Two peasants from Transylvania go to America in order to meet their brother who had left Romania ten years earlier. They meet a prophet in the American state of Utah and eventually help the cause of justice in the villages where the prophet proves to be a dictator and exploiter of the coal miners over there.
In this monumental Romanian film, a large family and its many generations vie for advantage, seeking to win the inheritance sure to be left behind by a wealthy older man of the clan. This movie is based on a popular novel by George Calinescu, and is similar in some ways to England's BBC television series, The Forsythe Saga, based on Galsworthy's books. Along the way, stories of friendship, love and rivalry emerge. In one story, a poor young man is disappointed in love as his girl chooses lucre over love in selecting a mate.
Around the nationalization in 1948, a worker's daughter, as a student, is attracted by the social life offered by a breed horse owner. The relationship will sour by the cruelty with which he kills the horses, rather then give them away.
Rumania's entry in the 1958 Cannes Film Festival was the excessively melodramatic Ciulinii Bărăganului. The title translates as Fools of Bărăgan, in reference to a band of beleaguered feudal Rumanian peasants. But these are no fools: instead, they are fearless freedom fighters, organizing a brave (though foredoomed) revolt against the tyranny of the landowners. The parallels drawn between the people of Bărăgan and Russia's revolutionary leaders are all but impossible to miss. It would have been nice, however, if the story had not been told in such a heavy-handed, spell-it-all-out fashion.
