Somewhere in the remote region, the war ends       In the midst of ruined cities and houses in the streets, in rural hamlets, everywhere where people still live, are children who have lost their homes and parents       Abandoned, hungry, and in rags, defenseless and humiliated, they wander through the world       Hunger drives them       Little streams of orphans merge into a river which rushes forward and submerges everything in its path       The children do not know any feeling; they know only the world of their enemies       They fight, steal, struggle for a mouthful of food, and violence is merely a means to get it       A gang led by Cahoun finds a refuge in an abandoned castle and encounters an old composer who has voluntarily retired into solitude from a world of hatred, treason, and crime       How can they find a common ground, how can they become mutual friends The castle becomes their hiding place but possibly it will also be their first home which they may organize and must defend       But even for this, the price will be very high      　　To this simple story, the journalist, writer, poet, scriptwriter, movie director, and film theoretician Béla Balázs applied many years of experience       He and the director Géza Radványi created a work which opened a new postwar chapter in Hungarian film       Surprisingly, this film has not lost any of its impact over the years, especially on a profound philosophical level       That is to say, it is not merely a movie about war; it is not important in what location and in what period of time it takes place       It is a story outside of time about the joyless fate of children who pay dearly for the cruel war games of adults      　　At the time it was premiered, the movie was enthusiastically received by the critics       The main roles were taken by streetwise boys of a children's group who created their roles improvisationally in close contact with a few professional actors, and in the children's acting their own fresh experience of war's turmoil appears to be reflected       At the same time, their performance fits admirably into the mosaic of a very complex movie language       Balázs's influence revealed itself, above all, in the introductory sequences an air raid on an amusement park, seen in a montage of dramatic situations evoking the last spasms of war, where, undoubtedly, we discern the influence of classical Soviet cinematography       Shooting, the boy's escape, the locomotive's wheels, the shadows of soldiers with submachine guns, the sound of a whistle—the images are linked together in abrupt sequences in which varying shots and expressive sharp sounds are emphasized       A perfectly planned screenplay avoided all elements of sentimentality, time-worn stereotypes of wronged children, romanticism and cheap simplification       The authors succeeded in bridging the perilous dramatic abyss of the metamorphosis of a children's community       Their telling of the story (the scene of pillaging, the assault on the castle, etc) independently introduced some neorealist elements which, at that time, were being propagated in Italy by De Sica, Rossellini, and other film artists       The rebukes of contemporary critics, who called attention to formalism for its own sake have been forgotten       The masterly art of cameraman Barnabás Hegyi gives vitality to the poetic images       His angle shots of the children, his composition of scenes in the castle interior, are a living document of the times, and underline the atmosphere and the characters of the protagonists       The success of the picture was also enhanced by the musical art of composer Dénes Buday who, in tense situations, inserted the theme of the Marseilaise into the movie's structure, as a motive of community unification, as an expression of friendship and the possibility of understanding      　　Valahol Europaban is the first significant postwar Hungarian film       It originated in a relaxed atmosphere, replete with joy and euphoria, and it includes these elements in order to demonstrate the strength of humanism, tolerance, and friendship       It represents a general condemnation of war anywhere in the world, in any form