
Synopsis
Foreword: A man (Dem Rădulescu) walks into a bar and asks what happened to the rocket that’s burning in the TV pictures.What fuel does it have? Who was the teacher who built it? He wanders around, interviews people who think he’s a journalist or a detective, and when he’s asked, he answers with the same clarity: “I’m not”. (cinepub.ro)
Directed by: Ion Popescu Gopo
Script: Ion Popescu Gopo
Cast: Dem Rădulescu, Cornel Coman, Vasilica Tastman, George Mihăiță, Marta Hertzec, Horia Popescu, Jorj Voicu, Petre Țăranu, Rodica Popescu, Florin Vasiliu, Coca Andronescu, Mihai Berechet, Haralambie Boroș, Niculescu Cadet, Horia Căciulescu, Mircea Bogdan, Eugenia Maci, Gheorghe Simoncea, Ion Dinu, Mihnea Mihăilescu
Producer: House of Movies Five. Bucharest
Cinematography by: Grigore Ionescu, Ștefan Horvath
Edited by: Eugenia Naghi
Sound: Dan Ionescu, Victor Cantuniari
Music: Dumitru Capoianu, piano fragments No. 1 by P.I. Tchaikovsky
Year: 1975
Category: Feature film
Genre: Comedy, Fantastic, SF
Duration: 84 minutes
30,226 – Cinepub viewers
PLOT SUMMARY
A sci-fi movie, with a touch of lyrical comedy, “like a human irony against human enthusiasm” (Gopo): the presence on Earth of a human-like alien who has come to have a relationship with a scientist who had built a cosmic rocket but disappeared with his invention in a fire, is not without results. Instead of the energy he had hoped to bring from Earth to his planet to replenish its depleted reserves, the alien will take with him human experience and human wisdom and Earth’s wisdom based on humor and fantasy. – Bujor T. Râpeanu (“Filmed in Romania”, 2005, Ed. Fundației Pro)
AWARDS:
- 1975 – Berlin International Film Festival – Golden Bear nomination
CRITICAL REVIEWS:
“A science-fiction, in which an extraterrestrial robot (built, however, in the image and likeness of earthlings) arrives on Earth to obtain information about the Professor’s experiments and the rocket he built. But the rocket had perished a short time earlier in a fire started by a shady character. The Alien’s investigations continue, but he wants to find out what fuel the rocket was going to fly with. The Professor’s assistant, Corina, convinced that she is dealing with a journalist, reveals everything to the Alien, not suspecting that he had come to get energy for his planet, which is in a crisis in this respect. The professor not only wanted to fly into space, but also to create life inside the rocket from seawater. And so a baby is born, raised by a robot mother, a child who floats in the cosmos for a long time, until the Professor projects him to Earth, where the child longs to go to meet his fellow man. What will be the Alien’s wisdom lesson? He will take the following message back to his planet: the great energy of humans is not transmissible or transportable, it is their humor and fantasy!” – Călin Căliman
“On board a spaceship, a child has been created out of the sea water to be cared for by a robot-mother. Destined to become the perfect being, armed with universal knowledge projected on the walls of the ship, he grows up in artificial comfort and lack of affection. The earthly images disturb the strange passenger who feels the desire to pluck weeds and hold a girl’s hand…” (Tudor Caranfil)
“Echoes of «Fahrenheit» or the more recent «Space Odyssey» or «Solaris». All of them, familiar and well-assimilated visual readings, are bathed in an original light, from home, from the realm of youth without old age, with the irresistible call of the valley of tears, the immortal home of memory…” –Alice Manoiu (Cinema Magazine, 1975)
“The animated films «A Brief History» (1956), «7 Arts» (1958) and «Homo sapiens» (1960) were the ones that made him a European and international icon, for the originality of his ideas, his humor and lyricism, his meditation on the human condition, and not least for his emblematic character, a naked humanoid with simple lines, known as «Gopo’s Little Man»”.
TRIVIA:
- Ion Popescu-Gopo says about his movie: “Although it looks and even is full of modern information and almost fantastic scientific forecasting, this movie should not be seen as a sci-fi movie, it is meant to be seen as a comedy.”
- The director attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest.
- He followed an animation class in Moscow and made his debut as a cartoonist in 1939.
- Film director Gheorghe Naghi recalled of his colleague: “I was a very good family friend of Gopo. He was incredibly superstitious. It is said that Tuesdays are three bad clocks, which is why Gopo had a very special way of life on this day. He didn’t show up for meetings, he didn’t film, he ate only one kind of food for lunch. He didn’t even answer the phone! At one point I even asked his wife, Ana Maria, what he does all day. “He lies in bed listening to the radio”, she said. So you see again the hand of fate. One Tuesday, November 28, 1989, he decided to go out to wash his car. He didn’t even have to go out, just to wash it. And the next day he had a heart attack!”
- “I made a little man with great economy of lines. His eyes are two dots, he can’t screw them up, and he doesn’t look googly. I’ve willingly reduced my possibilities. His mouth is almost motionless. I didn’t use facial expressions, but the subject has gained strength. The attention to the background has increased.” (Gopo, 1983, Cinema magazine)
- In 1962, when the director visited the great Walt Disney, he offered him a job as a scriptwriter at his Burbank studio, but Gopo refused.
LINES:
“These flying plates are making me overtired!” – Woman in the bar (Rodica Popescu)
“Did you see the rocket? Did you fly with it? Did anyone fly the rocket? Didn’t the teacher fly either?” – The Alien (Dem Rădulescu)
“Vacation… va-ca-tion… N o i t a c a v.” – The Alien (Dem Rădădulescu)
“We have an excellent teacher, esteemed and respected by everyone. He had a hobby, a madness of his own. He filmed and photographed all day.” – The School Director (Horia Popescu)
“Do you believe in aliens? (…) They’re robots like you, like me, in the flesh, so they’re indistinguishable from a real human being. They talk, they sing, because they have instead of a brain a computer in which all the problems are programmed.” – The School Director (Horia Popescu)
“Have you seen him (the professor) making fish with legs?” – The Alien (Dem Rădulescu)
“The fantastic snake: unique piece in the world. It shows very interestingly combined features: head of a ram, ears and hair of a man, body of a snake covered with feathers and, very interestingly, the tail of a lion. To the ancients, it represented a deity of good.” – Corina (Vasilica Tastaman)
“Good morning, my dear child. You’ve grown up. I am your father.” – Professor (Cornel Coman)
“I am your father. I see you, you don’t see me because I’ve been dead for two million years. And now I will teach you what life is.” – The Professor (Cornel Coman)
“If I didn’t have wires for a heart, I’d fall in love with her!” – The Alien (Dem Rădulescu)
“There in my dreams I bathe in the clear water of the rivers and race to run with young and old and pick the same flower for the same girl.” – The Child (George Mihăiță)
“But at night, have you ever thought… that I dream?” – The Child (George Mihăiță)
“He forgot how important a mother’s love is!” – Corina (Vasilica Tastaman)
“Is the band finished? No. It runs on dried chromosomes.” – The Alien (Dem Rădulescu)
“Look at your work! I am scientifically made, scientifically educated. I am perfect! I’m a doctor, I’m an engineer, I’m an architect, I learned elegant manners… For whom? For whom? Why did I learn to count? To count my sunless days?” – The Child (George Mihaita)
“You people have inexhaustible energy. Humor and fantasy…” – The Alien (Dem Rădulescu)
ARTICLES:
- Fantastic Comedy (1975) – istoriafilmuluiromanesc.ro
- The Culture Dose: “Fantastic Comedy” – agerpres.ro
- Documentary: 100 years since the birth of cartoonist, director and screenwriter Ion Popescu-Gopo (April 30) – agerpres.ro
- Buftea Studios: Ion Popescu-Gopo, a director of international stature, a visionary who elevated animation to a meditation on the human condition – saptamina.ro
- Fantastic Comedy – fest.ro