Independența
României
(Independence of Romania), subtitled Războiul
Româno-Ruso-Turc 1877 (The Romanian-Russo-Turkish War, 1877),
is a Romanian silent film made in 1912
and directed by Aristide Demetriade (1872-1930). The subject of the film is Romania’s 1877-8 war
of independence from the Ottoman Empire.
An intertitle announces it was made with the support of the Romanian
army and with members of the National Theatre in Bucharest (where Demetriade
was an actor).
The film opens with peasants dancing and
making merry. But conflict is brewing
between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and the Romanian ruler, Carol I (played
by Demetriade himself), summons the Council of Ministers in order to mobilise
the army. There he signs the Declaration
of Independence from the Ottoman Empire.
The troops mobilise. Back at the
village an elder breaks into the dancing to read the proclamation, to general
celebration by the men, but sorrow from the women. On a personal level, the hostilities
interrupt a love story and the lovers bid each other a sorrowful farewell.
A group of friends go to off to war, but
one, Cobuz, falls at Calabat by stupidly sitting on top of a trench playing a
pipe while his comrades dance below, making him a target for snipers. Carol is upbeat, but the Russians get
hammered by the Turks crossing the Danube.
At a Romanian camp the soldiers dance (so much dancing) and new flags
are blessed. Grand Duke Nicholas of
Russia, commanding the Imperial army, sends a telegram to Carol requesting
assistance to fight the Turks who are defending Plevna, and the Romanians cross
the Danube on 19-20 July 1877.
The Tsar gives control of the Russian
army to Carol so he can command a combined force. After a lengthy disembarkation sequence, the
allies go into battle against the Turks, who are put to flight, the Romanian
cavalry wreaking havoc on the enemy. A
Turkish patrol is easily dispatched, once the riders realise they are being
shot at. Osman Pasha, wily leader of the
Turks at Plevna, disposes his men, inflicting a reverse on the Romanians. Carol gives encouragement to boost morale and
his troops go on to defeat the Turks at Grivita, capturing the Turkish
standard. The Russians under General
Skobeleff attack the Green Mountain.
At the Valley of Weeping the dead and
dying litter the landscape until a truce allows the bodies to be buried, while
Carol and Tsar Alexander II visit the wounded at a first aid station. Here our lovers are reunited, as she is a
nurse, but alas he is badly wounded.
Meanwhile at Plevna fighting continues with the Turks counter-attacking,
pinning down the Russians until the Romanians intervene. After a fierce battle the Turks
capitulate. Osman Pasha surrenders his
sword to Alexander, but the Tsar returns it in honour of his gallant foe.
The Russians and Romanians are
victorious, and the defeated Turks are forced to trudge under mounted escort
through the snow. Our wounded soldier
and his lady love are on the side of the road returning home when a Russian
column passes and the colonel shakes his hand, a token of friendship between
the two countries. A final Intertitle
declares: ‘After 35 years the celebration of the independence of Romania’. The military parade held on 10 May 1912
concludes the film.
Filmed in what was intended to be a
realistic documentary style, Independenta Romaniei was propaganda
promoting Romanian nationhood; the Russo-Turkish War is firmly referred to as
the Romanian-Russo-Turkish War. It is ambitious in scope for its period, and predates
D W Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation,
with which it bears some similarities in its epic aspirations though not in
mastery of technique, by three years. Unfortunately
Demetriade was no Griffith, consistently employing a static camera with
extremely long takes and pedestrian cutting between scenes that fails to
generate any dynamism by their juxtaposition.
Additionally the pacing is ponderous as
the director wants to make the most of his cast of hundreds, their horses and
artillery pieces (if marching is involved, you can be sure that the scene will
continue until every man has passed in front of the camera), but he has trouble
blocking, often creating uncertainty in the viewer as to what is going on. The cast occasionally betray their theatrical
origins by overacting.
The battle scenes are amateurish to
modern eyes and lack tension, failing to capture the kind of energy that Griffith
was able to inject into The Birth of a
Nation. Nor does Independența României manage to
integrate the national and personal in the way that the Stonemans and Camerons
were used to show the effects of the American Civil War on individual families. However, the project was hugely ambitious and
Demetriade did a creditable job bringing this foundational experience of the
Romanian nation to life on what was clearly a much smaller budget than Griffith
had. Whatever its flaws, Independența României was well received
on its release.
The film is available on YouTube. The original running time was about two hours
but the running time of existing prints is only 82 minutes. This version has an English translation of
the intertitles:
There is
a Romanian-language Wikipedia page devoted to the film which is very detailed,
much more so than the English-language version:
