Grigore Vasiliu-Birlic
Based on a play by Tudor Mușatescu, Titanic Vals is the essence of Romanian genius in comedy, with amazing performances and the beautiful absurd of the quotidian.
"Post Restant" is about two engineers: Puiu (Iurie Darie), a quite shy character, and Dan (Ion Dichiseanu) an alpha male type. They receive a letter from Liliana, a letter which is actually meant for the former apartment owner. Puiu replies to the letter, although he does not know the sender. The mail exchange goes on and the two fall eventually in love. Being less self-confident, when the time comes to see Liliana in the flesh Puiu asks Dan to meet her and pretend to be the one who wrote the letters.
Petre Orsa, a young peasant gets a job at the Hunedoara Steel Mill with the dream of becoming a top-notch steel-man, having Mihai Solca - a sort of communist industrial hero- as his role model. He starts low moving dirt around with a shovel but he soon gets into the team of an old steel man, foreman Tudor Baci.
Geared more for the home crowd with a good knowledge of their own history, this Romanian political comedy takes place at the turn of the 20th century, when two opposing factions are going at each other tooth and nail to win an election. One candidate is a staunch if not deluded conservative and the other is a radical liberal. Anticipating modern election campaigns by a good half a century, the two candidates decide that the best way to win is to sling as much mud as possible. Lacking the Internet and fifteen-second TV spots, they do the best they can -- they send each other virulent telegrams denouncing each other's personal failings.
1957 film adaptation of Romanian playwright Ion Luca Caragiale's novella “Două loturi” (Two Lottery Tickets, 1901). The scenario was written by director Jean Georgescu, one of the most skilled Romanian filmmakers of the 1940s and 1950s, while the directing belongs to Aurel Miheleş and Gheorghe Naghi, at that time both recently graduated from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. This is the second feature film in colour from Romania. Despite the great public success, the film was often criticized by reviewers, mostly for its unhandy directing from the two debutants. Miheleş and Naghi would however continue their collaboration and release another two Caragiale adaptations, of which “Telegrame” (Telegrams, 1959) was nominated for the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1960 edition of the Cannes festival.
Over at the fictional DRGBP institution, events take a settling turn after a mutinied prize festivity.
The plot take place in 1883 in a small provincial town in Romania, where the corrupt establishment decide everything, including - of course - who will be the "elected" representative to the national Senate. A love letter from the bachelor mayor to the wife of the local party chief, gets lost and found by a drunk party supporter. The letter finds its way to the opposition party, which decide to use the letter by blackmailing the powerful local "camarilla", and to get his own man to represent the county. What follows is not easy to guess....
