The famous Romanian director, described by Newsweek as “one of the boldest and most challenging figures on the international scene”, would have turned 100 this year.
Born 100 years ago on July 7, the multidisciplinary Liviu Ciulei, who would be called by Newsweek “one of the boldest and most challenging figures on the international scene”, directed theatre and film, was an actor, writer and architect, and created film sets and costumes.
As a director, he brought a political perspective to the classic texts he staged. Don Shewey wrote of him in The New York Times that “although he shares with such iconoclastic directors as Peter Sellars and Andrei Serban a desire to bring as much of the contemporary world onstage as possible, he was professionally trained as an architect before he became a leading actor and director in the Romanian theater, and an architect's lucidity remains the paramount virtue of his work. He begins by re-examining each play microscopically and then creating, line-by-line, a fresh interpretation”.
The same talent was also conveyed in his films, made in parallel with his theatre performances. In the 1950s he began his career as a screenwriter, and in 1957 he made his debut as a film director with Eruption. Three years later he returned with Waves of the Danube, based on a screenplay by Francisc Munteanu and Titus Popovici, casting Irina Petrescu in her first role and featuring future director Lucian Pintilie, who considered him “the smartest man he has ever met”. Although these productions sold over seven million tickets, European acknowledgement came only in 1964 with The Forest of the Hanged, adapted from Liviu Rebreanu. Of the final scene in his masterpiece, Ciulei said it was the best he had ever filmed. “I wanted the final scene to be different because I want to get the award at Cannes”. A year later, his wish came true: the prestigious festival's jury awarded him the directing prize.
After that, however, film directing took a back seat, because “he didn't like or agree with any [other] proposal”. But he continued to act in films, and in 1974 he also made his American debut at the Arena Stage in Washington D.C., after director Alan Schneider discovered his work in Bucharest and recommended him to founder Zelda Fichandler. The performance of Hamlet staged here four years later was described by The New York Times as “the triumph not of a season, but of an entire decade”. He had performances even on Broadway, and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis won a Tony Award under his direction in the 1980s. After the Revolution he returned to Romania, directing a number of famous plays, and in 1990 he became Honorary Director of the Bulandra Theatre, where he had made his debut more than 30 years earlier. In 2010, when his three films were presented in the 3 x 3 section, Ciulei was awarded the TIFF Excellency Award.
An important landmark in the evolution of Romanian cinema and a pivotal moment for Victor Rebengiuc’s career, The Forest of the Hanged will be screened on Saturday, June 10, at 19:15 at Cinema ARTA.