TEST PAPER (1987) – love film online

Directed by: Nicolae Corjos
Script: George Sovu, Nicolae Sovu
Cast: Oana Sîrbu, Ștefan Bănică Jr., Mihai Constantin, Teodora Mareș, Adrian Păduraru, Tamara Buciuceanu, Diana Lupescu, Ion Caramitru, Costin Marculescu, Cristina Deleanu, Mariana Danescu, Cosmin Șofron, Tudor Petruț, Lucian Ifrim, Bogdan Vodă, Mihai Vasile Boghiță, Carmen Enea, Cornel Mihalache, Jana Gorea, Florin Chiriac, Mădălina Pop, Carmen Papa
Producer: Maria Popescu, Radu Stegăroiu
Cinematography by: Alexandru Groza
Edited by: Elena Pantazică
Sound: Bujor Suru, Ion Diaconu, Constantin Țarălungă
Music: Florin Bogardo
Year: 1987
Category: Feature film
Genre: Comey, Romance
Duration: 91 minutes

65,814 – Cinepub viewers

PLOT SUMMARY

The school year is inaugurated by teacher Socrates (Ion Caramitru) with an extemporary exam on the theme “How would I like to be the class headmaster?”. Socrates’ popularity worries the math teacher, Isoscel (Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez). But Socrates also has his worries about Anca (Mădălina Pop), his daughter in love.

CRITICAL REVIEWS:

“‘Test Paper’ commits the imprudence of shifting the center of the action from the teenagers, on their teachers, in a confrontation of ars-pedagogica and comic-melodramatic pontifices” – Tudor Caranfil

“The movie marks the debut of a veritable sociological phenomenon of the ’80s, which offered the younger generation the illusion of an alternative to the conformism of the cinema of the time, welcome in the mold of school uniform. Corjos and Gh. Șovu, the screenwriter of the movie, put two good-natured and beautiful young people in front of the baccalaureate to face, in love, the world of teachers and parents who believe that for love ‘it’s not the time!'” – Tudor Caranfil

“The authors of the comedy confront archetypes such as the class valedictorian, the girl of modest origin in competition with the ready-money, meddlesome, fire-breathing kid, the ideal teacher with his head in the clouds or the dry and exact little girl like the sciences he teaches, in a comical-melodrama steeped in sentimentality, but also with an honest attempt to tackle the mentality of the last years of high school.” – Tudor Caranfil

If there’s anything that can be taught to children by watching this movie, it would be about how the stilted language of a political era can become the language of the state, so deeply screwed into people’s minds that it is still spoken today, about how censorship excavates natural emotions and amputates natural gestures of closeness, about how, in an autocratic regime, two sentimental partners seem more awkward than the stuffed foxes in the dioramas of the Antipa Museum, work companions instead of lovers, and last but not least about how repressed people become mannequins in a territory ruled by a mouthpiece. – Augustin Cupșa, cinepub.ro

“It is interesting that all these harmful effects of the dictatorship are not seen directly in the movie, but through a gestalt mechanism – after you cut out the geometric body you can still identify it by the outline left. I am thinking that perhaps many of those involved in the ideal raised by “The Graduates” totally believed in it and identified with it, despite the fact that the corresponding years in reality were downright Orwellian in Romania. Perhaps therein lies the unnatural and superficial beauty of the movie, the fact that it has such an overdose of candor that it can absorb all the genuine miseries of life.” – Augustin Cupșa, cinepub.ro

TRIVIA:

• “Test Paper” and “The Graduates” became a movie phenomenon of the 80s. They enjoyed extraordinary popularity in the years that followed.
• Nicolae Corjos was born on May 22, 1935 in Hotin (Bukovina, now Ukraine). He graduated from the “Ion Luca Caragiale” Institute of Theatrical and Cinematographic Art (IATC) in Bucharest in 1956. He died on February 27, 2022.
• He worked for a long time as assistant and assistant director, collaborating with numerous directors, from Malvina Urșianu to Mircea Mureșan and from Sergiu Nicolaescu to Lucian Pintilie.
• He was awarded the Union of Filmmakers’ Prize for the film “The Graduates” in 1986 and was a member of the jury of the National Film and Slide Show Festival “Autumn in Voroneț” in 2003; associate professor at the Film and Television Directing Department of the National University of Theatrical and Cinematographic Art “I.L. Caragiale”.
• He was a member of the National Audiovisual Council between 1995 and 2001.
• He became a Doctor of Music in 2000 with the thesis “The Art of Music – Component and Halo of Audiovisual” and was a professor at the University “Hyperion” from 1990 to 2009. He was also a member of the Romanian Filmmakers’ Union.

LINES:

“You are Socrates, aren’t you?” – Luminița Cernea (Diana Lupescu)
“I prefer tradition. You in the front, in the prize-winners’ bench, and me further back, with a broader perspective on life.” – Dinu Murgoci (Dan Zamfirescu)
“Comrade headmistress, I was explaining to them how my grandmother scolded me in Mizil.” – Ionică (Mihai Constantin)
“We must get the militia off the bridge!” – Isoscel (Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez)
“If you don’t put the saddle on them from the start, they’ll get on your head!” – Isoscel (Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez)
“I have other principles. I believe that if students respect their teachers, they respect the rules.” – Luminița Cernea (Diana Lupescu)
“You would also like to be a sports prize winner. Homo universalis!” – Doru Murgoci (Dan Zamfirescu)
“This poem should be said simply. It is Eminescu.” – Socrates (Ion Caramitru)
“In life, you can’t run in several lanes at once. And my lane is tennis.” – Dinu Murgoci (Dan Zamfirescu)
“Please drop your tough guy airs!” – Anca Gavrilescu (Mădălina Pop)
“Dad, don’t move me to another school. Please trust me.” – Anca Gavrilescu (Mădălina Pop)
“The important thing is to go through life clean, under any circumstances.” – Socrates (Ion Caramitru)
“You’re looking too much into their horns, man! How can we still have prestige in front of them, when in front of you they’re sitting like in a cafeteria?” – Isoscel (Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez)
“Where did you get the idea that a pupil, in order to learn, must know only out of fear?” – Socrates (Ion Caramitru)

ARTICLES:

• Nicolae Corjos, the director of an 80s movie phenomenon. “The Graduates” and “Confessions Love“, the films of several generations – adevarul.ro
• Café inspired by the movie “The Graduates” by Nicolae Corjos, opened in Cotroceni – news.ro
• Nicolae Corjos, director of the movies “The Graduates” and “Confessions of Love” died at the age of 86 – adevarul.ro
• The director Nicolae Corjos, the author of the famous films “The Graduates” and “Confessions of Love” would have turned 88 on May 22 – radioromaniacultural.ro
• Nicolae Corjos, director of “The Graduates” and “Confessions of Love” – dosaresecrete.ro

This premiere is part of a national archive project supported by the Romanian National Film Centre.
Special thanks goes to the Romanian Filmmakers Union and to the Romanian Film Archive.

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