An Old Sloth, a New Cabriolet, and the Same Ending: The Limits of Female Liberation in Gaál’s Dream Car (1934) and Török’s Wild Rower (1937)

• In Event: Discourses of Liberation in Hungarian Nightlife, Popular Entertainment, and Mass Media, 1800-1940s

Abstract

Meseautó [Dream Car] (1934), directed by Béla Gaál, was the most successful Hungarian film of the interwar era. Its protagonist, a young female bank clerk, “wins” a fabulous set of wheels that takes her on a fairytale journey. Rezső Török’s novel Vadevezős [Wild Rower] (1937) captured the spirit of Budapest’s freewheeling waterfront culture, delivering its heroine on a picaresque voyage down the Danube. Arguing that these works form a pop-culture diptych representative of the Horthy era, my paper shows how their portrayals of the New Woman in motion ultimately park her securely within the lines of class-affirming matrimony.

Author

• Andrew Behrendt, Missouri S&T