Mircea Săucan – A Paramount Escape from Reality in Romanian Cinema
Mircea Săucan – A Paramount Escape from Reality in Romanian Cinema

Summary/Abstract: Mircea Săucan, one of the best kept secrets of Romanian narrative cinema, is yet to be unveiled. Starting off as a dedicated Stalinist, he studied in Moscow at VGIK (Moscow Film School) and he was very familiar with mainstream propaganda works by Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, Dovzhenko. When he returned to Romania, he worked as a Communist Party secretary of “Alexandru Sahia” Documentary Film Studio in the 1950’s. As Romania gradually evolved towards national-communism and liberated itself from the patronage of the USSR, Săucan became a persona non grata. His exceptional talent and powerful cinematic feeling helped him create unconventional and formally radical works. His revolutionary style, in perfect synchronization with the French Nouvelle Vague, acted as a tremendously macroseism able to shatter the very geological configuration of Romanian cinema. Nobody wanted that. Mircea Săucan directed only four full length features. Each of them had to face major opposition when it was about to be released: When Spring Is Hot (1960), The Endless Shore (1963), Meanders (1967), 100 Lei (1973). In 1971, a journalist asked Mircea Săucan what he thought of the coming decade. The director admitted uneasily that he was rather concerned about what the coming decade had planned to surprise him with. His concerns proved to be true, as he stopped directing full length features in the early 1970’s. He was allowed to direct only a few shorts and, in the late 1980’s, he emigrated to Nazareth, Israel.

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