Books, Arts & Manners: Versions of Bedlam

LUCIAN Pintilié, who stunned us with The Oak, has done it again with An Unforgettable Summer. The title was imposed on him; he wanted The Salad, after the name of part one of the autobiography of a Rumanian army captain, Petre Dumitriu, on which the film is based. This focuses on an incident in the officer’s life in 1925, when he was transferred to a border outpost in the Dobroudja by his superior, General (and Prince) Ipsilanti, who vainly lusted after Petre’s beautiful wife, the halfHungarian Marie-Thérèse. Nationalities and their languages are very important here: when the babble of tongues and dialects rises to Babelic heights, bloodshed ensues. Particularly in the Balkans.

The film quickly establishes the ethnic-linguistic cauldron threatening to boil over. Because a grand ball is about to take place nearby, a brothel must be temporarily closed and shuttered. The official bearing the edict is roundly abused with colorful (but anachronistic) Hungarian expletives by the liveliest of the whores, Erzsi, a Magyar. Later, from her window, the girl moons the army dignitaries arriving for the ball; they stare up in mixed horror and admiration at the familiar globe whose owner they promptly identify. When Ipsilanti sends a couple of junior officers to beat up the girl, she hurls at them the slogans of Béla Kún, the deposed Hungarian Communist leader.

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John Simon

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LUCIAN Pintilié, who stunned us with The Oak, has done it again with An Unforgettable Summer. The title was imposed on him; he wanted The Salad, after the name of part one of the autobiography of a Rumanian army captain, Petre Dumitriu, on which the film is based. This focuses on an incident in the officer’s life in 1925, when he was transferred to a border outpost in the Dobroudja by his superior, General (and Prince) Ipsilanti, who vainly lusted after Petre’s beautiful wife, the halfHungarian Marie-Thérèse. Nationalities and their languages are very important here: when the babble of tongues and dialects rises to Babelic heights, bloodshed ensues. Particularly in the Balkans.

The film quickly establishes the ethnic-linguistic cauldron threatening to boil over. Because a grand ball is about to take place nearby, a brothel must be temporarily closed and shuttered. The official bearing the edict is roundly abused with colorful (but anachronistic) Hungarian expletives by the liveliest of the whores, Erzsi, a Magyar. Later, from her window, the girl moons the army dignitaries arriving for the ball; they stare up in mixed horror and admiration at the familiar globe whose owner they promptly identify. When Ipsilanti sends a couple of junior officers to beat up the girl, she hurls at them the slogans of Béla Kún, the deposed Hungarian Communist leader.