Michael the Brave

Michael the Brave (1971)

Mihai Viteazul

An epic fresco depicting the reign (1593-1601) of Mihai Pătrașcu (better known as "Mihai Viteazul" / "Michael the Brave"), the famous prince who united the three provinces: Transalpine Vallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia, into the country of Romania, at the end of the 16th century (1599-1601) against the opposition of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires, this movie features large scale battle scenes mixed with political intrigues, murderous treachery, and family drama.

Date of release
1971-02-13
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (48)
Runtime
3h 23m
Genres
War, Drama, History
Director
Sergiu Nicolaescu

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Michael the Brave is a Romanian historic epic film, directed by Sergiu Nicolaescu and starring Amza Pellea in the leading role. The film is a representation of the life of Wallachia's ruler Michael the Brave, and his will to unite the three Romanian principalities into one country. The film was released in 1970 in Romania, and worldwide by Columbia Pictures as The Last Crusade.

Production

The film was produced in 1970 after a script by Titus Popovici. It starred Amza Pellea in the lead role, while the cast included a number of the best Romanian actors at the time, including Sergiu Nicolaescu, Ion Besoiu, Olga Tudorache, Florin Piersic, Ilarion Ciobanu, Silviu Stănculescu, and Mircea Albulescu.

The film had initially been intended to be an American-Romanian superproduction, with Columbia Pictures proposing actors such as Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Laurence Harvey, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, or Kirk Douglas. But at Nicolae Ceaușescu's insistence, the production was approved only with Romanian actors.

The story is historically less authentic, but is full of grand battle scenes, political plots, betrayals and family drama. To reenact the battles that Mihai Viteazul fought against the Turks, some 5,000 soldiers of the Romanian Army were brought to the set. Some reports put this number around 10,000 soldiers.

The budget at the time was around 14 million lei, which in 2010 was estimated to be worth to be around 500,000 US dollars, a relatively high sum for its period.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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