The scream that pierces through the opening of “Semmelweis” sets the tone for the 19th century-set drama from Lajos Koltai , about the groundbreaking Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis, immediately showing its concern for a very pregnant young woman desperately roaming the streets for a proper place to give birth. Loath to check in to local clinics that have acquired a reputation for patients mysteriously dying in postpartum care, her shaken faith in the health care system sets a distinctly modern emphasis for the sturdy, old-fashioned Vienna period piece, selected as Hungary’s official Oscar selection after it became a local box office hit. Even without taking a look at a picture of the real balding and bespectacled Dr.
Semmelweis, it’s immediately clear Koltai wants to deliver something that’s more popcorn than medicinal when he gives a movie star entrance to the dashing Miklós H. Vecsei, playing the film’s title role. An already resplendent full mane of black hair is drenched in sweat to add further glow to the doctor, whose piercing blue eyes cut through all the redness that’s around them from working night shifts.
As portrayed here, there’s nothing complex about Semmelweis; he has no time for anything but medicine and is severely lacking in social graces. Nonetheless, he makes for an engaging protagonist as a single-minded, scalpel-wielding swashbuckler who relentlessly pursues answers for an outbreak of puerperal fever — a bacterial infection th.
