The real life of Prince Dracula

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Movie
German title The real life of Prince Dracula
Original title Vlad Tepes
Country of production Romania
original language Romanian
Publishing year 1979
length 138 minutes
Rod
Director Doru Nastase
script Mircea Mohor
production Dumitru Fernoaga
music Tiberiu Olah
camera Aurel Kostrakievici
cut Adina Georgescu
occupation

The real life of Prince Dracula (alternative title: Vlad - The Impaler ) is a Romanian monumental film by Doru Nastase about Vlad III. Drăculea from 1979 with Stefan Sileanu in the lead role.

action

In 1456, Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler and Dracula , fought against the Ottoman Turks on the battlefield and against the Hungarian boyars at his court. His rule is not undisputed, but leaves no doubt about his goals. When he ascends the throne, he releases those condemned to death from prisons and gives them life. In this way he creates the basis for loyal followers and his own princely army, because his current army consists only of boyars, whom he cannot trust without limit. Furthermore, he tries to get the farmers on his side and also the merchants, who at the moment can not safely cross Wallachia without being attacked. This shows the prince's hardship against the highwaymen. He lets his people track them down and kill them mercilessly. He had all of their goods brought back to the merchants, which earned him great reputation among them. However, the boyars ridicule him as "benefactor of beggars". As a punishment for this blasphemy, Vlad lets an entire boyar village burn down. In revenge, the boyars attack a princely monastery, whereupon Vlad rushes to help and has the leaders impaled.

To take action against Vlad, the boyars bring the Transylvanian kingdom to cut off his trade route to the Danube . Unexpectedly, Vlad receives an offer of peace from the king, but the prince's envoys are deceived. The contract is too one-sided that Vlad does not feel bound by it. In the meantime, the old king of Hungary dies and the new ruler expects Vlad to give him the vassal oath , which, however, he strictly refuses. At most he is willing to be a brotherhood in arms, but not to be in bondage. To this day he has not been able to free his people from Ottoman oppression, so Vlad does not want to commit himself any further. Manzila, his closest confidante, stands by him.

The conflict with the Ottomans has been going on for three years. Iunus Beg, formerly a member of Vlad's entourage, was captured by the Ottomans long ago. Now he comes from Constantinople as the emissary of Mohamed al II-lea and proposes that Vlad join forces with the Ottomans to attack Hungary. But Vlad refuses and does not allow the Ottomans to make their way to Hungary through Wallachia. When they do, a military conflict is inevitable. Vlad and his army are victorious and continue to drive the enemy back from the country. As far as the Danube and on to the sea in Asia. Mohamed al II-lea then starts to strike back. Thanks to the support of his subjects, Vlad can oppose the Ottoman troops with a powerful army, but Mohamed is determined to carry the flag of the crescent over all lands. After the forces of Vlad's army weaken, the prince sneaks into the enemy camp at night and kills the sultan. The Ottomans then back down and flee. Vlad proudly enjoys the homage of his compatriots for the victory he has won and he knows that he could only be victorious because the whole country stands behind him. But in the end he was imprisoned by the Hungarians for 12 years. In 1476 he succeeded again in ascending the throne of Wallachia with the help of Stephen the Great. But he only ruled for two months because then he fell victim to treason.

background

The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu , ousted in 1989, developed a particular preference for Vlad Drăculea in the 1970s and commissioned a monumental film about the Impaler ( Vlad Țepeș (1979), director: Doru Nastase). The film made Vlad III. Drăculea - the son of Vlad II Dracul - seem like a direct forerunner or spiritual ancestor of the dictator. The film was also shown in the GDR under the title “The Real Life of Prince Dracula” . Although Vlad was already a myth in the 19th and especially in the early 20th century, under Ceaușescu he became an omnipresent figure in literature, in historiography and not least in school books. Romanian historians were encouraged to either play down the alleged atrocities or to praise them as proof of the strict but just rule of Vlad. Finally, even the name Dracul (a) should be reinterpreted because it means devil and not dragon in modern Romanian . With an etymology that is dubious from a linguistic point of view , the name was derived from a Slavic word root drag- , which also appears in the Serbian first name Dragan and means something like darling . Dracula was thus the little darling of his loyal subjects - an argument in the sense of Nicolae Ceaușescu, who liked to be celebrated as the beloved son of the Romanian people as part of the personality cult celebrated around himself.

criticism

kino.de judged: “Not really balanced Romanian period film […] which became a national hero despite his short reign in Romania. Vlad's cruel approach according to the motto 'The end justifies the means' is likely to have been in the interests of the communist government when the film was made. In addition, the film serves as a history corrective, with which the distorted image of the prince created by Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' ('Draculea - son of the dragon' - was a second nickname of Vlad) is to be corrected. Originally German title: The true life of Prince Dracula . "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Video at youtube.com.
  2. ↑ Georg Seesslen, Fernand Jung: Horror: History and Mythology of Horror Film, Basics of Popular Film . Schüren, 2006, ISBN 3-89472-430-7 , pp. 1135, here p. 54 .
  3. ↑ Thomas M. Meine: Alle ins Gold and other errors around the bow and arrow . BoD - Books on Demand, 2009, ISBN 3-00-029013-3 , pp. 161 .
  4. ↑ Film review at kino.de , accessed on November 17, 2018.