Two Girls on the Street

The maverick Hollywood stylist André de Toth sharpened his craft in his native Hungary, including making this chic, dynamic melodrama, studded with deco decor and jazzy musical interludes. Two upwardly mobile working women—one a musician in an all-girl band, the other a bricklayer—join forces in their attempts to make it in Budapest, supporting each other through changing fortunes, the advances of lecherous men, and the highs and heartbreaks of love. Kinetic camera work, brisk editing, and avant-garde imagery abound in this often strikingly modern ode to the power of working-class female solidarity.