Mud, sweat, testosterone: Eruption
In 1957 Liviu Ciulei made his directorial debut with Eruption, which is perhaps the most Hitchcockian Romanian film ever made.
In 1957 Liviu Ciulei made his directorial debut with Eruption, which is perhaps the most Hitchcockian Romanian film ever made. I say this because the symptomatic criticism (Freudian, Marxist, feminist, etc.) that has been applied to Hitchcock's films with texts like Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" could easily be applied to Ciulei's debut feature film, finding a fertile ground for exploration.
From its opening sequences, Eruption sets its parameters clearly. Anca (Eva Christian), a young petroleum engineering graduate, is sent to practice at the Ursei oil well in the Ploiești area. There, she stumbles upon a situation of maximum tension. Engineer Andrei (Jean Bart), a sculptural figure, as Rodica Pop-Vulcănescu described him in her review of the film, struggles to keep the well active despite no oil being found, and under the threat of closure.
We are told through a title card that this is a film "made in honor of the centenary celebration of the Romanian oil industry." The determination of the steel man, a cultivated figure but not urban and blasé, capable of rolling up his shirt sleeves and getting to work, is fully evident throughout the film and is juxtaposed with the cosmopolitan nonchalance (jazz, salons, leisure) of those in positions of power, as well as with bureaucratic shortsightedness, whose critiques from that era also appear in other films, most notably in Our Director (1955, dir. Jean Georgescu).
At the same time, signs of danger are everywhere: the imposing machinery and wells, the vehicle that transports the young young graduate to the well and breaks down in an area the driver calls a "graveyard," which seems to be known as such by almost everyone, locals fearing the potentially explosive gasses underground, which they liken to the mouth of hell, just as they fear drought, etc. The parched landscape in which Engineer Andrei is determined to continue drilling gives only aridity. And when there is an alternation, it is manifested in the form of sticky, wet mud, these two opposing textures vibrating on the film material thanks to the cinematography of Grigore Ionescu, who does the same alongside Ciulei in The Waves of the Danube (1960) with the landscape of the Delta.
To soften and humanize the whole story, the film parallels several romantic intrigues. One involves Anca's relationship with Emil (Manole Teodorescu), which is threatened by distance and the young graduate's attraction to Engineer Andrei and his fieldwork. Then, we have Emil's relationship with Nina (Lica Gheorghiu), his former colleague and Andrei's ex-wife, who left the construction site because of her husband's lack of attention to anything other than the drilling project. And last but not least, the persistent flirtation between Gore (Dorin Dron), one of the workers, and Bica (Lucia Mara Dabija), a former switchboard operator turned chemist at the well, who was unfairly imprisoned for prostitution. This last thread reveals a series of issues regarding morals and unjust prejudices against women in the socialist society of the time, ultimately vindicating Bica as a collateral victim of patriarchal villainy.
However, beyond all this, Eruption is covered from beginning to end by a sexually charged tension manifested symbolically, which does not contradict the film's explicit or implicit significance but adds an extra visceral layer that cannot be overlooked. Alongside the concreteness of the story's elements, highly suggestive editing take place. From the opening sequences, the repetitive, languorous, and yet tectonic pulsations of the well machinery are alternated with Anca's sexualized body, from which we directly see or are guided to observe suggestive fragments: lips, shoulders, silhouette, hairstyle, etc.
Furthermore, Anca's blonde, angelic beauty is contrasted with Bica's tarnished reputation, whose brunette hair was cut as punishment for the accusation of prostitution, and whose integrity is constantly endangered by the desires of the men at the site. This "Madonna/whore" complex, borrowed from Freud in film criticism and heavily applied to Hitchcock, is repeated in Ciulei's work, even in the hair color of the two actresses.
Anca's eroticism does not materialize in a physical act, but is only suggested through her submissiveness, her attraction to Andrei portrayed through hyper-masculine representations framed by the camera. Her body is not subjected to penetration, but the pulsations of the well, the rhythm with which it drills into the ground, are emblematic of the frustration that settles over the enterprise, yet symbolize the sexual frustrations depicted in relation to her.
The only occasion when Anca's body is engulfed by an external element is the sequence where the young woman swings on a wooden beam above the mud, and Andrei walks past her and scolds her, to which Anca responds by flirtatiously defying him. In the following sequence, we see the young woman deep into the mud, baptized, if you will, in the viscous liquid of the construction site and saved by Gore. Another very interesting element in the dynamics between Andrei and Anca is that romantic love does not find its place or even appear as a supposition, as it is very clearly represented in the romantic convention between Gore and Bica. Between Andrei and Anca, a dynamic of dominator-dominated is established, which also has paternal undertones. Their connection is rendered only through the phallic symbol of the brute force of the well, which persists and persists until – no pun intended – it finally erupts.
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(Emil Vasilache, cinepub.ro)