The Revue in Twentieth-Century Budapest

Summary

Budapest from the 1920s until 1968. In the 1930s, Budapest became the capital of Central European cosmopolitan nightlife. As Hungary's borders closed after the Second World War, any chance for the revue to regain its international authority was lost. The turn to communism and the new Stalinist totalitarian system had to come to terms with this stigmatised, but highly popular genre. For the first time, the field of entertainment began to be considered a cultural product that had to adhere to new political requirements. Three experiments attempted to legitimise the genre in the 1950s and their inevitable failure broke the genre's local tradition. By the time its place was stabilised within the socialist system by 1968, the revue's cultural relevance had become almost insignificant with the appearance of new genres of entertainment.