By Marian Tutui
As it is known, after his 1968 speech in favor of
Czechoslovakia’s political right to self-determination, Nicolae Ceauşescu was
no longer in good relations with Moscow and with some of its satellites. This
was one of the reasons why he sought to approach the West, the USA, and
Yugoslavia. He was the first communist leader to visit London and Washington,
while Bucharest was the first communist capital visited by Charles de Gaulle
and by American presidents. Richard Nixon visited Romania in 1969, and his
successor, Gerald Ford, followed in 1975. In return, Ceauşescu also visited the
United States twice, in 1971, and 1978.
The three Romanian westerns The Prophet, the Gold and the
Transylvanians (1979, d. Dan Piţa and Mircea Veroiu), The Actress, the Dollars
and the Transylvanians (1981, d. Mircea Veroiu) and The Oil, the Baby and the
Transylvanians (1982, d. Dan Piţa) are parodies and this is what makes them
valuable, probably more than they would have been if they were serious
westerns. Unlike with classical westerns, the main characters are not American
and they do not intend to settle in America. It is the story of three brothers
from Transylvania, the oldest and the youngest arriving in the USA, not as
immigrants but in order to look for the middle one and bring him home. The
historical circumstances are barely credible: the elder brother, having
participated as a volunteer in the Romanian War of Independence of 1877
(although, as Romanians from Transylvania they would have been, at that time,
subjects of the Austro- Hungarian Empire), he wants to bring his brother home
believing that, now that Romania had become independent, their fate as
Transylvanians would be more promising. Once in America, the brothers are
reunited but they encounter various obstacles which prevent their return.
First, there is gold and a Mormon leader, then oil, then the marriage of the
youngest brother and the birth of a baby, a conflict with Hungarian neighbors
(even in America!), fighting bandits, and finally, the eldest brother’s passion
for an actress. All these will postpone their trip back to Europe during the
first film, and also during its two sequels. Each of the three brothers has his
own skills and character traits that help them survive and fight against the
villains of the West: the elder brother with his mixture of native force,
peasant wisdom and innocence, the youngest with the knowledge he’d earned from
books, and the middle one with his riding and shooting skills he had acquired
as a frontier man in America. Thus the Transylvanians solve America’s problems
before getting a chance to solve their own back home! Even the episode of the
quarrel and subsequent alliance with the Hungarians symbolize that the old
Romanian- Hungarian feud is not irreconcilable.
Paradoxically, the three Romanian westerns resume the
ideological war with the West in subtler way. To understand that we have to
remember two other films made the same time: Aurel Vlaicu (1977, d. Mircea
Drăgan) and Stefan Luchian (1983, d. Nicolae Mărgineanu). While the westerns
deal with a Transylvanian peasant who looks for a better life in America, the
films mentioned above are about two famous Romanians, an airplane builder and a
painter who are lured for a while by Paris. So we may say it about immigration
and brain-drain, same as in the Yugoslav contemporary production The Secret of
Nikola Tesla/ Tajna Nikole Tesle (1980, d. Krsto Papić) where the Serbian
inventor is a victim both of Edison and J.P.Morgan, which might be true and
that is why turned into a patriotic film. Such an interpretation may seem
far-fetched with the westerns, but we must remember that it is not a case of
immigration from Romania but from Transylvania under Austrian-Hungarian rule
and the elder urges his brother to return home because “Our country Romania is
free now”.
The scripts belong to Titus Popovici, probably the
greatest Romanian scriptwriter during communism, already specialized in epics
and friend of director Sergiu Nicolaescu. The fact that he was a member of the
central committee of the Romanian communist party is obviously quite an
important detail. In spite of that, according to the documents regarding the
production of The Prophet, the Gold and the Transylvanians kept by the Romanian
Film Archive, Titus Popovici was advised to “underline the seriousness” of
certain scenes and, because he didn’t quite stick to all the terms of the
agreement, was finally fined with 10% from the value of his contract. The total
value was of 140,000 lei which, at that time, was worth about 10,000 USD, or
the price of two Dacia automobiles.
The three westerns present some unusual situations. First
of all, they are about Romanians going to America and intending to come back.
Even reconstructing the Far West using Romanian locations was unusual, although
the 1968 Romanian- West German- French co-production The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer/ Aventurile lui Tom Sawyer and its sequel The Death of Indian Joe/
Moartea lui Joe indianul (d. Mihai Iacob and Wolfgang Liebeneiner) were the
first films made in Romania whose plot required an American western atmosphere.
The French, German and Romanian cast tried to play Midwestern Americans living
at the end of the 19th century, while the Danube played host to Tom Sawyer’s
adventures, replacing the Mississippi.
During communism, Sergiu Nicolaescu was the first
director who shot some scenes abroad, in Istanbul and Prague, for his epic The
Last Crusade/ Michael the Brave/ Mihai Viteazul (1971). Nicolaescu was one of
several Romanian filmmakers who have been involved in international
co-productions, including westerns. Between 1968- 1988, Nicolaescu directed a
film and two TV series of the western genre. They were screen adaptations of
novels by Fenimore Cooper and Jack London: The Prairie/ La prairie (1968,
France- Romania, co-directed by Pierre Gaspard-Huit), and the two series
Leather Stocking Legend/ Die Lederstrumpferzählungen (1969, France- West
Germany- Romania- Austria) and The Gold Rush/ Lockruf des Goldes (1975- 1988,
Austria- West Germany- Romania- France, with Alecu Croitoru as co-director).
Several Romanian actors were cast in westerns shot in Yugoslavia, such as
Violeta Andrei who became Gojko Mitić’s partner and a prototype for the
beautiful ‘squaw’ (the American native chieftain’s wife).
It is maybe a significant illustration of the ‘relative
liberalism’ of the 1960s that “Romanian Folk Ballads”, a collection of folklore
published in 1966, included an early 20th century ballad from Maramureş called
“The Song of Immigration”/ “Cântecul emigrării”. The ballad tells about the
adventures of Transylvanians travelling illegally from Austro- Hungarian
Transylvania to the harbor of Fiume (Rijeka) in order to embark on a boat for
America. The ballad ends with the first impressions of the naive Transylvanian
in New-York: “Arrived in America, guess what I saw then:/ Only black folks and
Englishmen.”. A similarly rare and
amusing gem is the documentary film If I Were a Cowboy/ De-aş fi cowboy (1972)
14. Nicolae Cureliuc, a self-educated peasant from the village Mariţeia Mică,
sends a letter to the magazine “Cinema” in which he asks whether cowboys still
exist nowadays. Director Iancu Moscu tried to find an answer and made two trips
to Mariţeia Mică, a village in North-Eastern Romania where the residents live
mainly from livestock. He interviewed some naive youngsters and even screened
The Miracle Rider/ Călăreţul misterios, a vintage western (1935) starring Tom
Mix, at the local cinema. Iancu Moscu’s documentary shows the faces of the
spectators while watching the film and alternates images of the Romanian
village with scenes from the old film. Although the documentary also shows
images from the nearby modern silver exploitation at Leşu Ursului, much
different from an early 20th century gold mine in the Wild West, the village
itself ironically proves that life was still similar. Such ironical conclusion
contradicted, in fact, the official propaganda of the times about communism
having improved the village life. In 1972 Romanian villagers still used, as
they still use today, horse-drawn carriages, still got drunk at the local bar
and, while some rode motorcycles, most still proudly wore their wide-brimmed
hats.
It is important to consider some other facts about the
period when the three ‘Transylvanian’ westerns were made, in order to better
understand and assess the extent of their boldness. Four years before, the
first Romanian western writer Nicolae Frânculescu published his first western
novel: “The Fangs of the Jackal”/ “Colţii şacalului” (1975). It was followed by
“South of Rio Grande”/ “La Sud de Rio Grande” (1980). Both novels pretend to
render the notes and adventures of Ştefan Şercanu, a Romanian who crossed the
Wild West. In 1988, the first novel was turned into a comic strip by Sandu
Florea (under the pseudonym Dorandu).
In 1977, two years after Gerald Ford’s visit to Romania
and one year before Ceauşescu’s second visit to the USA, the Romanian Academy
published a first collection of studies on the history of Romanian- American
relations: “The Image of the New World in the Romanian Principalities and Their
First Relations before 1859”. In fact, Gerald Ford’s visit is mentioned in the
foreword of this book. The most interesting fact is that the book offers a
short biographical note about George Pomutz (1818 - 1882), an American hero of
Romanian origin. He was a general during the Secession War, and because of his
knowledge of foreign languages (he knew no less than eight), he was later
appointed general consul for the USA in Russia, where he was the one who bought
Alaska for the US 18. Two years before the publishing of this first collection
of studies on early contacts between Romanians and Americans, Val Tebeica
published a book (also the first of its kind) on Romanian explorers. Although
he wrote about several explorers such as Iuliu Popper, who went as far as
Tierra del Fuego, or Samuilă Damian, a globe-trotter who met Benjamin Franklin,
the author does not mention George Pomutz, whether because he did not know
about him or he simply did not find his story relevant enough.
In order to render Romania’s efforts at that time to play
the card of collaboration with the West and the USA, we should also mention
that, in 1974, the Romanian air company TAROM inaugurated the first regular
flights to New York, soon after Yugoslavian JAT and Aeroflot from USSR. In
1976, to celebrate the USA bicentennial anniversary, the Romanian Navy exercise
clipper “Mircea” visited several US harbors; in 1980, Bucharest hosted the 15th
International Congress of Historical Sciences, and, in 1984, Romania and
Yugoslavia were the only communist countries who attended the Olympic Games in
Los Angeles. Perhaps of less importance, but still relevant, is the fact that,
in the late 70s and in the 80s, Bucharest had a cinema theatre specialized in
screening mainly westerns. It was called “Luceafărul“ (The Morning Star), today
“MediaPro Cinema Theatre”, and centrally located.
And, for the picture of that era to be complete, we
should also mention that, when the three Romanian westerns were screened (1979 -
1982), the times of “national communism” had already begun. Economically it was
the beginning of a period of severe deprivation and shortage of consumer goods,
after Ceauşescu had decided to urgently repay the country’s foreign debts
through massive exports and a drastic reduction of imports. Thus, the number of
genuine American westerns had already decreased, as did the overall number of
foreign films released in Romania, while the number of Romanian feature films
reached its peak: 30 films were made in 1980. Maybe it is not only a
coincidence that three of the people involved in making Romanian westerns left
Romania soon after completing their works: director Mihai Iacob left Romania
for USA in 1973 (where he also died in 2009), director Mircea Veroiu left for
France in 1984 (but came back in 1996), while
cartoonist Sandu Florea also left for the USA in 1991.
