Cinema
O noapte de pomină
Ion Șahighian · 1939
Synopsis
Dumitru Dumitrescu, known as Mitică, has worked all his life and is reaching the modest goal he had set himself: a house on the outskirts of Bucharest. According to Cinemagia, this bank clerk, who has remained a bachelor, withdraws his savings, then goes to the dinner that brings together the former pupils of his class, forty years after the baccalaureate. Drunk, he ends up in a nightclub, discovers there for the first time the power of money over people, and falls for Lulu, an entertainer of the house, who almost makes him lose his head and extracts everything he has from him.
Context
The screenplay is by Tudor Mușatescu, the cinematography by Louis Behrend and the music by Paul Constantinescu; the film was produced by Ciro-Film. George Timică and Dina Cocea play the leading roles, and it was there, according to Historia, that the actress made her debut in Romanian cinema; among the extras one glimpses the young Ion Popescu-Gopo. Most of the soundtrack has been lost, and the film, partly silent, underwent its first digitisation in 2021 with the National Film Archive; it has since been shown with musical accompaniment played live in the cinema by Irinel Anghel.
Who it is for
A fifty-four-minute comedy, of which the sound survives only in part; a portrait of a minor Bucharest clerk.
Prizes and reception
For Călin Boto, a film that plays it safe, without this restraint making it a failure: it suits its hero.
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