Sunday at Six (1966) User Reviews

at the crossroads

[dromasca · 8/10 · 23 October 2010]

In his book '4 Decades, 3 Years and 2 Months with the Romanian Cinema' the Romanian film critic Alex Leo Serban considers 'Duminica la ora 6' (Sunday at 6 o'clock) as an extreme case of difference between content and form - a story about the invented 'heroic' Communist past wrapped in the most modern means of expression of the cinema of the 60s. After having seen the film again many decades after its first viewings my feeling is different. I believe that Lucian Pintilie's first film is as daring in content and especially in its subliminal message as it is in its form which clearly shows already the hand of a skilled director, having learned and assimilated all the lessons of the French New Wave and placing them in the service of his cinematographic message.

I see 'Duminica la ora 6' as a beautiful love story in impossible times, a story that can happen under any repressive regime. The art of director Pintilie is brilliant in the pacing of the action using repetitive motives (the elevator going down, the dark tunnel leading to an uncertain light which can mean deliverance or death) and in the way he directs his actors (Dan Nutu and Irina Petrescu, young, beautiful, sincere, frightened, desperate). A few scenes are worth being included in anthologies, like the ambiguous end with the run of the hero filmed from the windows of the police car, his tentative to run away towards the deep sea, his so human giving up. All is natural and well directed, with the sole exception of the few sequences were the 'bourgeois' police appears and the few lines of dialog which were inserted to please the censorship by locating the action in the fabricated history of the Communist resistance. Seen 45 years after the film making the contrast is too flagrant to avoid the feeling that this scenes where visibly inserted by the director (and maybe script author Ion Mihaileanu) to make the film pass and see the lights of screening - but the language is so different that they look intentionally out of context. My impression is also enforced by the very 'modern' look of the heroes and extras, which avoid localization and historical dating, inviting the viewers to consider the heroes contemporary to their own times, and to live the story in the present and not in the past. Again, for a director with the level of skill that Pintilie was already showing at that time, this cannot be coincidental.

Made in the year 1965, a year of crossroads in the Romanian history, the start of a short period of hope at the beginning of the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, 'Duminica la ora 6' could have signaled a new start for the Romanian cinema which was still forced to use the vocabulary and thematic of the socialist-realist art but was daring to dream to new forms and freedom of expression. The political and artistic hopes were to fade out soon, and 'Duminica la ora 6' remains one of the few singular moments in a history of Romanian cinema whose destiny was to get back to its natural course only many decades later.

This film seems to be as much about Ceausescu's Romania as about the period that preceded Nicolai Ceausescu for reasons that need to be explained

[jxwelsh · 10/10 · 12 May 2008]

This film seemed to me quite remarkable for the way it created the feeling of what it might have been like to have lived in the kind of repressive society typical of Romania before 1989. Radu and Anca seem to be Socialist activists working to improve the lives of their fellow workers, but the approach seems to me also allegorical of the kind of paranoid society that typified Romania's police state under the Ceausescu regime. The comparison made by one viewer between Radu and James Bond doesn't wash, really (where are the guns and the gimmicks? This film goes beyond adolescent foolishness). The film is about betrayal, after all, isn't it? And there are monsters lurking in the Socialist shadows: Note, for example, the Iron Guard thugs that intrude upon the dance and break up the festivities. (The Iron Guard was a Fascist group that originated in the city of Iasi in the province of Moldavia before World War II, but there is no context to explain that for non-Romanian viewers.) The style of the film is far more complex that earlier commentaries here suggested, it seems to me. The end of the film at the Black Sea port of Constanza, brings to my mind Antoine Doinel's run to the sea at the end of Truffaut's The 400 Blows. And note the foreshadowing of the flash cuts inserted passim, the elevator descending, for example, with the people looking downward, horrified, and, of course, we don't see what is so horrifying to them until the very end of the film. Likewise, the shots of Anca, fallen, the sound of the mechanism of the elevator, the grinding noises of the cable as the elevator runs, the cables turning on their spindles. All of this is very effective visual foreshadowing for the menace to come. Finally, the authorities with their topcoats and silk scarves, looking for all the world like the fatcats of the nomenclatura. For these and other reasons, I believe the film was more evocative of Romania of the Securitate than of the earlier period during which, presumably, it was set. Nowadays audiences outside of Romania seem enchanted with what they believe to be a so-called New Wave (though Cristian Mungiu, the director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days. has denied this to be the case), but this film reminds us that the work of Lucian Pintilie deserves to be revisited, and that solid work had been done in Romania under Ceausescu's Socialism. I was privileged to see the film at the Siskel Theatre in Chicago; I hope it eventually reaches a larger art-house circuit.

An underground revolution, love and sacrifice.

[oanaDARIE · 9/10 · 4 July 2006]

This is a movie that deserves more than 6 lines of comment after having seen it! ... or, better said, not only six which are so void of content and vague. So, here I am, doing this film a little justice:

The plot... In the pre-communist era, the socialist movement is closely monitored by the Romanian police, who would stop at nothing to acquire the information leading to the silencing of these outlaws. At a time like this, Radu, a sort of "James Bond" figure, but without the glamour and in more of a "1984" tone, falls in love with the dazzling Anca, also a member of the movement. He indulges in this affair against the good advice of the underground and against his own better judgment, thus endangering both their lives.

It's a lovely dramatic story which follows two youngsters whose beliefs in the revolution are shaken by the increasing love they have for one another. Nonetheless, they accomplish their duties.

One could argue that this film contains a lot of pro-communist allusions, which is absolutely true and, in the context, absolutely natural. The two main characters are turned into real martyrs of the socialist struggle (not to mention that Radu - Dan Nutu - looks very much like Nicolae Ceausescu in his young socialist revolution days... or at least, the way he was depicted by the artists of the time) Regardless, they couldn't have cast a better actor: Dan Nutu's performance is genuine, true and lacks the theatrical accent which cripples most Romanian productions.

Pintilie is a master in his league: he builds the suspense admirably by cross-cutting between Radu's vivid, turmoiling and painful memories of what had happened to Anca on that dreadful Sunday at 6 am and the events that led to it. The film is well balanced and the story flows naturally; it's simply well written.

There are, of course, also down sides (that's why I couldn't give it a full 10), like the quality of film used, which is bellow 1965 world-wide standards and makes it fairly difficult to watch at times. Nonetheless, with due effort, seeing this film is definitely time well spent. There's also a lack of attention to details like coupling sounds from one scene to another, the absence of sounds which are expected (like the dropping of some wooden items on a table, or steps on pavement etc), faulty synchronization between dialogs on film and those added in post production and other little details of the likes. (but, then again, films which are internationally renowned as being landmark masterpieces have that problem too... see Visconti's Il Gattopardo)... So, I'll give Pintilie full merit for a well done movie!!!

It's definitely a notable Romanian film from the Communist era. Sure, the story flatters the political system of those days, but that shouldn't be regarded as a negative, but rather a good thing: it also entraps the social context of the year 1965 and what Romanian cinematographers had to do to keep on doing film. On an international and universal scale of values, this film should be regarded as a great movie about love, the power of conviction and sacrifice...

yet another Pintilie masterpiece!

[marcbanyai · 4 February 2002]

If you have never seen Pintilie`s other masterpiece("Reconstituirea"),it would be quite difficult getting used to this world, where hard feelings run around in difficult times lived by emotionally charged people.This is the story of a couple struggling in a hopless world between obstacles that are thought in the end the meaning of the "big brother" concept and still,not giving up,even when was ready to!

Incredible antithesis

[cristidumitr · 9/10 · 20 October 2013]

From an in-existent story he made a cinematography masterpiece, from a propaganda linked subject he made an emotional love story, from the core of the communist Romanian period he made a film in which the politic subject is in the last plane. An undercover piece of cinematographic art. To be taken into consideration that this film was made in the same year with the presidential change in Romania, when Ceaușescu replaced Dej. Also to be noted that there is a completely unrelated scene which depicts some legionnaires acting without logic, just to be in a dark light. As the subject is, no doubt, a fake, even that scene has to be seen only as a cinematographic pattern of well done filming.