The Independence of Romania

The first feature film produced in Romania, and arguably the first international movie clocking in over two hours (even though only 83 minutes remain today) was September 1912's "The Independence of Romania."

The production was an adventure in movie-making in the extreme. An actor Aristide Demetriade, took the director's reign while the young Grigore Brezeanu was really the brains behind the operation, who became instrumental in getting financing from a private investor. Meanwhile, the production team received as much resources from the Romanian government and military as they needed. It helped that the ruler of the Romania, King Carlos I, who had fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, received star billing as himself, even though it was 30 years after the war.

"The Independence of Romania" is really a collection of vignettes strung chronologically, from civilians dancing in the street to soldiers battling oi the fields. It has essentially no plot, but the event of Romania and the Balkan countries overthrowing 500 years of Ottoman and Turkish rule was such a big deal that the meandering film didn't bother the Romanian audience viewing the sprawling epic for the first time. As one observer noted, the movie appears to be a documentary filmed during that war, with wide shots dominating the action. Of course, there wasn't any filmmaking back then.

The production of "The Independence of Romania" was so fraught with difficulties the stories emerging from the efforts of those filmmakers became legendary. The 2007 film, "The Rest Is Silence," Romania's entry into the 2009 Oscars, dramatizes the making of the 1912 film and its trials and tribulations, all done in a humorous vein.

An amazing film for that era... This was the first feature film to last 2 hours (from which about 20 minutes are lost).

Ionut Niculescu and Tudor Caranfil discovered in 1985 the movie's scenario, begun by Petre Liciu and continued by Aristide Demetriade and Constantin Nottara. This led to the establishment of the real director: Aristide Demetriade, not Grigore Brezeanu, as thought before. Brezeanu, along with Leon Popescu were producers.

Carol I was not present in the film (although the Royal House gave a sum of money for the production) except for the final parade which was set not in 1877/78, but in 1912 (actually a cut from a news reel, like a "30 years later..."). In the movie he was impersonated by Aristide Demetriade, the director himself. The critics emphasized the merit of make-up artist Pepi Machauer (who also played czar Alexander).

Also, this was not the first Romanian film ever. Previous titles are:

Papusa (The Doll), a theater play, 1911 Amor fatal (Fatal Love), a theatre play, 1911 Insir'te, margarite!, a fairy tale, 1911/2

More info from wikipedia (with some minor corrections):

In December 1911, the theatrical magazine Rampa published a note under the heading The Cinema in the Theatre (signed by V. Scânteie) indicating that "The Maestro Nottara is in the course of making a patriotic work re-creating the Romanian War of Independence on film, so that today's generations might learn the story of the battles of 1877, and for future generations a live tableau of Romanian bravery will remain".

As a result, the director of the Bucharest branch of the Gaumont-Paris studio, Raymond Pellerin, announced the premiere of his film Războiul din 1877-1878 (The 1877-1878 War), scheduled for 29 December 1911. A "film" made in haste, with a troupe of second-hand actors and with the help of General Constantinescu, who commanded a division at Piteşti, from whom he had obtained the extras needed for the war scenes, "Războiul din 1877-1878" was screened a day before by the prefect of the capital's police, who decided that it did not correspond with historic fact. Consequently, the film was confiscated and destroyed, Raymond Pellerin was declared persona non grata and he left for Paris, while the "collaborationist" general saw himself moved to another garrison as a means of discipline.

On 5 May 1912, the magazine Flacăra (The Flame) brought to its readers' attention the fact that "as it is known, a few artists have founded a society with the goal of producing a film about the War of Independence... Such an undertaking deserves to be applauded". The initiators were a group of actors: C. Nottara, Aristide Demetriade, V. Toneanu, Iancu Brezeanu, N. Soreanu, P. Liciu, as well as the young Grigore Brezeanu, associate producer and the creative force behind the whole operation. Since a large amount of money was needed for the production, they also brought into this effort Leon Popescu, a wealthy man and owner of the Lyric Theatre. The group received strong backing from government authorities, with the army and all necessary equipment being placed at its disposal, plus military advisers (possibly including Pascal Vidraşcu). The camera and its operator was brought from abroad, and the print was prepared in Parisian laboratories. Could Grigore Brezeanu have been the film's director? No source from that time gives credence to such a hypothesis. On the contrary, they present him as "initiator", producer of the film, beside members of the National Theatre and Leon Popescu. Furthermore, it appears that it was he who attracted the financier of the entire undertaking. In 1985, the film critic Tudor Caranfil discovered among Aristide Demetriade's papers his director's notebooks for Independenţa României, unequivocally confirming that he was the film's director. Thus, the film's production crew was as follows: Producers: Leon Popescu, Aristide Demetriade, Vasile Toneanu, Nicolae Soreanu, Petre Liciu, Grigore Brezeanu, Constantin Nottara, Pascal Vidraşcu. Screenwriters: Petre Liciu, Constantin Nottara and Aristide Demetriade. Director: Aristide Demetriade. Cinematographer: Franck Daniau. Makeup and hairstylist: Pepi Machauer.

On 1 September 1912, at the Eforie cinema, the largest movie theater in Bucharest, the premiere of Independenţa României took place. Despite all its shortcomings as the theatrical game of the actors, the errors of an army of extras uncontrolled by direction which provoked unintended laughter in some scenes and rendered dramatically limp those of the beginning, the film was well received by spectators, being shown for several weeks. Through this realization, through the dimensions of its theme, through the distribution method chosen, through the genuine artistic intentions, through its professional editing (for the time), the creation of this film can be considered Romania's first step in the art of cinematography.

And yet he who had realized this work, the man who kept the whole team together, the theater director Grigore Brezeanu, was left disappointed. The press of the time made ostentatious mention of Leon Popescu, who financed the film and made sure to distance the other financiers, buying their part; no such praise was heaped on the artistic makers of the film. This caused producer Grigore Brezeanu to say in an interview given to the magazine "Rampa" and published on 13 April 1913: "My dream would have been to build a large film studio. I have come to believe that this is impossible. First of all, we are missing a large capital investment. Without money we cannot rival the foreign studios...A studio, according to our financiers, is something outside art, something in the realm of agriculture or the C.F.R. Hence I have abandoned this dream with great regret."

For a film made in 1911, this chronicle of the 1877 war of Romania and Russia against the Turkish which led to Romania's independence is crude and primitive; but for a film from a country with little film history at the time, it is a monumental achievement. It plays more like a newsreel or documentary than an historical drama, and the filmmakers have little to no knowledge of the concept of editing (if they did, the film would only have been one-third its current length). Of historical importance to Romanian cinema, but of little worth otherwise.