Comedie fantastica [A Fantastic Comedy] (1975)

A Sci-Fi comedy version of Rashomon?

That is rather unusual, even for eccentric Romanian director Ion Popescu-Gopo.

After all, he may have made a wild wordless comedy about the atom bomb, an epic fantasy comedy about a routine airport trip to the moon, a love story between a girl and a robot, and an entirely sung Fairytale about an elderly couple adopting an alien in a spacesuit, but he does seem to have taken things up a notch in Comedie Fantastica.

Aliens send a robot agent to Earth to ask questions about an incident in which a science teacher was beaten by a gang of bullies and sent to the hospital. He appears to be an ordinary, middle-aged man in a bowler hat, carrying a briefcase, and people seem to be willing to answer his questions — because they think he’s a policeman, a reporter, or an inspector sent down by the School district.

The Professor is obsessed with research and learning, so obsessed that he sometimes forgets he has a class to teach — or even worse, talks to them about his latest research. He even built his own spaceship outside his office, and the robot wants to know how it was powered.

Unfortunately, a young woman at the museum where the Professor frequently takes his classes is quite taken with all his knowledge and experiments and her jealous boyfriend beats up the Professor (with the help of his gang).

The robot talks to a series of people, each one of whom has a different view of the Professor: the Director of the school, the student who adores the Professor, the bully, and, finally, the girl.

But by far the longest sequence comes when we finally learn what the Professor’s real plan is — and why it will take two million years…

It definitely seems strange in a goofy comedy, following two absurd and deliberately subjective stories that the final sequence turns into a very different sort of fantasy. We already know that our witnesses are not necessarily particularly accurate in their stories but this final sequence is supposed to be the Professor’s own explanation of his plan, even though it is still filmed in the same over-romanticized way as the sequence showing what is supposedly the Professor’s own fantasies about launching his rocket.

This is such a strange sequence that I found myself a bit lost at the end of it. The end of the film seems very, very sudden, with the robot simply vanishing, and the Professor never actually appearing in the flesh in his own story. On going back and watching and listening more carefully to the long sequence in the spaceship, however, the meaning of it all becomes more obvious.

However, it is also very obvious that this sequence does go on for too long.

And, let’s face it, the sheer enormity of what the Professor has in mind is hard to imagine.

This is one of those films which has only been available without any kind of subtitles and I suspect this is why so many of the reviews and comments I’ve seen on the film get it very wrong.

But it is also has one of the more outrageous notions we’ve seen in any science fiction film. One might compare it to the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey as the two seem to share many of the same ideas

However, Comedie Fantastica never forgets that it is a comedy and plays this sequence for laughs.

I’m not entirely certain what I think of this one: it seems such an odd combination of absurdist humor, personal fantasy and something rather more serious. There are some nice moments here, like the bully’s absurd view of the Professor, or the robot’s final comment before he leaves.

It’s an intriguing film, one which stays in your imagination.

But you need to be ready for where this one is going to really accept it…

(Watch with Subtitles)

BUY ME A COFFEE!

A TO Z REVIEWS

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

CHECK OUT OUR NEW FEATURE (UPDATED FEBRUARY 16, 2022):

The Rivets Zone:  The Best SF Movies You’ve Never Seen!

DON’T MISS MY STRAY THOUGHTS ON FILM, SCIENCE FICTION AND ANYTHING ELSE THAT CROSSES MY MIND:

THE RIVETS ON THE POSTER BLOG

Where Spacemen Seek the Ultimate Prize…