Scenes from Bucharest

When the communist regime was established, and later when this story about Bucharest’s Telephone Palace was filmed, telephones had already become a common fixture in the capital and across the country. The Telephone Palace itself, where this newsreel segment was shot, had been standing for over two decades, having been completed in the early 1930s. At the time of its construction, its elegant straight lines and towering silhouette both garnered admiration for the Art Deco style and sparked outrage, as its development required the demolition of a famous ‘artistic hub’ of the time – Oteteleșanu.

Telephone Palace is a tongue-in-cheek, mildly educational satire directed by much loved filmmaker Mirel Ilieșiu, and meant to remind the citizens of Romania in the 1950s of the proper etiquette for using landline telephones—while also showcasing the modern technologies used at the Telephone Palace. We see individuals eager to make calls, but not those on the other end of the line. There’s also an interesting gender dynamic in the film’s portrayal of employees at the Telephone Palace: while the workers handling the telephone installations are men, we briefly see two female phone operators. Moreover, women appear to be the ones most in need of learning the new rules of communication, as they are shown either talking for too long or waiting too long before dialing a number.

Or perhaps it’s just hindsight that makes us notice this?  (AB)