The Wooden Cannon

The Wooden Cannon
Romanian	Tunul de lemn
Directed by	Vasile Brescanu
Written by	Nicolae Esinencu
Starring	Veronica Grigoraș, Vasile Tăbîrță, Georgy Chulkov, Sica Esinencu, Mikhail Kirianov
Cinematography	Ivan Pozdnyakov
Edited by	E. Burlescu
Music by	Vlad Druc
Production company	Moldova-Film
Release date	1986 (1986)
Running time	73 minutes
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Romanian

The Wooden Cannon (Romanian: Tunul de lemn) is a 1986 Soviet drama film directed by Vasile Brescanu.

Plot

The movie follows the life of an elderly man, David, who lives with his daughter-in-law, Maria, in their rural home by an unspecified body of water. Maria's husband, Andrei, is a soldier fighting in World War II, and it is shown that the two have not received any news from him in some time.

A German bomber plane flies over David and Maria's home daily and disrupts their livelihoods, having already killed their livestock and threatening to destroy their house. David attempts to bargain, even offering that Maria undress for the Germans in exchange for their house being left alone. These negotiations eventually fall through, and the man seeks help to destroy the plane. He manages to find and bring home a cannon but inadvertently launches the cannon's only projectile at the house, nearly causing it to collapse.

Maria takes to building a catapult (the titular wooden "cannon") to hit the plane's fuel tank with a rock launched as a projectile, thereby causing the plane to crash. This attempt also proves unsuccessful, with the catapult missing its target. Frustrated, David places several gas barrels inside the house and digs a trench surrounding it, filling it with gasoline. When the plane next flies over the house, David fires the gas inside the trench. The house, however, fails to explode. In a panic, David takes some burning hay and throws it inside the house, causing it to explode and destroy the plane. David, however, dies in the process.

The movie ends with a pregnant Maria rebuilding the house and tending to the land. Andrei is revealed to have died on the battlefield, and the narrator is revealed to be Maria's son.

Production

• Script - Nicolae Esinescu
• Director - Vasile Brescanu
• Cinematography - Ivan Pozdnyakov
• Scenography - Igor Grigorishchenko
• Music - Vlad Druc

Cast

• Vasile Tăbîrță as David
• Veronica Grigoraș as Maria
• Georgy Chulkov
• Vasily Lisenkov
• Sica Esinescu
• Mikhail Kirianov

External links

• The Wooden Cannon at IMDb