A beautiful film to look at, A Strange Role is set in the winter of 1919-1920, after the collapse of the Hungarian Council's Republic, and deals with the bizarre story of a young political fugitive who disguises himself as a woman and takes temporary refuge working in a rural sanitorium as a physical therapist. John Gillett has observed: “A Strange Role is stunningly shot by Elemer Ragalyi and set in a snow-bound sanitorium full of glazed-over mirrors, a lift straight out of Stavisky and mysterious, dimly lit rooms and corridors. Sandor occasionally lets his heady style run away with him, but keeps the narrative consistently absorbing and gives a visual sheen comparable to Visconti and Bertolucci.” The director, Pal Sandor, has stated: “I was haunted by the particularity of the story, a revolutionary in drag.... Obviously, I was never in the Red Army. And I am not a transvestite. Still I am attracted by the anecdote: how long can we play a role without being absorbed by the experience? When does the role come to devour the man?.... Like Felix Krull, we would all like once to escape from our personality.”