The Romanian director Ion Popescu-Gopo (1923-1989) periodically turned his attention to the works of Ion Creangă, deciphering and interpreting in his own way the motifs and characters, which are so original and full of fascination. In his films, we detect an increasingly daring involvement in the ideational approach, as well as a distancing from the original subject. If “Povestea lui Harap Alb/The Tale of Harap Alb” is rendered in the formula of a fairy tale within a fairy tale, starting from the idea of a game: where the name of the film If I Were… Harap Alb (1965) comes from, and the main character found himself in the situation, when he has to overcome the same difficulties, then in the following films the director includes more obvious changes. “Povestea porcului/The Pig Story” turns it into Love Story (1977), replacing the pigskin with an alien’s spacesuit. The message of the tale “Fata babei şi fata moşneagului/The old woman’s girl and the old man’s girl” can be found in the story of the two contemporary little girls in Maria Mirabela (1981). In the last film “Rămăşagul/The Bet” (1985), inspired by the tale “Punguţa cu doi bani/The Purse with Two Coins”, the director gathers characters from the most diverse tales in a carnival, confusing their paths, clashing and challenging them to take unexpected actions. Obviously, Gopo plays “with Creangă’s tales”, entering an artistic-stylistic competition with the great Disney, as well as in a competition of ingenuity and spirituality with the author of the tales himself - Ion Creangă.