THE ALERT (1967) – documentary film online

Directed by: Mircea Săucan
Script: Dumitru Cămîrzan, Mircea Săucan
Cast: Gabriela Alexandru, Mihai Creangă
Producer: Bucharest Film Studio
Cinematography by: Nicolae Mărgineanu
Edited by: Erika Aurian
Sound: Leonid Strașun
Year: 1967
Category: Feature film
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 58 minutes

6,018 – Cinepub viewers

PLOT SUMMARY

Inspired by the modernism of European art cinema of the 1960s, the movie is divided into 4 chapters and features a boy and a girl couple, who sometimes look like lovers and sometimes like characters from a labor protection movie.

CRITICAL REVIEWS:

“«The Alert»” is one of the most bizarre labor protection movies imaginable. In fact, it functions rather as a deconstruction of the pattern of this cinematic species, generally characterized by clarity, didacticism and pronounced rhetoric. Now, the only part that functions here according to these principles is the opening credits, the rest of the construction being a kind of poem with dreamlike or surrealist overtones, in which the border between reality and fiction, between the outer and inner worlds of the characters is so fine that it becomes, in the end, impossible to identify.” – Sahia Vintage Cineclub

“There is no moment of pause as the movie unfolds – the eye is constantly invited to observe, to admire, and the mind to remain active in trying to piece together the lapidary fragments of the narrative.” – Sahia Vintage Cineclub

“Mircea Săucan seems to have had not the slightest intention of really making a utilitarian, labor-protection movie, but a lyrical reflection on the cinematic environment. The result is quite possibly a masterpiece.” – Sahia Vintage Cineclub

“Asked to work on a movie commissioned by the Ministry of Chemistry, Săucan uses the commission as a pretext for an hour-long cinematic essay on the right to dream and the necessary overcoming of inertia (…) the poet Săucan cannot curb his creative exuberance, even if it means putting his career in question.” – Horațiu Damian, istoriafilmului.ro

“Săucan was a discreet, almost secret director. A sort of Salinger of Romanian cinema. He left the country a long time ago, after a few movies – few, but fundamental.” – Alex. Leo Șerban

“Săucan and Mărgineanu use the image as an abstract tool, complicating and challenging, or on the contrary, emphatically enunciating the conventions of subjective visual representation. They opt for atypical station points and perspective alterations that transform the frames into semi-abstract, structural-dynamic compositions. From this point of view, the movie looks like the lost pearl of a late Bauhaus in the style of Moholy-Nagy.” – Emil Vasilache, cinepub.ro

“The expected experiments are not mere evasive decorations. The film’s format and purpose of interchange is not condescendingly strangled by the sole of art for art’s sake, as much as some would like to believe. The film questions formal standardization while fully engaging with the utility of the utilitarian film.” – Emil Vasilache, cinepub.ro

“Despite the quasi-obscure formalism and the ease with which Săucan hovers over the utilitarian format, “Alert” is readable and accomplishes its purpose. It might wrinkle only those working-class foreheads chronically suffering from stiffness; the more outspoken ones, it will brighten with a breath both poetic and militant.” – Emil Vasilache, cinepub.ro

TRIVIA:

• Following the investigation case accusing him of modernism in the film “Meanders” (1966), Mircea Săucan needed a helping hand in the industry, which he received from Victor Iliu (he found him a job, in the form of a labor protection film).
• Victor Iliu’s death in 1968 meant that, when Săucan was exiled to “Sahia”, the director had no support from the then cinema management. For four years he will not work on any film, even for labor protection.
• Săucan was born in Paris to a Romanian father and a Jewish mother. He then moved to Prague before returning to the country in 1934. When Transylvania was ceded in 1940, the family took refuge near Sighisoara. They narrowly escaped deportation to Auschwitz and anti-Jewish persecution, and the arrival of the Red Army took on almost mystical dimensions in the imagination of the future director. Moreover, the education he received in his family home would leave him with a steadfast admiration for Iosif Visarionionovich Djugashvili, an admiration that would probably cost him later in his relations with society. (Horațiu Damian, istoriafilmului.ro)
• The young Săucan attended one of the most prestigious universities at the time, VGIK (Vsesoiuznîi Gosudarstvenîi Institut Kinematografii/ United State Institute of Cinematography). He became a fellow student of Paradjanov’s, with Dovzhenko and Yutkievich as his teachers. It is unclear whether he met Eisenstein, who was dying at the time.
• Between 1952-1957 he became director of the Alexander Sahia documentary film studio and its party secretary.
• The difference between him and other communists was a more bohemian view of the system, also due to his time in Moscow, where he studied with some of the teachers marginalized by Soviet socialism, which led to a more careless personal conception of socialist realism. This also explains why, despite his personal convictions, Săucan never wrote or directed a socialist-realist, party-oriented story. It was his aesthetic choices at odds with the dominant ideology that caused him problems later on, along with the subtle criticism of the regime in his films (Diana Voinea, agena.liternet.ro).
• In 1987, after another seven years of being banned from making films, during which he made only documentaries and films about labor protection, and after the death of both his parents, Săucan left for Israel, from where he never returned. (Diana Voinea, agena.liternet.ro)

LINES:

“I’m not taking my overalls. I’m not putting my seat belt on. Tonight I’m going to go and dance and tomorrow I’m going to climb up the tower like this in my dress and I’m going to fall.” – She (Gabriela Alexandru)

“Freedom is not always madness.” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“Don’t smoke, don’t walk without a mask, don’t climb without a seatbelt, don’t run up and down the stairs, always be careful where you step, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t… Because people need to be protected.” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“Let’s go after the delinquents, those who don’t respect the rules of safety at work.” – She (Gabriela Alexandru)

“To free ourselves from routine, it is enough to become aware of the purpose that unites us. The visiting surgeon does not listen to the moaning of the patient. Beyond them, he seeks to heal man. And so on to the simple shepherd who modestly tends a few sheep. If he becomes aware of his purpose, he becomes a sentinel. And each sentinel is responsible for the whole empire.” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“I am the one who saved you, (…) I would know how to do that anytime. Would you?” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“Someone always has to be saved.” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“My flower… I am responsible for it. It’s so delicate and so tender” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“There should be a gardener of men.” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“There’s no way I can fall, because I’m in overalls, because I’m wearing a seatbelt and because I’m not playing, because I’m careful.” – She (Gabriela Alexandru)

“You can only see clearly with your heart. The eyes cannot penetrate to the heart of things.” – He (Mihai Creangă)

“You are responsible for your flower.” – He (Mihai Creangă)

ARTICLES:

• The Alert – cineclub.sahiavintage.ro
• Documentary by Mircea Săucan – arhiva.unatc.ro
• The antisystem Bolshevik – istoriafilmului.ro
• Rebel without will – istoriafilmului.ro
• In the intimacy of the Modernist – hotnews.ro
• Round table, In Memoriam Mircea Săucan (1928 – 2003). Book discussion: “The Cage seeks the Bird” (2008). Film screening: “Le Retour” (1994).
• Mircea Săucan and the wandering cinema night – agenda.liternet.ro

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