Dacian-Roman myths
A product of the Ceaușescu regime's opening towards the West “The Column”, directed by Mircea Drăgan, is, in turn, a big-budget co-production, this time with the West Berlin company CCC-Filmkunst.
I don't know how many Romanian parents named their children Andrada or Tiberiu before 1968, but I am convinced that their number has increased several times since that year, when the popular film “The Column” was released on the big screen.
After the 19th century (“Tudor,” Lucian Bratu, 1963) and even the first part of the 20th century (“Lupeni '29,” Mircea Drăgan, also from 1963), it was to be expected that the decision-makers and producers of the “national cinematic epic,” still in its infancy, would set out to go much further back in time, passing through the reigns of the great medieval princes and reaching the Dacian-Roman wars and the formation of the Romanian people.
The direction is summarized by Antoaneta Tănăsescu in “Contemporanul” on August 19, 1966: “The Bucharest Film Studio is focused on capturing on film the most important moments in the history of our people. Immediate projects include films such as “Trajan's Column”, “Mihai Viteazul”, “The Revenge of the Haiduks”, and “Ovid” (titles are provisional). In the future, the cinematic epic will include recollections of historical moments and personalities such as Stephen the Great, Horia, Bălcescu, the Union of the Principalities, the formation of the Romanian Communist Party, and various stages of the proletarian struggle.” In December of the same year, the project “Trajan's Column”, directed by Mircea Drăgan and based on a screenplay by Titus Popovici, was also announced in the monthly magazine “Cinema”. However, before Mircea Drăgan, the first director to spectacularly tackle the era of the Dacians and Romans (more precisely, the armed conflicts between them in 87 AD) was Sergiu Nicolaescu, who made his feature film debut with “The Dacians” based on a screenplay by the same Titus Popovici. A Romanian-French co-production/ super-production (the partner company was Franco-London Films in Paris), “The Dacians” was filmed in 1966 and released on Romanian screens in February 1967. By the end of that year, Sergiu Nicolaescu's film had attracted over 7.3 million viewers in Romanian cinemas. Screened numerous times since then, “The Dacians” has sold well over 13 million tickets to date (according to the latest statistics provided by the National Center for Cinematography).
A product of the Ceaușescu regime's opening towards the West (combined with a distancing from Moscow, initiated by Dej), “The Column” (as Mircea Drăgan's film was eventually called) is, in turn, a big-budget co-production, this time with the West Berlin company CCC-Filmkunst (with which the Bucharest Film Studio was collaborating at around the same time on Robert Siodmak's The Battle of Rome, with Sergiu Nicolaescu providing support from the Romanian side).
Titus Popovici's script continues the story from “The Dacians” (in fact, the writer had conceived a two-part film from the outset), but after almost two decades. Thus, the first scenes of “The Column” are set in 106 AD, when the fortress Sarmizegetusa Regia fell into the hands of the Roman army of Emperor Trajan (Amedeo Nazzari). Defeated, Decebal (a role that Amza Pellea had also played in the previous film) decides to commit suicide rather than be captured alive by his enemies. As he leaves this world, the last king of Dacia is accompanied by his faithful Gerula (Ilarion Ciobanu), who will carry on his fight, leading the (still) free Dacians, among whom is Decebal's nephew. Led by a traitorous Dacian nobleman, Bastus (Gheorghe Dinică, who has an anthological line: “In my wickedness, like a mad dog, I bit the hand that raised and fed me...”), the Roman tribune Tiberius (Richard Johnson) finds Decebal's body and desecrates it, in order to take his head and right hand to Trajan as trophies proving the king's death. Gerula will never forgive the tribune for his gesture.
Although the emperor had promised Tiberius that he would send him back to Rome, Trajan changed his mind and convinced him to stay in Dacia to build an impregnable fortress and impose the Pax Romana in this corner of the empire, which was under constant threat by barbarians. While carrying out the mission entrusted to him by the emperor, Tiberius befriends a wise village chief, “The Cripple” (Ștefan Ciubotărașu) – the communist culturalists did not know what a politically incorrect term was – and falls in love with a captive aristocrat, Andrada (Antonella Lualdi), who slowly gives in to his charms and bears him a child (the first offspring of a couple composed of a Roman woman and a Roman man). At the same time, the commander of the colonists spares his adversary Gerula when their paths cross again, a decision that Tiberius will come to regret.
Notable supporting characters are played by Florin Piersic (Sabinus, Tiberius's second-in-command and friend, who follows a similar path with another woman, only his indiscretion costs him his eyesight) and Emil Botta (Decebal's High Priest, a role taken from “The Dacians”).
“The Column” constructs a narrative that is contested by historians but captivating for viewers at the time (and, I am sure, even today's viewers will not remain indifferent), “the propagandistic goal being to counteract Rösler's theories regarding the ‘Wallachian vacuum’, the formation of the Romanian people south of the Danube, theories agreed upon by by the Soviets” (as Cristian Tudor Popescu observes in “Filmul surd în România mută” [The Deaf Film in Silent Romania]).
The film is one of the highlights of Mircea Drăgan's varied – and uneven – oeuvre, who benefited here from conditions that the vast majority of Romanian directors would not have dared to dream of: 73 days of shooting on Eastman color (the best film available at the time), six assistant directors, international stars (including Italian actor Amedeo Nazzari, who in 1957 was already playing himself as a movie star alongside Giulietta Masina in Fellini's Nights of Cabiria), extras including 6,000 soldiers and 1,000 horsemen (provided by the Ministry of the Armed Forces), and a score by the great Romanian composer by Fellini), extras including 6,000 soldiers and 1,000 horsemen (the mountain troops of the Ministry of Armed Forces took part), and so on and so forth.
The mythical dimension of the plot is well highlighted in sequences such as that of the judgment of the “masters,” in which Zamolxis himself could just as easily have participated. The scene in which Decebal bids farewell to his homeland is memorable, as is the one from the subjective, alcohol-blurred perspective of Tiberius, who is spending time with with “The Cripple” (the moment with the two drunks is the funniest, and the improbable buddy movie aspect significantly increases the film's appeal). Admittedly, as critics have pointed out, the battle scenes (such as the one with the barbarians towards the end) are notas well directed as those of Sergiu Nicolaescu in “The Dacians”. However, Nicu Stan's cinemascope cinematography is stunning, not only in the wide shots of landscapes, but also in the close-ups (for example, the image of Andrada staring into space, sitting next to the wooden platform of Tiberius' house, seemed to me to be taken from a Ceylan film, such as “Climates”). Theodor Grigoriu's expansive music (also composer for “The Dacians”), performed by the Cinematography Symphony Orchestra, contributes decisively to the epic feel of the film.
The Column had its world premiere on October 24, 1968, at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), in a much shortened 105-minute version (according to the festival's online archive); Bujor T. Rîpeanu (“Filmed in Romania”) even mentions an English version of only 93 minutes, distributed internationally by Columbia. Now in its 12th edition, the SFIFF was already an important film event, supported since 1959 by major Hollywood studios. The world premiere in San Francisco was attended by director Mircea Drăgan and cinematographer Nicu Stan. However, as it was difficult at the time for a film produced in socialist Romania to be released at a Western festival, the official reason given for the two Romanian filmmakers' trip to the US in the documents of the time (see “The Cinematic Year 1968”) was a documentary internship (what they were documenting across the Atlantic was not specified). According to Bujor T. Rîpeanu, the German-dubbed version of the film was released in Vienna on November 1, 1968, before the premiere of the Romanian version, which took place at the Patria cinema in Bucharest on November 18.
Sold in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, “The Column” received a Diploma of Merit at the Adelaide and Auckland International Film Festivals in Australia in 1969 at the Adelaide and Auckland International Film Festival (Australia). With over 2.4 million tickets sold by the end of 1968, Mircea Drăgan's film went on to attract more than 10.5 million viewers, ranking seventh (three places below Sergiu Nicolaescu's “The Dacians”, which was also distributed in France) in the all-time box office ranking of Romanian film productions.
The best anecdote in Romanian cinema is linked to Columna that I know (and I've heard it in several versions, most recently from Florin Piersic at the opening gala of the 2025 TIFF in Cluj). At the wrap party attended by the film's crew and cast (the Romanians on one side, the foreigners on the other), Ilarion Ciobanu approached a beautiful guest (Richard Johnson's cousin according to some, Antonella Lualdi herself according to others) and asked her: “Dancing?” Richard Johnson intervened decisively: “No!” To which the Romanian shouted in his face: “What are you doing in our mountains?” Now that's patriotism!
(Mihai Fulger, cinepub.ro)
Premiere of the week: The Column, by Mircea Drăgan, Thursday, July 3, at 9:30 p.m., on CINEPUB.RO
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