Today, at his house museum, “built in the year 1908, having two rooms and a lobby”, you actually find “two rooms in one”: the one in which there was born and raised the genius of the Romanian cinematography and the one of Nea Mărin, a role created by Amza Pellea, a character who ironized when sweet, when bitter the era of sad memory, transforming the white – black of the screen in tints of blue, the color of the angels.
Here there were brought by the people of Băilești old objects kept from the period of communism. With the help of the master’s daughter and of Mister Daniel Tudorică who succeeded to gather 25 personal objects of the actor.
The mayor Costel Pisrițu, together with almost all the village which loves Amza put hand to hand and made that the apartment, having at the entrance an angel head, to be transformed into a place of pilgrimage for the lover of beauty.
The white house, as in the stories which Amza told to his daughter, Oana, is sprinkled here and there with grass, that you feel that the land is together with the sky for a few seconds.
A black table, on which it sits a photograph of the master, which bears mourning at the frame, and two footstools, an ashtray with a few peels of seeds and two smoked cigars, together with Amza Pellea’s cigarette case, make you think the fact that the actor genius of Romania is waiting for you at a steamy coffee. A buffet, where you find at a state four photographs, two with the artist’s parents, one from the marriage of Amza with Dominica and another one portraying the immortal Nea Mărin, together with a study where you can read with your years a poem written by the actor’s hand, replenish the image of welcoming home, which waits the guests to come in endlessly.
On the lobby there is found the only photograph in which Amza Pellea laughs out loud, form all his heart. Oana wanted for it to be situated on the entrance in the artist’s home, a sign that he welcomes all of us with the same joy with which we were used to. Also, in the house there are found two old clocks, both stopped at the time of 7:25, the hour at which the Romanian cinematograph genius left, the poet’s word, “to rest for a little while”.
At the exit from the house museum, somewhere in a corner, there is a horseshoe set on a wooden piece, which appeared at the door’s house when the arrangements started.
He left from this world very surprised that people loved him. He was looking behind the curtains at the queues in front of the house. Queues of strangers, who were waiting to get in to tell him: Bless you! He was surprised and he asked us loudly: “Why do these people love me? I haven’t done anything for them?” That is how Amza was.
Amza Pellea, was born on the 7th of April 1931, at Băilești, in a family with five children, his father having the same name. After the Primary school graduated in the natal village, Amza finishes the National College Carol I from Craiova, being a representative of the golden promotion of the Romanian theater. He played at the National Theater of Craiova, the Little Theater, the Nottara Theater, the Comedy Theater and the National Theater from Bucharest, enforcing respect as one of the most consecrated actors of the Romanian stage. Although he played in dozens of movies, he remained in the public’s soul by the role of Mihai Viteazul, the comic one of Nea Mărin, and he succeeded in combining both the characters in “That is when I have condemned them all to death”. The actor dies at the age of 52, leaving behind a void which is felt every day more and more.
