Graduate of the "I.L.Caragiale" Theatre and Film Academy, major in stage directing (Class of 1956). „I am Romanian, I was born in a monarchy Romania, in Southern Bessarabia (now part of Ukraine), in a small German city within an area which was a true ethnic melting pot: Romanians, Ruthenians, Gagauzians, Turks, Tatars, Jews and, of course, Ukrainians and Russians.”
He graduated the "I.L.Caragiale" Theatre and Film Academy staging – as graduation final exam – the play „Amphitryon” by Plautus. He was hired right away by the Romanian Television Station (TVR) and set up several performances that remained landmarks for TV theatre, but he was soon fired („for lack of talent”). In 1958 he started to set up performances on various Bucharest stages – especially at „Lucia Struza Bulandra” Theatre– all of them being deemed exceptional: „Biedermann and the Arsonists” (Max Frisch), „Children of the Sun” (Maxim Gorki). „Caesar and Cleopatra” (Bernard Shaw), „The Cherry Orchard” (Anton Chekhov) and „D'ale carnavalului” (Carnival Scenes) (I.L. Caragiale). „D'ale carnavalului” (Carnival Scenes) was staged in 1969 at the Nations' Theatre in Paris, bringing L. Pintilie international acclaim.
About the staging of this performance, L. Pintilie confessed: „I love this performance very much but, unfortunately, only a few times was it played „admiringly”, that is how I conceived it… I don't have the diabolic energy of some directors to check on the performance night after night. In a way, for me the performance dies as soon as I staged it. This is one of the reasons I left theatre… I don't want to be dependent on actors anymore, and on their beastly caprices. Theatre remains a collective business, while filmmaking, contrary to the popular belief, is much more individual.”
In 1964, he enters the filmmaking world as director assistant of Victor Iliu in the production of Comoara de la Vadul Vechi (The Treasure at Vadul Vechi). Meeting V. Iliu had a deep impact on him: „If obsessions are viral, I feel that a part of his turmoil contaminated me, it's still running through my veins, guiding me. I learned from him the passion for rigour, for the celestial discipline of this calling (…).”
In 1965, he makes his director debut with Duminică la ora 6 (Sunday at 6 O’Clock), which brought him awards at the Film Festivals in Mamaia, Mar del Plata and Acapulco. „For me, Sunday at 6 O’Clock meant the discovery, a little frenetically, of cinema. It was a movie marked by cinema lectures, but also revealing the beginnings of a personal discourse… I wasn't interested in its excellent formal quality. Or in the awards it won.”
In the spring of 1969, he finished Reconstituirea (Reconstruction). Dedicated to Victor Iliu, the feature was a live incision, extremely painful but absolutely necessary, into the Romanian realities of the '60s and, at the same time, a metaphor of what Romania of Ceaușescu's era was and was about to become. The film was screened only in 1970 and, after a few weeks, was withdrawn. „I don't accuse, I describe… And this is obvious in the movie… In fact, the criticism addressed to me – which honour me deeply – are the same that were addressed, word by word, to Gogol and to Caragiale.”
In 1972 he stages „The Inspector General” at ”Bulandra” Theatre, a grotesque vision about despotic power gone mad, and about paralysing fear that reduces humans to crawling beings. After three performances, the play was forbidden. „The decision about forbidding the play was announced during the TV news journal from 8 p.m., on a solemn tone, as if a natural disaster or a war declaration were broadcasted. People started to avoid me and I knew that, in the Secret Police's offices, a passport was made for me. It was rumoured that Ceaușescu himself said: ˂Let him go work in the West to see how hard it's there, and afterwards he'll be begging us to come back!˃”
In 1973, he made for the Yugoslavian Television Ward 6, which won the Catholic Film Office Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978. It is a overwhelming film about the detention universe, closer to the spirit and world of Solzhenitsyn than to Chekov. „It is a TV movie and I made it in two and a half weeks… It was an intellectual fraternity: the Serbians received me with a lot of love and with very little money, because they felt a moral obligation to help an artist threatened in his native country.”
Between 1974-1990, Pintilie, in exile in Paris, put up on the greatest stages of the world a series of performance considered, both by the audience and by the press, as true events of the contemporary performing arts – theatre and opera: „Turandot” (Carlo Gozzi), „Seagull”, „Three Sisters”, „Cherry Orchard” (Chekov), „The Last Ones”, „Night Asylum” (Gorki), „Tonight We Improvise” (Pirandello), „Tartuffe” (Moliere), „Jack or The Submission” (Ionesco), „The Magic Flute” (Mozart), „Carmen” (Bizet) etc.„In this eagerness to practice all kinds of performance, I think one should see the curiosity and restlessness specific to my temperament, but, even more profoundly, a total indifference to the technical demon. I don't believe in language. This – if it exists – is born spontaneously.”
Early in 1980, he came back in Romania for the making of „D'ale carnavalului” („Carnival Scenes”), later changed to De ce trag clopotele, Mitică? (literal translation: Why Are the Bells Ringing, Mitica?). It is a film inspired from Caragiale's work and thought as a synthesis of three types of delirium: of passion, political and of irresponsible living – by „joking around”. The production was sabotaged and then stopped by the communist cultural representatives. The film got to be screened only in October 1990, after being held „under arrest” at the Jilava National Film Archives. „In 1970, after Reconstruction premiered, I stated that I wished to devote the rest of my life to Romanian literature. Now I look behind „after 20 years.” Nothing came of those scripts. Each of them held a bomb, a torch, a candle – a buried film. Who is responsible? Nobody! The essence of the „carnivalesque” principle consists in the abolishing of any responsibility. And we live in a state of perpetual carnival. So why wouldn't „Carnival Scenes” be welcome – my film saved from the Holocaust?”
Returned in the country, in 1990 he becomes the manager of the Cinema Creation Studio within the Ministry of Culture. The Studio, together with MK2-Productions (Paris, France) and Filmex (Romania), co-produced the most important Romanian productions of the decade: University Square – Romania, Fox Hunter (directed by Stere Gulea), E pericolososporgersi (directed by Nae Caranfil), The Snails' Senator (directed by Mircea Daneliuc).
In 1992, he adapts for the big screen the novel „Balanța” by Ion Băieșu. This feuilleton movie – with the subtitles: „Wake up, Romanian” or „Sad year, small pay” – is a journey through the emotional, social and political chaos of Romania in the '80s, censored at all times by the sarcastic irony and the lucid eye of the author. Present in the official selection (but outside the contest) in Cannes – with the French title Le chene – the movie was one of the Festival's events. „I realised that the grotesque aspect of the Romanian socialism, sign of an unique monstrosity, was given by the catastrophic and carnival-like dimensions. A crazy, crazy, crazy, unpredictable, uncontrollable world where everything was possible.”
In 1994, the short story „The Salad” – a chapter of the fresco-novel by Paul Dumitriu, „Family Saga” – became An Unforgettable Summer, a film entered into the official competition at Cannes, winning no awards, but very well received by reviewers and audience. „I am a supporter of the Monarchy and the only era in Romanian history I identify with is that period – the '20s – where economic boom were mixed with bourgeois liberalism and tolerance in thinking. It is well known I don't love socialism, but I wanted to believe I could also make a very critical movie about the only era I love.”
In the summer of 1995, he is conferred by the French Ministry of Culture the high title of „Cavalier of Arts and Letters” and, shortly after, he starts shooting Too Late, his only contemporary, post-Revolution film. Entered in 1995 in the official competition at Cannes, the feature gave rise to diverse reactions, being regarded by some reviewers as a „setting of accounts with the Bucharest Government”, responsible for the mass unrest and for the calling of the miners to the capital city. „Before I made the movie, I didn't know the miners. I saw them as brutes lacking humanity. I was totally wrong. There is a strong guilt in ValeaJiului. Most of the miners realised they were deceived and manipulated by the power.”
In September 1998, Terminus Paradis (Last Stop Paradise) got the Grand Special Jury Award at the Venice Festival. The movie tells an impossible love story lived in a world where the Apocalypse became a daily reality. „A lost hope is not a sin, it may be sometimes a step forwardin despair and implicit illumination. Last Stop Paradise might be a more accurate and more poetic title than one thinks at first sight.” (Viorica Bucur, ProCinema, November 1998).
