Pacat

In accordance with "Die Silent German Encyclopaedia", Herr Jean Mihail was one of the Romanian silent pioneers. He began his career through his participation as assistant director under the German Alfred Hallm. "Pacat" (that means "sin" in German), is a film after a play of Herr Ion Luca Caragiale, a Romanian playwright and short story writer. Jean Mihail, was a filmmaker, who on the other hand, sought to promote internationalism with his films.

As a curiosity, the film directors of the early Romanian period (their first film was made in Bucharest of a parade held on the national holiday, 10 May 1897 made by the Frenchified photographer Herr Paul Menu) had many problems, due to lack of money, to shoot their films. So, film enthusiasts would form a cooperative: one would contribute to the camera, other one in the laboratory, other in the script or the direction, not to mention that the actors were easily obtained due to their, tst, tst… ego and desire to appeared in the screen. That's not to forget that finally all these people must find a creditor to lend them some money on the assurance that it would be returned to him after the big and great success of the premiere. All those things happened under Herr Jean Mihail's direction "Pacat".

As it happens with a lot of early European films, many of the early Romanian oeuvres that have survived till these modern days ( aggravated in this case because the Romanian Film Archive was founded only in 1957 when almost all of the silent films were already lost ) are in excerpts. This is true with "Pacat", because in this case has survived a kind of excerpt of excerpts that lasts only, ehem… 2 minutes!.

It is said that "Pacat" tells the story of a seminary student who had an affair with a widow but is forced by his family to put an end to that relationship. The seminary student becomes a priest and one day he finds in the streets a ragged child that is the son he had with the widow. When the boy grow up, he lives together with the priest's daughter without knowing that she is his own sister. One morning, when the priest sees the two together, absolutely mad and full of pain, kills them.

The premiere of "Pacat" provoked a huge scandal in the religious circles and tried to forbid its distribution. They finally managed to remove the ending notwithstanding the praise of the Romanian critics who especially liked the direction, art design and the performance of the main actor.

The aristocratic facts say that it is impossible to have an opinion (a common habit among the aristocracy) by watching only a consecutive showing of bizarre shots: a woman tried to awake his children in vain; three men in a room; a priest crying, a man eating in the street in front of a laughing audience; a priest saying goodbye to his mother (?) as he leaves the town in a cart; the priest pealing the bells and crowd people beating a man in the street. So that well-known aristocratic lack of opinion is absolutely justified this time; but it was a perfect excuse to rant about Romanian silent films instead those popular and ordinary Transylvanian subjects.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must to pay a visit to a well-known Romanian Count.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/