1,500 units. There’s also a standard version available as well. The following disc-based extras are included on both releases, all of them in HD:
- Commentary by Stephen R. Bissette
- Vissza a jövőbe: Hungry at a Tipping Point (20:18)
- Interview with György Ráduly (18:54)
- Sirius Werkfilm (2:27)
- Trailer (2:48)
The commentary features film historian, author, cartoonist, and artist Stephen R. Bissette, who always brings the full weight of those experiences to bear when providing a commentary track, and this one is no exception. (He also always identifies his sources, which is helpful for anyone wanting to learn more.) He says that if Ernst Lubitsch had made a science fiction romance, it would be like Sirius. Bisette identifies all of the performers and provides filmographies for them (even the various ballet dancers), but even more helpfully, he delves into both the historical context surrounding the making of the film and the history that infuses the story itself. The film assumes a familiarity with Hungarian history, and Bissette did the research on that so that we don’t have to (and speaking as someone who spent hours going down the rabbit hole of Namibian colonial history in regard to Dust Devil, I appreciate his efforts). He admits he’s not Hungarian, so he asks for forgiveness over his pronunciations. He takes a lengthy dive into the history of time travel films (including the lost Michael Curtiz version of Alraune) and time travel literature as well. Oh, and among other things, he also points out plenty of subtle details in Sirius that are easy to miss (keep an eye on everything that happens with women’s gloves). It’s a great track, and Bissette closes with a deeply humanistic plea to make the most of the time that you have.
Vissza a jövőbe: Hungry at a Tipping Point is a visual essay by film professor Dr. Will Dodson and Ryan Verill of The Disc-Connected. Dodson also provides some historical context as it relates to Hungarian cinema, which had the first nationalized film industry in the world, and it produced many filmmakers who eventually emigrated to Hollywood (and elsewhere). Sirius director Dezsõ Ákos Hamza had to deal with German influence during World War II, but he managed to slip some pointed critiques against German nationalist ideology in films like Egy fiúnak a fele (aka Half a Boy). He had already done something similar with Sirius, which Dodson points out isn’t exactly propaganda, but it does affirm Hungarian traditions, values, and pride in a way that can be read as a critique of the values that Germany was imposing. It’s a solid essay that provides a nice companion piece to Bissette’s commentary.
Deaf Crocodile’s Dennis Bartok is also on hand to interview György Ráduly, director of the National Film Institute – Film Archive in Budapest, who breaks down the rediscovery and restoration of Sirius. Since the negatives are lost to time, they used a release print instead, and Ráduly is especially proud of the quality of the audio restoration. They also explore the story of Sirius, pointing out its parallels to Back to the Future and especially Somewhere in Time, and make a special note of the heroism displayed by Katalin Karády after the German invasion of Hungary in 1944—she saved lives using her own money, and was imprisoned and tortured as a result. (In 2004, she was posthumously recognized by the Yad Vashem—World Holocaust Remembrance Center as a Righteous Gentile.)
Last, briefest, but definitely not least, is Sirius Werkfilm, which is a reel of behind-the-scenes footage on the set of Sirius, captured by a 19-year-old studio trainee using a 9.5mm camera. Considering how rare that any kind of behind-the-scenes material from that era can be, it’s even more impressive to see some from a Hungarian film produced during World War II. And no, there’s nothing particularly impressive or insightful on display, but the fact that it exists at all is impressive enough.
This is one case where quality definitely outweighs quantity—there are countless home video releases with far more extras than this that are way less worth your time. Deaf Crocodile’s Blu-ray for Sirius is definitely worth every minute of your time, from the film itself to every last one the extras that they’ve included. It’s a fantastic set, and another fine feather in the cap for a label that has always maintained a particularly high standard of quality. Don’t miss out on it.
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).