La Bucarest di Criterion

This paper focuses on the efforts of Criterion group to modernize Romanian culture during the 1930s following the Greek model of the ancient polis. Through conferences dedicated to Lenin, Mussolini, Freud, Greta Garbo, Gide, Valéry, Bergson, Krishnamurti, Gandhi, Charlot, Proust, members of the Criterion group brought world culture to Bucharest and delivered it to their fellow citizens in the form of a Platonic dialogue. The 1934 Bucharest, according to the reviewer of the journal Rampa, was the “city of the future” in which the spectacular urban development that gave the city the name Little Paris was matched only by its cultural effervescence. The Criterion group launched a cultural revolution that presented itself as an alternative to Romanian political stagnation.