by Bogdan Jitea

In the mid-1960s, the ideological project of a national cinematic epic took shape in the minds of Communist cultural officials, one that set out to group the historical films into a veritable visual treatise on national history. By connecting to a past reinterpreted in the political key of the present, the regime sought to legitimize itself domestically. Cinema, with its immense capacity to reach into the deep strata of society, played an essential role in this vast propaganda effort. The project’s chief promoter, and almost certainly its architect, Mihnea Gheorghiu—at the time vice-president of the State Committee for Culture and Art and president of the Cinematography Council—announced, in a series of articles published in the press, the commitment to complete and conclude by the end of the decade the epic conceived to “set down our people’s history on screen,” inaugurated with the patriotic films Lupeni 29 (1962) and Tudor (1963), the latter after a screenplay of his own (cf. Mihnea Gheorghiu, “National Cinema,” in Contemporanul, no. 31 (981) of 30 July 1965, pp. 1–2).

What is striking in this account of the project’s beginnings is the omission of Neamul Șoimăreștilor (The Șoimărești Clan, 1964), which would later be included in every listing of the historical films in the national epic cycle. At the time Gheorghiu was writing, Neamul Șoimăreștilor tended to be regarded as belonging rather to the subgenre of screen adaptations of historical novels, as would, somewhat later, Frații Jderi (The Jderi Brothers, 1974) and Întoarcerea lui Vodă Lăpușneanu (The Return of King Lăpușneanu, 1979), than strictly to the national cinematic epic. This despite the fact that, formally, the film enjoyed a good part of the ingredients of the historical super-productions that make up the political project of the epic: armies of extras placed at its disposal by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, a museum-like reconstruction of seventeenth-century Moldavia with filming at the actual locations of the painted monasteries of Bukovina, the idyllic, pășunist idealization of the rural world with peasants in impeccable folk costumes populating sets lifted straight out of the Village Museum, and the picturesqueness of the period costumes later used by the Buftea studios in most productions of the genre. What sets Mircea Drăgan’s film apart from the classic productions of the epic, however, is the absence, in Sadoveanu’s novel, of nationalist pathos and of the main guiding ideas that animated the project launched by Mihnea Gheorghiu: the image of the exemplary leader, sovereignty, and national unity.

In this respect, a great handicap was also the historical period in which the writer chooses to develop the narrative thread of his novel—one of the dissolution of central authority and of feudal anarchy in the Moldavia of the first decades of the seventeenth century, in which the great boyar families dispute the country’s throne, often with foreign backing. From this standpoint, Sadoveanu’s approach recalls rather the historical trilogy of the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, who sets his novels in the fraught period of the mid-seventeenth century known in Polish history as “The Deluge,” marked by foreign invasions, ceaseless wars, and the anarchy of the magnates. On the contrary, the films of the national cinematic epic cycle are set in the heroic periods of state centralization and of the anti-Ottoman struggle, from which communist propaganda could readily glean historical precedents useful to its own ends.

The red thread running through the entire national cinematic epic, beginning with Tudor and ending with Mircea (1989), is given by the tutelary presence of the providential leader around whom the whole country closes ranks in the face of external dangers. It is true that in Neamul Șoimăreștilor the figure of the leader also appears, in the person of Prince Ștefan II Tomșa (Ion Besoiu); yet, for all his overtones of social justice, he manages to impose his authority only temporarily, through a combination of cunning, brute force, and sadism. His claim to the throne of Moldavia does not seem to have any more legitimacy than that of the Movilești faction, backed by the Polish magnates.

For his part, the temporary ruler relies on the foreign aid of the Tatars of Bugeac, led by Khan Temir Bey, played by Colea Răutu, a specialist in oriental roles. The justness of the Moldavian ruler’s cause is not affirmed unequivocally, and Tomșa ends up abandoned by a large part of his allies. The national character is rather blurred, and what prevails in the novel, as in the film, is the message of social justice. Whereas in the films of the national cinematic epic the conflict is built on the antagonism between the political leader, around whom the whole country rallies, and the external enemy—aided at certain moments by internal traitors as well—in Neamul Șoimăreștilor it is centred on the dichotomy between the răzeși—the free peasants of Moldavia—on the one hand, and the boyars on the other. The role played in the epic films by the political leader is filled, in Mircea Drăgan’s adaptation, not by Prince Ștefan Tomșa II but rather by the fictional character of Tudor Șoimaru (Mihai Boghiță), an army captain sprung from the ranks of the răzeși, who rallies the whole community of the Șoimărești against the rapacious claims of the boyar Stroe Orheianu (Ștefan Ciubotărașu), assisted by Polish mercenaries.

Another characteristic of the films in the epic cycle is the obsessive reiteration of national unity, bound up with the idea of historical continuity. From this standpoint too, Neamul Șoimăreștilor strikes a discordant note. With the exception of a passing reference to some of Mihai Viteazul’s captains who place themselves in the service of the ruler of Moldavia, no allusion whatsoever surfaces to national unity as the foundation of the heroes’ motives in the story.

The literary recognition of the novel, first published in serial form even before the First World War, in 1912–1913, in the pages of the Iași magazine Viața Românească, explains why the director Mircea Drăgan, assisted by the writers Alexandru Struțeanu and Constantin Mitru (the latter being Mihail Sadoveanu’s personal secretary), who sign the film’s screenplay, did not deviate from the original story. What the critics of the time reproached him with had rather to do with the directorial ineptitude that made the film fail in the cinematic translation of the spirit of Sadoveanu’s writing.

Mircea Drăgan gave in to the easy seduction of the spectacle of reconstructed battle scenes, having at his disposal armies of thousands of extras and the almost unlimited logistical resources of the communist state. Unlike his rival in the historical-film niche, Sergiu Nicolaescu, Drăgan’s proverbial inability to orchestrate action sequences involving large masses of people is visible at every turn. Even the classic cloak-and-dagger moments, the chases and duels of the protagonists, are cast into bathos through technical devices the director seems not to master too well, such as the speeding-up of the editing, which, instead of energizing the action, tends rather to induce effects of involuntary comedy.

An equally risible effect is the one produced by the uninspired casting of the great comic actor Dem Rădulescu in the role of Lie, Tudor Șoimaru’s servant, a mix of Planchet and Păcală, to whom Drăgan applies an unnatural wig, just as he does with most of the film’s characters. The eternal female presence of the director’s wife in his films, the lumpish Ioana Drăgan, beside whom even Lica Gheorghiu seems to possess acting talent, does nothing but sink the film even deeper into ridicule.

For all its artistic shortcomings, taxed by contemporary criticism, the film was an immense success with the general public. In total number of viewers, with over 13 million tickets sold, Neamul Șoimăreștilor stands fifth in the all-time ranking of Romanian films, with only Sergiu Nicolaescu’s Dacii (The Dacians) and Mihai Viteazul (Michael the Brave) placing higher among the historical productions. The explanation lies, without doubt, in the film’s ambition as a historical super-production, which drew a large Romanian public at a moment when the genre was being intensely cultivated internationally.

In addition, Neamul Șoimăreștilor is also the first Romanian production filmed in CinemaScope format and on Eastmancolor stock, which heightens its epic dimension. As we have seen, although it was not initially included in the national cinematic epic, it would later be assimilated into it—as the film historian Ion Filotti Cantacuzino does, while nonetheless noting its distinctive character, “an adventure film against a historical backdrop,” which brings it closer to Dinu Cocea’s Haiducii (The Outlaws) series.

With the latter it shares the character of a popular entertainment film in which the emphasis is placed on the adventures of fictional heroes at the expense of the heroic deeds of the figures of national history. Ultimately, Neamul Șoimăreștilor stands at the meeting point of the national cinematic epic and the adaptation of classic Romanian literature, failing brilliantly at both endeavours.