ANDRZEJ WAJDA IN HONG KONG

Krzysztof stanisławski Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb

K r z y s z t o f s ta n i s ł aw s k i J o a n n a S ta n i s ł aw s k a - Z dy b

ANDRZEJ

WAJDA Wa r s aw 2 016

ANDRZEJ WAJDA is a publication accompanying the film project ANDRZEJ WAJDA IN HONG KONG, which includes a film retrospective, a multimedia exhibition and master study courses at Hong Kong Film Archive in Hong Kong. The project was held from 28th October to 4th December 2016 in Hong Kong (main program) and to the end of December 2016 (exhibition).

Publisher Kampania Artystyczna Cover Jacek Staniszewski Copyright (texts) © by Krzysztof Stanisławski, Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb and Authors.

Project organizers Association Artistic Campaign

Printing and bounding mDruk, Warsaw ISBN 978-83-62962-24-2

General Consulate of Poland in Hong Kong

Leisure and Cultural Services Department in Hong Kong

Project co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland

Curator: Krzysztof Stanisławski Project coordinator Izabella Stanisławska PR in Poland Joanna Stanisławska-Zbyb Critical texts, interview, notes, correction Krzysztof Stanisławski, Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb Concept of the book, editing, selection of photographs Krzysztof Stanisławski

Special thanks to: Andrzej Wajda, Mable HO Mee-po, Becky YAU, Doris YY Fung, Becky TSE Wing-sze, Law Waiming, Film Programmes Office, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Hong Kong; Mirosław Adamczyk, Łukasz Felczak, Mariola Felczak, General Consulate of Poland in Hong Kong; Anna Sienkiewicz-Rogowska, Adam Wyżyński, Polish National Film Archive; Marcin Ogiński, Film Studio ZEBRA; Alicja Jagodzińska, AKSON Studio; Tomasz Hagström, Film Studio KADR; Martna Motylewska, CRF (Cyfrowe Repozytorium Filmowe - Digital Film Repository); Karolina Socha-Kalinowska, TVP; Joanna Wiśniewska, DHL; Renata Pajchel.

PHOTOCREDITS © by Polish National Film Archive (Filmoteka Narodowa - Fototeka: fototeka. fn.org.pl), Warsaw, photos by: Jerzy Kośnik, Antoni Nurzyński, Jerzy Troszczyński, Romuald Pieńkowski, Tadeusz Kubiak; Film Studio ZEBRA, Warsaw, photos by Renata Pajchel; AKSON Studio, photos by Anna Włoch, Piotr Bujnowicz, Fabryka Obrazu; Film Studio KADR, Warsaw, photos by Wiesław Zdort, Andrzej Gronau; Polish Television TVP, Warsaw, photos by Piotr Bujnowicz, Lech Szurkowski; Cyfrowe Repozytorium Filmowe, Warsaw; NOTORO Collection (Film Archive), Warsaw; Dreamstime LLC, Brentwood; Wiki Commons; Krzysztof Stanisławski, Przemysław Pokrycki; Jacek Malczewski Museum, Radom; courtesy of Andrzej Wajda, DMMS Sp.z.o.o.S.K.A. Posters © by NOTORO Collection, Warsaw; Polish National Film Archive (Filmoteka Narodowa - Gapla: gapla.fn.org.pl), Warsaw; AKSON Studio, Warsaw; TVP, Warsaw; courtesy of Toronto Film Festival, Toronto.

Special thanks to Polish National Film Archive

Graphic design, preparation for DTP print Konrad Kwas English translation Maria Apanowicz, Joanna Warchol

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TABLE OF

CONTENTS ANDRZEJ WAJDA

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PREFACE

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AFTERIMAGE / POWIDOKI

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WAŁĘSA. MAN OF HOPE / WAŁĘSA. CZŁOWIEK Z NADZIEI

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SWEET RUSH / TATARAK

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KATYŃ

57

KORCZAK

71

DANTON

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MAN OF IRON / CZŁOWIEK Z ŻELAZA

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THE MAIDS OF WILKO / PANNY Z WILKA

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ROUGH TREATMENT / BEZ ZNIECZULENIA

115

Man of Marble / CZŁOWIEK Z MARMURU

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THE PROMISED LAND / ZIEMIA OBIECANA

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THE WEDDING / WESELE

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LANDSCAPE AFTER BATTLE / KRAJOBRAZ PO BITWIE

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THE BIRCH WOOD / BRZEZINA

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EVERYTHING FOR SALE / WSZYSTKO NA SPRZEDAŻ

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THE ASHES / POPIOŁY

185

INNOCENT SORCERERS / NIEWINNI CZARODZIEJE

199

SPEED / LOTNA

209

ASHES AND DIAMONDS / POPIÓŁ I DIAMENT

219

KANAL

233

ANDRZEJ

WAJDA The winner of Oscar in 2000 for lifetime achievements as well as of several dozen other major film awards. The best known in the world Polish artist of the 20th and 21st centuries. Film and theatre director, screenplay writer, writer, painter, graphic artist, head of the legendary Film Group X (1972-83) and the more and more important Wajda Film School (established in 2001), Polish senator.

In the past he felt reluctant to the traditions cultivated at the Jan Matejko Fine Arts Academy in Kraków, now he calls himself “the Matejko of film”, or an artist feeling obliged to talk about the history and the present day of his country. Something like “national conscience”. I am specially writing it using inverted commas because this term in relation to a filmmaker might seem too grand. Yet, since the cinema, and Wajda’s films in particular, is a form of synthesis of arts, combining the features of painting, literature and theatre, together with the mission that used to be reserved solely for the high arts and this ‘conscience’ may be, perhaps, expressed through the means of ‘vulgar arts’, or - to make it sound more elegant, and quote Karol Irzykowski - the means of “The Tenth Muse”.

He was born in Suwałki in 1926, where the battalion of his father, a regular infantry officer, stationed. He spent his childhood and early youth first in Suwałki and then in Radom, where his father was transferred. During the September Campaign 1939, Jakub Wajda was captured by the Soviets and later murdered in Kharkov by the NKVD. Andrzej was brought up by his mother. Since he was a child, he has displayed artistic talents; during the war he completed a secondary school and attended a private art school, he also had to work physically as well as was a liaison of the Home Army. After the war he wanted first of all to deal with art and build his homeland in this way.

Not necessarily according to the communist propaganda 4

which, among others, claimed that the Katyń crime was

committed by the Nazi and not the current friends – Russians. In 1946 he passed exams to the Fine Arts Academy in Kraków, the Painting Faculty and formally remained its student till 1950, although after the second year of Kraków studies he moved to the Directing Faculty of the newly-established Film School in Łódź. He graduated from the school in 1953, but he did not formally defend his diploma until 1960, when he had already made A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds and Speed.

So far he has made 75 feature, television and documentary films.

Andrzej Wajda has won all the most important film awards in the world, among them the Silver Palm for Kanal in Cannes 1957, thanks to which he gained international fame, Palme d’Or for Man of Iron in 1981, Golden Lion in Venice for lifetime achievements in 1998, honorary Oscar for lifetime achievements in 2000 (earlier he had been nominated three times for this award), honorary Golden Bear in Berlin in 2006. He was a member of the French Academy of Fine Arts (since 1994), and has received Doctorates Honoris Causa of several universities. In 2001 he was awarded by the Polish President the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish decoration.

Andrzej Wajda died in 2016, in the year of his 90. unniversary.

ANDRZEJ

WAJDA “My father considered it natural that I should go into the Army. In 1939 I went to Lvov to enroll into the Cadet’s School, but unfortunately I failed”1 – write Wajda about himself. During the September Campaign 1939 his father, infantry captain of Polish Army, was captured by

the Soviets and later murdered by NKVD. Apparently Providence did not want to Andrzej to became a soldier, but an artist. Young Wajda was brought up to his mother in Radom. During WWII he completed a secondary school and attended a private art school (art lessons), he also had to work physically as well as was a liaison of the Home Army. In fact he was half an artist and a soldier.

As a young painter he was rather traditional. Stored now at the Jacek Malczewski Museum in Radom, his early paintings: watercolors and small oils, prove the young student’s undeniable talent, but also considerable awkwardness. They show the quaint corners of the city: the old town yards, the Observantine church, portraits and still lives. Honestly speaking – nothing special. Maybe some sketches in pencil, presenting dramatized scenes, allow us to see in the artist a future film director.

In 1946 Andrzej Wajda left Radom for Kraków, where he started studies at the most renowned, but also most attached to tradition, Jan Matejko Fine Arts Academy at the Painting Faculty. Among his friends from the same year we find Andrzej Wróblewski, one of the most outstanding Polish postwar painters, in his whole oeuvre and all his activity in the so-called self-educating group (Wajda also belonged to it) opposing the style of Academy professors, mostly belonging to the circle of École de Paris.

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Andrzej Wajda, fragment of talking in documentary Credit and Debit.

Andrzej Wajda about Himself, 1999.

Andrzej Wajda’s works from the period of his studies in Kraków should also be considered rather traditional in style although there are a few more modern works, e.g. self-portraits from 1950 and 1951 or some abstract pieces.

Wróblewski, a huge talent who could not present his works on the international scene, wanted to revolutionize and revolutionized painting; he felt misunderstood and unfulfilled, which was the reason for his (probably) suicidal death in the Tatra mountains in 1957.

Recently asked about the causes of his resignation from the painting studies and about Wróblewski, the director replied, “Wróblewski had no chance for a career abroad, he died only because the Polish People’s Republic never sent him to any major exhibition”2.

Wajda did not desire revolution in painting because almost from the beginning he was hesitating whether it was the right medium, best suiting his temperament and artistic objectives. As an artist, technically prepared at one of the best European academies, he realized the limitations of painting which at that moment was entering the era of socialist realistic clichés, and at the same time he knew about the real chances of functioning in the communist exhibition and promotion system. He knew very well that this system was closed, at most allowing promotion at home or in the Eastern block countries.

When he left after 3 years the Matejko Academy and moved to the recently opened Film School in Łódź to make films, he did not assume either that he would be revolutionizing the cinema, although he opposed the socialist realistic schemes.

In his film debut A Generation, which was formally a socialist realistic work, he included contents distant from this style and was the first director to do so. Using the modern 2

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with Andrzej Wajda, October 2012.

Andrzej Wajda, “Selfportrait”, 1949, oil on board, 32 x 22,5 cm, collection of Jacek Malczewski Museum, Radom

film language: realistic, but using strong contrasts almost expressionistic in style (thanks to his excellent collaboration with the cinematographer), a faster editing as well as the dynamic performance of the actors, particularly one of the main characters - Jasio Krone, he opened a new chapter in the Polish cinema with this film.

He perfected this style in Kanal and in Ashes and Diamonds which became the foundations of a new phenomenon: the Polish film school. Together with films by Andrzej Munk.

He was making films throughout the whole era of the Polish People’s Republic, despite the fact that in the situation when the only film producer was the communist state with its inseparable censorship, he not always managed to smuggle a message which was incompatible with the official party line. Like most Polish intellectuals and artists of those years, with time he became a true master in smuggling his ideas, in cheating the censors by not speaking explicitly, by using allusions, associations not always clear for the apparatchiks but very well understood by the intelligent audience who came to his films.

He has always been interested in history: both the old, romantic one and the contemporary events. While presenting old times, or adapting great works of our literature, he spoke about the crucial contemporary issues. It was an ingenious trick also regarding censorship, because which censor would dare to censor Stanisław Wyspiański (The Wedding), called the fourth Polish bard, or Władysław St. Reymont (The Promised Land), a Nobel Laureate?

Since the international success of Kanal, he has become a European class artist, and later a world-class one. Yet he never wanted to emigrate form the country, despite many propositions, thinking that his power comes from his presence and a constant bond with Poland and Poles.

All of the films he has made abroad, were not fully successful or fulfilling as if the very fact of working far from

the country doomed them to faults and imperfection.

He has worked a lot, often making several films a years.

And doing so he did not forget about young filmmakers, especially at the end of the 70s when the so-called Cinema of Moral Anxiety appeared. The Film Unit “X”, which he headed, gathered almost all the disobedient and ‘morally anxious’ artists, giving them an opportunity to make their first films.

His Man of Marble became one of the key elements of social and cultural ferment which was soon to be born under the name “Solidarity”.

During the August 1980 strike at the Gdańsk Shipyard, which was named after Lenin, he came to Gdańsk and stayed together with the shipyard workers. It was then that he promised one of the workers to make a film about them. This is how – on social demand – he made Man of Iron, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes.

The last but one film is called Wałęsa. Man of Hope, third part of “workers trilogy”, the most important and involved in his film career. The last is Afterimage (2016).

Over half a century, a whole epoch has passed since the time of the slightly awkward Radom watercolors and sketches, the paintings from the abandoned Kraków Academy, from his first etudes made at the film school, and the semi-socialist-realistic A Generation. He has made several dozen films, often outstanding ones, including some masterpieces, seldom revolutionary in formal terms.

Perhaps it has never interested Wajda.

He has always been first of all a ‘storyteller’ and he mastered this art to perfection. No wonder then that it is this universalism of his films that was highlighted in the speech of Robert Rehme, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which awarded the director

9

an honorary Oscar for a lifetime achievements in 2000: “Film lovers regard him as one of the most outstanding directors in the history of motion pictures, an artist who has repeatedly brought the world’s attention to European cinema. By showing both the loftiest heights and the darkest depths of the European soul, he has inspired all of us to re-examine the strength of our common humanity.

Wajda belongs to Poland, but his films are part of the cultural treasure of mankind”3.

scope and do it in Poland, probably in Radom or Warsaw, which at the end failed to happen.

As well as the film festival and an exhibition in Hong Kong Film Archive. And many many other events that were to take place in the future…

We are proud that we were able to complete such extensive project in Hong Kong, as it includes 21 movies made by Andrzej Wajda, multimedia exhibition, master courses and a seminar. It was possible with the help and support from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the cooperation with the General Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Hong Kong as well as active collaboration with our Chinese partners, first and foremost, Film Programmes Office, the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Hong Kong Culture Center and HK Film Archive.

Post scriptum Andrzej Wajda died at the age of 90 in Warsaw, shortly after coming back from the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, where his last movie Afterimage was presented.

The audience received it with a great deal of enthusiasm giving him a standing ovation. In addition to that, the Festival has also hosted an opening of a big exhibition featuring photographs prepared by the National Film Archive, screenings of renovated movies, promotion of a box featuring 25 movies shot by the Master and an official celebration gala of the Artist. It was a beautiful culmination of his 90th birthday.

I remember that when back in 2015 we talked on the phone, Andrzej Wajda had placed a special value on various events that were to mark his 90th birthday. He really liked the album that we published as part of the film review and exhibition in the National Film Archive in Athens in 20124 as well as a smaller catalogue of a big exhibition in Žilinskas Gallery, a branch of the Čiurlionis National Museum in Kaunas.5 We showed in Lithuania a vast selection of his paintings that came from the collection of Jacek Malczewski Museum in Radom.

On the occasion of Andrzej Wajda’s 90th birthday, we planned to repeat the Kaunas exhibition, but to expand its 3 4 5

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Robert Rehme, statement as quoted in: www.andrzejwajda.pl.

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, Krzysztof Stanisławski, Andrzej Wajda, Warszawa 2012, ISBN 978-83-62962-09-9.

Krzysztof Stanisławski, Andrzej Wajda. Kaunas – Vilnius 2014, Kaunas 2015, ISBN 978-9955-674-34-4.

Let me say that again that we are very proud to celebrate Andrzej Wajda’s 90th birthday, which has so unexpectedly and unfortunately turned out to be also connected with his departure, here, in Hong Kong, in the Far East that has always been so close to Andrzej Wajda.

Krzysztof Stanisławski

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World according to Wajda

Tadeusz Sobolewski “GAZETA WYBORCZA”, 04.03.2011

“His biggest movies help to better understand the mind of the Polish intellectual. Poland is the main theme of his movies. What kind of Poland? – asks Tadeusz Sobolewski on the eve of Andrzej Wajda’s 85 th birthday.

In his “Histoire(s) du cinéma,” Jean-Luc Godard lists Andrzej Wajda’s Kanal, a movie made in 1956, as an example of the “national Cinema” – i.e. a cinema, in which the nation “observes itself.”

comparison: because Andrzej Wajda was the last Polish romantic who at the same time remained in disagreement with Poland.

When he was graduating from the film school in the mid1950s, Polish cinema was treated as the second rate art; it was anachronous, “pre-war-like” and led by artists who represented the previous era. Wajda came with the whole new generation who had some knowledge about the global movie industry, knew what is Italian neorealism, how movies are shot in France and in the US. Nonetheless, this change was not just aesthetic, debuting directors wished to make contemporary movies that told a story about their generation. Including the people who did not live to see the peace. As Wajda once said during an interview: they died and we were obliged to ask whether their death made sense, whether they had to die the way they did?“

“How Andrzej Wajda told us about Poland. The last Romantic” “Polityka”, weekly, 2006, No 42, cover

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Andrzej Wajda was the hope for those Russians who kept their consciousness

Aleksandr Sokurow “GAZETA WYBORCZA”, 12.10.2016

THE LAST ROMANTIC

Zdzisław Pietrasik ”Polityka”, 11 October 2016

“He was a great artist, appreciated by the world, the winner of Oscar award and all most important awards for directors. There is no book about the history of cinema that would fail to present a frame of Ashes and Diamonds or Kanal. We owe him the fact that the term “Polish school” became part of the cinema vocabulary studied today by those who learn about directing. He told the world about the Polish fate.

Remembering the Master on TV, Daniel Olbrychski said that he joined the best writers and poets – such as Norwid and Żeromski, among others. And this is the correct

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“

“- I feel that somebody very important and close to me has left, as close and the closest relative – says Aleksandr Sokurow, an outstanding Russian filmmaker (Mournful Unconcern, Russian Ark, Faust).

It’s hard to talk about a man when just a moment ago a door closed after him...

Whenever I came to Poland, I always saw Andrzej Wajda.

He and his charming wife, Krystyna, have always invited me to their home, where I felt I was with very close people.

When the situation was particularly hard for me, when I nearly lost my vision, he gave me an award in Berlin. He called me in the hospital. We talked sincerely and for as long as I had strength. And right after our conversation, I felt better. It helped.

He was one of the three teachers I had. I love his The Maids of Wilko, his other movies. Now, in our radio, Moscow Echo, I keep hearing that “a great filmmaker” has died.

I disagree. Wajda was much more – he was one of the fathers of the contemporary Old World’s cinema. He developed the greatness and importance of this art.

Why? Some may say that it’s talent, genius. But for me, his importance involved also his moral qualifications. He was a very noble man. It’s rare today. It was very visible in his attitude towards Russia and Russians. He had a stern perception of us, yet very honest and kind. Still, during

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last people who keep fighting for the European culture, faithful to your vision until death. I am proud to be part of this fight and I am sending my warmest regards”7.

“

Martin Scorsese

Ingmar Bergman “Your art would not be possible without love. In every take, every scene your art brims with love to what you do, to your country and to people. You are one of the 6

Martin Scorsese, Andrzej Wajda, „Guardian”, 09. 2015.

Father Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski “Wajda loved Poland and every mature love hurts. “Between the idea and the reality, there is a shadow”. As Norwid has once said, Poles are great men and yet the man in Poles is small. It hurts because of flaws, puissance and a fierce smallness of human nature, but also because

the USSR period, he was the hope for those Russians who kept their consciousness and didn’t forget how to think independently. He was much appreciated and respected in our country.

Today, I feel that somebody very important and close to me has left, as close and the closest relative.”

“But all Wajda’s films made an impression on me. Whenever I had the opportunity to see one I was impressed by his mastery. Among the three [war movies], it was Ashes and Diamonds that had the greatest impact on me.

It announced the arrival of a master film-maker. It was one of the last pictures that gave us a real testament of the impact of the war, on Wajda and on his nation. It introduced us to a whole school of film-making, related to what was coming out of the Soviet Union but quite distinct. And it gave us Zbigniew Cybulski, a great actor and a new generational icon”6.

A fragment of the sermon delivered during the funeral in Kraków

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of the historical treason of the Yalta dictate that enslaved Poland. Just as the grating in the ending sequence of Kanal. (…) Andrzej Wajda was the only one to tell a story about a man. He told Poles about Poland. And he told the world about Poland, and he did it making the highest quality art.

Just as every great man, he was not afraid of people, on the contrary, he needed them. He gave up painting because this art was for loners, although he kept drawing and his friend was the great loner from Maison-Laffitte – Józef Czapski”8.

Henryk Woźniakowski “Andrzej Wajda’s name is the landmark of our times.

People will say that we lived in Wajda’s time. If we failed to have him, our individual lives would be grey and our collective life a chaos. Wajda belongs to a generation that experienced the cruelty of war and was shaped by it. It is a generation of people who are tireless and never rest on their laurels. He showed his courage by taking on the most important subjects at the time. Andrzej, finish all your uncompleted projects for the audience in heaven”9.

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Ingmar Bergman, a letter to Andrzej Wajda sent on the occasion of awarding Mr. Wajda with the European Cinema Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990.

Father Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski, a fragment of the sermon, as quoted

in: Monika Waluś, Małgorzata Skowróńska, Paweł Figurski, Andrzeja

Wajdę żegnały w Krakowie tłumy ludzi, „Gazeta Wyrorcza”, 20.10.2016.

9 Ibidem.

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Shooting “Speed”: Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Lipman, 1959

POWIDOKI

AFTERIMAGE Poland 2016

Cameramen assistants: Zbigniew Gustowski,

Feature film

Ignacy Myśliwiec, Katarzyna Świetlikowska, Krzysztof Włodarczyk, Jakub Skrzypczyński, Maciej Edelman,

Screenplay: Andrzej Mularczyk

Michał Frączek;

(based on idea of ANDRZEJ WAJDA);

Still photographer: Anna Włoch;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Music performance: Narodowa Orkiestra Symfoniczna

Cinematographer: Paweł Edelman;

Polskiego Radia (Katowice), Piotr Sałajczyk (piano),

Music: Andrzej Panufnik: “Landscape” (1968), “Autumn

Łukasz Frant (cello), conductor: Piotr Komorowski;

Music” (1971), “Piano Concerto” (1964), “Dreamscape” (1991);

Set designers II: Wojciech Czapla, Anna Anosowicz,

Editing: Grażyna Gradoń;

Anna Marzęda;

Sound Department: Maria Chilarecka, Kacper Habisiak,

Asistant: Magdalena Oczkowska;

Marcin Kasiński; Set design: Marek Warszewski;

Production company: Akson Studio, Warsaw;

Lighting design: Cezary Lisowski, Tomasz Frankowski,

Coproduction: Polish TV (TVP), EC1 – City of Culture

Adam Karczewski, Lechosław Kolendowicz, Adam Napora;

(Łódź), National Audiovisual Institute (NiNA),

Costume design: Katarzyna Lewińska, Ewa Różewska,

Tumult Foundation;

Małgorzata Karpiuk;

Cofinancing: Polish Film Institute; Producer: Michał Kwieciński;

Cast: Bogusław Linda (Władysław Strzemiński),

Executive producer: Paweł Gabryś, Małgorzata Fogel-Gabryś;

Zofia Wichłacz (Hania), Bronisława Zamachowska

Producing cooperation: Ewa Brodzka;

(Nika Strzemińska), Krzysztof Pieczyński (Julian Przyboś),

Distribution: Akson Distribution, Warsaw,

Mariusz Bonaszewski (Madejski), Szymon Bobrowski

www.filmpolski.pl; aksonstudio.pl;

(Włodzimierz Sokorski), Aleksander Fabisiak

Filming locations: Łódź, Warsaw, till 30.11.2015;

(Museum’s director Rajner), Paulina Gałązka (Wasińska), Irena Melcer (Jadzia), Tomasz Chodorowski (Tomek),

Color: color (Panavision);

Filip Gurłacz (Konrad), Mateusz Rusin (Stefan),

Running time: 98 min;

Mateusz Rzeźniczak (Mateusz), Tomasz Włosok (Roman),

Format: 35 mm; DCP;

Adrian Zaremba (Wojtek), Izabela Dąbrowska

Aspect ratio: 2,33 : 1:

(Artists Association’s oficer), Dominika Kluźniak (teacher),

Sound format: stereo Dolby;

Dorota Kolak (HR director); First screenings: festival premiere – Toronto International Script doctoring: Paweł Mossakowski,

Film Festival (September 2016); Polish festival premiere:

Władysław Pasikowski;

Gdynia Polish Film Festival (September 2016), European

Direction cooperation: Marek Brodzki;

festival premiere – Rome Film Festival (October 2016),

Assistant directors: Agnieszka Kral, Marta Borys,

official theatrical premiere: 13.01.2017;

Elżbieta Benkowska, Nastazja Gonera, Michał Edelman, Alexander Denysenko;

Awards and distinctions: Special Jury Award, Gdynia

Cameramen: Tomasz Kuzio, Tomasz Gajewski

Polish Film Festival, 2016; Oscar 2016 nomination.

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When Emil Nolde, one of the most important German expressionists was sentenced and as a result banned to paint in his original style, every day he was checked on in his studio in Seebüll in Szlezwik-Holstein by a policeman who made sure that the painter respects the ban. With time, the policeman and his son, who was supposed to assist him in his work, turned out to be understanding and sometimes they turned a blind eye (especially the boy) to the fact that Nolde painted new expressionist watercolours as sketches to his future oil paintings. The worst totalitarian regime, personified by a benevolent son of the policeman, turned out to be quite benign. There was also a great novel written about it by Siegfired Lenz1 and a wonderful German movie was made, at the time it impressed me quite a lot, because it exposed everyday life in the oppressive totalitarian system in artistic circles.2 Although the Nazis removed the works of the “degenerated art” from the national collections in order to ridicule them during propaganda sponsored exhibitions, “Entartete Kunst,” opened by Hitler and Goebbels, at the same time Goering used some helpful merchants to sell the most interesting works on auctions in Switzerland, because the Third Reich constantly needed hard money. With regard to Nolde, they confiscated over 1000 of his works, some were sold on auctions, and some got destroyed. The whole story is more juicy and spicy because Emil Nolde was a Nazi and a member of the Danish NSDAP, therefore, he took this accusation of “degeneration” as particularly unfair…

Jewish collectors in Nazi Germany were robbed in the light of law, their works were misappropriated by party bosses or, with the “degenerated works,” they were sold in Switzerland. The Nazis fought first and foremost with works and styles, while with the artists, they preferred to “convince” them about the new aesthetic doctrine of the 3rd Reich than exterminate them, although there were quite a lot of such cases as well – however not among the most outstanding artists. Nonetheless, most of the non-humble ones: painters, writers and movie makers were allowed to emigrate to France and UK, and later to the US. 1

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2

Siegfried Lenz, German Lesson, original title: Deutschstunde

(published in 1968), Czytelnik, Warszawa 1971. In Lenz’s novel, the painter is called Max Ludwig Nansen.

Deutschstunde, directed by Peter Beauvais, West Germany 1971.

Authors of the aesthetic doctrine in the communist era of Lenin, and later Stalin, i.e. the so called socialist realism, felt the same sort of disgust with the “degenerated art” and used all available propaganda resources to implement their ideas in life. Threatening and offering profits, they implemented “cultural revolution.” Unlike Germans, they cared not only about works or theories, but about people. And woe betide anyone who failed to believe in the “convictions,” if he/she failed to be broken or scared within time given.

Andrzej Wajda’s last movie Afterimage features a story about one of those artists, an artist who was destroyed by the communist system in Poland right when the implementation of the rules of socialist realism in the culture started, i.e. 1949-52. It is a story of the last years of the artist, Władysław Strzemiński.

This intimate, quiet, modest, personal and grey story was filmed and played very guardedly, minimalistically even, and thus it feels so important and shocking. It’s a true movie dissertation, a trial against the totalitarian system, so efficient, ruthless, murderous, and yet unable to break the artist, who may have been physically weak, but kept a great spirit, who even when faced with direct threat to his, his daughter and students’ life, will not surrender. As the last “cursed,” who nevertheless does not fight for any political freedom for his country, he fights for personal freedom, for the freedom of art, in which he believes and which he develops.

You may say: well, it’s just a factor contributing to the history, a couple of less known facts about the avant-garde artist’s life, an artist who was crippled, lost his job and died of consumption. But not in Wajda’s work. In this movie, the artist undertakes only the subjects that are not facts contributing to but more general comments about our reality – the past and the current.

Let us move back to Strzemiński. Who was this professor of the history of art, not painting, who worked in, despite everything – still provincial, College of Fine Arts in Łódź?

Which by the way is bearing his name today.

Was he, as one of the characters in the movie, the director of the Museum of Art, says: “the most important Polish contemporary artist?”3 Creator of the second European, as he himself says,4 museum of modern art, hence his merits for Łódź are so huge that he “will never be pushed away?” 5 In order to answer those questions, we need to move back in time. Back to the era that started right after the October Revolution and the introduction of new art in Russia, when, wishing to believe in a historic chance to build New Art, the following artists returned from the West: Belarusian Jew who came back from Paris, Marc Chagall, Moscow lawyer from Munich, Wassily Kandinsky 3

4

and a Pole, who never left Russia, Kazimierz Malewicz.

They all jumped into working on the new aesthetics and developing modern university structure (e.g. Malewicz’s Unawis in Vitebsk), exhibiting their works in Russia and taking part in designing: interiors, posters, fabrics and architecture. Young Strzemiński was one of those enthusiasts, a student and an assistant of Malewicz, who he believed was his only master, he was also a companion of Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky as well as Kandinsky and Chagall. As Malewicz’s “ambassador,” he headed the regional branch of Unawis in Smoleńsk. He was co-developing revolutionary art, one of those European avant-garde artists who supported the October. Only that the October does not want their support or any activities, because the doctrine that is in force in the USRR will not have anything to do with any constructivism, suprematism or any sort of formalism, it wants simple socialist realism that is

Subtitles.

In fact it was the second such collection in the world as it followed New

York’s MoMA opened on 7 November 1929. The first exhibition in Łódź’s Museum of Art was opened on 13 April 1930.

5 Subtitles.

23

easy to understand for the proletariat as well as for Lenin or Stalin. Chagall and Kandinsky came back (luckily) to Germany and Paris and Malewicz, despite his attempts to start a career in Germany and obtaining Polish citizenship (he was helped by Strzemiński), remained in the USSR (an unfortunate decision for his art and for himself).6 Together with a Russian woman with German roots, Katarzyna Kobro, who first took care of him in the army hospital, where he was taken as a young sapper in the Russian army after a tragic accident in 1916, which cost his leg and arm as well as vision in one eye, and whom he met again in Moscow, where they both studied art and whom he married, Władysław Strzemiński came back to the independent Poland via Vilnius.

In Poland, him and his wife took part in creating new, avant-garde art and accompanied by poets Julian Przyboś and Jan Brzękowski, the futurists, they launched the groups: Blok, Preasens and a.r. (“avant-garde real” or “artists of revolution”), initiating international art collection, which was provided to the Museum of Art that was being opened at the time in Łódź (first as Julian and Kazimierz Bartoszewicz Museum of the History and Art).

The answer to the above-posted question is of course positive, but needs to be complemented: Strzemiński was not only one of the most important Polish avant-garde artists, he belonged to the group of very important artists of the 20th century European art. And it’s not the same.

In the 1920s and 1930s, when both art and artists moved quite freely around Europe, personal relations mattered most as they helped to organise exhibitions, exchange and obtain works for a collection that will soon become the Museum of Art’s initial collection. Many of those 6

Malewicz was a member of the Russian communist party since the Oc-

tober Revolution. Creating Unawis, i.e. the group of New Art Promoters, he took part in redesigning Russian art and education under the auspices of new ideology. New authorities have alternately praised and persecuted

him. In 1929, with the help of Anatoliy Lunaczarsky’s support, he became folk commissioner, i.e. minister of visual arts of the Russian FSRR. A year

later, the NKWD arrested him as the alleged German spy. Upon leaving

24

the prison, he again was praised: in 1932, he became the director of the Experimental Laboratory of the Russian Museum in Leningrad.

relationships survived the war, they were alive until 1949, until the unexpected decree, or actually a lecture given by Włodzimierz Sokorski, People’s Army officer (at the end of his life he managed to become general of the branch), writer and deputy minister of culture, who undertook the responsibility of implementing the infamous task of introducing socialist realism across art and culture in Poland. When Julian Przyboś (a great role of Krzysztof Pieczyński), a poet who was appreciated by communists, of course not because of his avant-garde poems (which he wrote and put on ice) and Polish ambassador in Switzerland, stood up for his friend, when facing Sokorski, who was already minister of culture, his argument was that Strzemiński was Malewicz’s assistant, collaborated with Chagall, together they were developing new art in the USRR and yet in response he heard that those merits are no longer applicable, those artists are renegades who are now persecuted and the only right poetics is the socialist realism. When the minister and the poet leave the minister’s office after this uplifting discussion, Sokorski (played wonderfully by Szymon Bobrowski) approaches the artist, who waits at the corridor and says: “And you, Mr. Strzemiński, should be pushed under the tram.”7 So at the end of the day, the new authorities thought he could “have been pushed away all right.” Oh yes, new authorities were definitely into extermination of cumbersome artists, not just their works or theories…

Co-creator of a.r. collection, Strzemiński gave the Museum of Art dozens of his works, some of them were exhibited in the Neoplastic Room he designed – all other works were presented around this centre. When, following the order of the authorities, the room was dismantled, those paintings also disappeared from the walls ending up in the underground storage, supposedly to make them safe. “Safe but not exhibited”8 – as the teenage Nika Strzemińska (a great role of the young Bronisława Zamachowska) said pragmatically when she and her father brought the last paintings, again as gifts, on the sled. Seriously ill from 7 8

Subtitles.

Ibidem.

Neoplastic Room (Sala Neoplastyczna), aka: De Stijl Room, designed by Władysław Strzemiński, Museum of Art, Łódź, actual view

tuberculosis, shortly before his death, the artist who was once recognised by the director of the museum as “the most important contemporary artist,” the director who is now greedily accepting the gifts, in response to the artist’s plea about any sort of job, the director says twice: “I am unable to help you!”9 And though it is said by the fan of his art, yet an official, who follows, first and foremost, guidelines from the top (but also has in mind the interest of the facility he manages), his words have the same effect as the minister’s story about the tram.

Strzemiński was dying of tuberculosis, but also of hunger. Friend of Malewicz and Chagall, who exchanged pictures with Europe’s key avant-garde artists: one of the coryphaei of Dadaism Jean Hans Arp and his wife Sophie Tauber-Arp, the founder of De Stijl Theo van Doesburg, cubists: Fernand Léger and Louise Marcoussis, futurist Enrico Prampolini and surrealist Max Ernst. Including Strzemiński’s paintings and the sculptures by Katarzyna Kobro, works of the above artists make a priceless national collection, until today unparalleled in Poland and one of the best in Europe.

To make ends meet, he drew Stalin, Marks or Bierut on posters and huge banners, designed the interiors of cafes and shop windows. But unrelenting fate hovered above him. First, he was expelled from the university, and then 9

also from the propaganda painting shop: the Association of Polish Artists, whose Łódź division he had once founded.

The latter act made it impossible for him to legally work, or even buy paints. It was total attack, aiming to exterminate, fully effective, inhumane, and fully sanctioned by the communist law.

The last years of Władysław Strzemiński’s life, and last years of the life of his wife Katarzyna Kobro, who died of cancer several months before his death, are a depiction of times most tragic for the Polish culture, comparable to the times of Hitler’s occupation, when Germans put Polish artists in concentration camps for being Poles, as they did with e.g. Xavery Dunikowski, or shot them for being Jews, as they did with Jonasz Stern, who managed to escape from a hole in the ground full of dead bodies. I would not dare compare or rate which totalitarian system was more dangerous, let me just say that during the war Germans exterminated nations, and the fact that one in the mass was an artist was not of importance. This applies even to the death of Bruno Schulz, who died in Drohobycz, whose artistic talents made him popular with a Gestapo officer, Landau - who used him to decorate his villa. Schulz was shot dead not because the murderer didn’t like his works, but he simply had an argument with Landau, so the latter took offence.

Strzemiński’s death 7 years after the war, a death that

Ibidem.

25

was in a way announced by an omnipotent communist minister, a death caused by systematic, systemic, official methods of persecuting the artist and cutting him off from all sources of income, might be perceived as even more devastating than war tragedies because it happened in peace, in normal conditions, where of course meat was rationed and shortages of everything were common, but most people lived quite normally.

The painter could also have lived normally, or even quite well, the offer was extended to him by an officer of the communist security service. But he could not. And it wasn’t just about remaining loyal to his theory of art, faithful to the ideals of the avant-garde which stood in opposition to the socialist doctrine. It was about being honest with oneself. About dignity.

To a director who always held art dear, and who was exceptionally sensitive to the symptoms of politics’ influence on art, the case of Władysław Strzemiński had long seemed worthy of presenting in a film: 20 years.

Initially, Wajda was planning to make a film about the Strzemiński - Kobro relationship, particularly its personal aspect, but he did not have a relevant screenplay. Besides, focussing on one theme only enabled him to concentrate on the toxic relation between power and art. This theme is predominant in the film.

“When I understood – told Andrzej Wajda – that there was no Dostoyevsky to write the screenplay (about the Strzemiński – Kobro relationship, KS), I decided to make a film about Strzemiński – artist who has to cope with the communist system, who the system step by step destroys, until his death in 1952. He was persecuted because he didn’t accept socialist realism, and his history of art lectures, which bore fruit in the form of “Theory of Vision” were in total opposition to the doctrine obligatory in the soviet and Polish art of the time. (…) Strzemiński lectured in my school (Film School), but it had been a year

before. However, I visited the Museum of Art with the Neoplastic Room, which was designed by him and used for presentations of outstanding works from the collection of the a.r. group, plus I was friends with his students. I still remember how they edited “Theory of Vision” and stuck reproduction of works next to type-written texts.”10 A film about the complicated relationship of Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro would certainly be very interesting. The two met in a military hospital, studied in post-revolutionary Moscow, and spent the years between the wars jointly working for the Polish avant-garde that was coming to life in Łódź, then, the extremely hard times of war followed, and the most tragic post-war period, ending with the spouses’ separation, court battles for the rights to the child, and finally their death, within a short period. From romantic love, through the fight for revolution in art, to bitter hatred. Maybe a film like that will once be made…

In Afterimage, Kobro is not present for a single moment, though we see her funeral. The only – but so very important – link between the spouses is Nika, who lives with her mother and after the mother’s death, evicted from the flat, moves in with the father for some time, to finally move again, to an orphanage (the official version is it’s closer to school, the unofficial – she doesn’t want to disturb his contacts with students, both male and female). The girl tries to take care of the father, but at the same time wants to be a good student and participates in the communist youth movement. She wants to find her place in the new reality, having learnt from her parents’ example that all rebellion brings is disaster and death.

Andrzej Wajda developed this character, and the young actress who plays Nika makes her visible from the film’s beginning to its end.

In the mid-eighties, Madam Nika, who had become 10

28

Jędrzej Słodkowski, Wajda is shooting “Afterimage” about Strzemiński.

Starring Linda, Wichłacz and the young Zamachowska. Report from the set, gazeta.pl, 26.10.2015.

a renowned psychiatrist and anthropologist,11 came to the office of “Sztuka” bi-monthly, where I then worked.

She brought a text remembering her parents, and a lot of unique photographs. After studying the materials, we were astonished, and decided to print them all, in parts.

“Sztuka” presented Strzemińska’s memories to the most important target: those who love contemporary art, often students and young artists, who in this way first learnt about the difficult life of Madam Nika’s parents. It was a true publishing hit, we were proud and honoured, as publishers of “Sztuka” that these memoirs were published in our magazine. Many people still remember the emotions that accompanied the publication of every new issue and new chapter of Madam Nika’s text.

Naturally, it was just one of the forms of popularising the parents’ works that the daughter employed. It can safely be said that she devoted her life to this activity, crowned with the exhibition organized on the 100th anniversary of 11

Jakobina Ingeborga (Nika) Strzemińska (1936-2001) graduated from the

Medical University in Łódź and the University of Łódź. She was a doctor in the Institute of Psychiatrics and Neurology in Warsaw, where she did her doctoral studies. She spent 17 years on Polish commercial ships

Władysław Strzemiński’s birthday in the Museum of Art in 1993, and later foundation of Katarzyna Kobro Award “honouring a progressive and searching attitude, artist open to the exchange of thoughts, generous initiator of cultural events.” 12 But let us come back to the film of Wajda, who proposed the idea for a screenplay – which was finally written by Andrzej Mularczyk. The screenplay is largely based on the memories of Nika Strzemińska so developing her character seemed an obvious choice: she is a fictitious character in the film, but also an authentic historical figure, witness of the last years of her mother and father, who provided a direct, eye-witness testimony, so painful for a young girl, which was then systematized, ordered and published. It may be that is what the amazing strength of Afterimage is based on: direct truth and personal account.

The life of this film will not be easy – as wasn’t the life of 12

The Katarzyna Kobro Award, Culture.pl, 10.08.2008. The initiator of the award was Józef Robakowski, initially with Madam Nika and Georg Kobro.

working as ship’s doctor. She published numerous scientific papers, books about her parents, novels and reports with maritime themes.

29

ners.”14 I cannot agree with my colleague’s words – this is an extensive work, considerably beyond the present, or allusions to the current situation in the country.

Surprising were the words of another film critic and conferencier, Tomasz Raczek, who, when talking on the radio, called Afterimage a failed film with a poor, incomprehensible screenplay, excessively discussing the theory of painting: “I have the impression Afterimage’ problem is its screenplay. The dialogues are ‘ hard to speak’, so to put it. There are lots of Strzemiński’s theoretical texts, and painters’ artistic manifestoes are incomprehensible and obscure by nature.”15

Nika, the daughter (which is prophesized by her father in one of the scenes). Because this is a film for a sophisticated viewer, someone who knows something about eastern European constructivist avant-garde, a praiseworthy card also in the Polish art, which was physically destroyed by communism and socialist realism, the way Strzemiński was physically destroyed – artist, who was also forgotten.

And basically, still is.

After the world premiere of Afterimage on the Toronto International Film Festival, in the Masters section, the industry press: American and Canadian, welcomed the film with enthusiasm, as did the festival’s director, Piers Handling, who said: “This is his strongest, angriest film in years.”13 European premiere took place on the festival in Rome, which Wajda was to attend… The audience were enthusiastic, a standing ovation lasted several minutes. Also the Italian press were generous with words of praise for the film, especially Bogusław Linda. Premieres in other countries are expected.

Meanwhile, the film premiered in Poland, on the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, where the Polish filmmakers celebrated the director’s 90 birthday, with him present.

Afterimage received a standing ovation, although the press remained considerably reserved. Poland’s best film critic, Tadeusz Sobolewski, barely mentioned Wajda’s film in his report from the festival, demonstrating uncharacteristic reserve (usually, he discusses films that moved him at length and with enthusiasm, and does not mention others): Afterimage, a movie about the last years of Władysław Strzemiński, avant-garde painter destroyed by Stalinist authorities. This is a story about remaining loyal to oneself. One has the impression it was created for a couple of expressive images that warn against something that existed in the past but may return under different ban-

13

30

Piers Handling, Director of the Toronto Festival, quoted after

Andrzej Wajda’s Afterimage enthusiastically received in Toronto,

“

I fear that columnists of this level, both in Poland and other parts of the world, will find this film uninteresting, that they will keep it down. But this only shows the columnists in a bad light. It also means the film is serious. True, it is not for all: too uncompromising, too gloomy. Serious, it does not simplify artistic matters, but does not demonize them either. It is not a lecture on unism and “Theory of Vision” because it is not a film about art. It is a film about a man, though it so happened he was unism impersonated, as theoretician and practitioner, to the end. Out of respect for Strzemiński, but also in order to make the subject credible, to make the viewer at least roughly understand what the hero is suffering so much for, Wajda had to show a couple of pictures, quote fragments of lectures, and the book. If today someone finds this boring or obscure, as it was obscure and senseless to Włodzimierz Sokorski, it is a shame. And it’s sad.

Onet.pl

Andrzej Wajda “In my film, I ponder what happens when the state starts to rule art and require the artist to obey. It is a film about the life of an artist who has something to say in art, and will not relent”16 14

Tadeusz Sobolewski, A Summary of the Gdynia Festival. Wise Polish

15

Torbicka liked Wajda’s “Afterimage” Raczek did not. They could have had a big

Onet.pl, 15.09.2016.

16

Cinema, “Gazeta Wyborcza,” 26.09.2016.

fight, but… If all arguments looked like this, the country would be different, TOKFM.pl.

Onet studio from Gdynia Film Festival – part 4, Onet.pl, 23.09.2016.

“

ordered from Switzerland Rimifon and PAS. Only temporary improvement was achieved.

Nika Strzemińska Warsaw, 22 June, 1993

In the hospital my father was visited by many of his former students. They used to bring him fruit, food, paper, pencils.

Discussions about art were held at his bed. (…). He was also busy writing a study “Theory of Vision”, a book in which he collected his lectures delivered at School. The book was left unfinished. (…)

„Early in January a conference was held in the Łódź School with the participation of party leaders, including Włodzimierz Sokorski. The minister attacked my father and informed him that he would be dismissed. Soon the School office received a letter from the minister of culture and art, dated 19 January 1950, which said: “I hereby require to dismiss at once citizen Prof. Strzemiński Władysław (...).

Considering the good of the service I order that Prof. (...) be granted immediate leave of absence.”

When this paper - so crucial to my father’s life - reached the school, he lost overnight his job and means of sustenance. Everything was done according to law. He felt like a lepper, who in great hurry is isolated from other people, so as not to infect others. Nearly at the same time he was dismissed from the Artists’ Union, and the doors of the School closed behind him for ever.

After he was sacked from the School, father still lived in a rented room which was equipped only with the most necessary things and devices. He was lucky to get a few hours of teaching in the Printers School. Till September 1950 he designed advertisements and posters for the Public Food Cooperative, and then arranged shop displays.

It was difficult for him to move there with his crutches, and so he jumped on one leg. I remember how much I was shocked by the behaviour of the juvenile onlookers, standing on the other side of the shop-window. They all laughed, making indecent gestures and calling out loud: “Lame-leg!.” (…).

In October 1951 father on his way back from work fainted in the street. He was taken to the hospital. It was discovered that he suffered from an advanced tuberculosis. There were no proper medicaments in Poland. Julian Przyboś

“

Father died on 26 December 1952. He was buried on the New Year’s Eve in the morning, on the Old Cemetery at Ogrodowa Street in Łódź. I was a teenager then, a ward in an orphanage. My mother had been dead for nearly two years. She died on 21 February 1951 of cancer in the House for terminally ill. In the same time after the decision of the Ministry of Culture, father’s paintings and mother’s sculptures, as well as all abstract works by other artists, were removed from the exhibition halls to the cellars of the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. It seemed that this censured movement would be forever forgotten”17.

Culture.pl

Magdalena Wróblewska “An afterimage is an internal image, it appears in one’s vision after exposure to the object that reflects light or when looking at the very source of light. Strzemiński highlighted in his concept the role of the eye movement in this phenomenon and an image that is recorded in the form of a trembling line drawn by the moving gaze. This trembling has purely physical ground and is a result of muscles contracting and relaxing. In a sense, the attempt to record an afterimage is impossible, doomed to fail. An attempt to reconstruct the movement on canvass makes Strzemiński’s painting in practice a purely vision-related phenomenon, optical phenomenon in a double sense: as an object to be looked at only but also as an object that presents the process of looking.

17

Nika Strzemińska, Władysław Strzemiński 1893-1952. Man and Artist, Museum of Art, Łódź 1993.

31

Afterimage introduce new aspects in the problem of connections between time and painting. Because the very physiology says that retina keeps the image longer than the duration of the view thereof. Retina is therefore sort of “memorizing” the view, although the recipient has already looked away. This fact has consequences for the process of seeing, because the eye keeps on overlapping and mixing images. In a glimpse, images that continue to remain on the retina though they are no longer subject of perception are combined with those that are seen in real time. Hence, we can safely say that image overlapping

“

“

“Variety”

Dennis Harvey 21.09.2016

32

18

19

Stephen Dalton „Polish maestro Andrzej Wajda pays tribute to an avant -garde artist who fell foul of stifling Stalinist rules (…).

The veteran Jedi master of Polish cinema, Andrzej Wajda revisits another bitter episode from his homeland’s brutal history in Afterimage. His subject this time is the avant-garde painter Władysław Strzemiński, a martyr to philistine Stalinist orthodoxy, but there may also be a hint of personal identification in this love letter from one dissident Polish artist to another. (…)

results in subjective visions and impressions of objects – objective image cannot be reconstructed.”18

„Yet Strzemiński is not too illustrious to be spared the petty-minded, punitive policy changes that rain down from on high in this late Stalinist period. He refuses to renounce abstract imagery despite the new official demand for only “Socialist Realist” art that “enthuses” the masses — a wellspring for so much propagandic Soviet kitsch, in every medium. The result: He finds himself first stripped of the position at the school he’d co-founded. Then his works (including the famous, futurist Neoplastic Room at the Łódź Museum of Art) are withdrawn from public view or destroyed outright. Finally the bureaucracy takes away even his ability to make a living as a sign-painter, buy art supplies, and collect food stamps. He’s virtually driven into a pauper’s grave by the government that had lauded him. (…) All too faithfully reproducing the dull gray palette of a repressive era — the artist’s penchant for vivid color barely factors — Afterimage is an accomplished dirge whose downfall chronicle marches with unvarying step toward death. While this grim story is one worth telling, it’s a pity that in relating the bum’s-rush Strzemiński got in later life, Wajda couldn’t have communicated more of what sustains his legacy as a great artist and innowator”19.

“The Hollywood Reporter”

“

In its favor, Afterimage is as elegantly assembled as all of Wajda’s work: beautifully lit, tastefully art-directed, and handsomely shot by Paweł Edelman, who was Oscar-nominated for his work on Polański The Pianist. Ablaze with abstract expressionist designs, the credits sequences are witty and colorful. The decision to use music by the late Andrzej Panufnik is also inspired. Panufnik was a modernist composer who defected from Poland to escape the same stifling climate of Socialist Realism that ruined Strzemiński”20.

“CineVue”

Ben Nicholson „After a stylish title card, the whole screen turns a deep red in a playful early scene that sees Strzemiński’s (Bogusław Linda) Łódź apartment window covered by an enormous Stalin banner. He puckishly rips a hole in it - to let in some natural light for his work - but his impertinence goes unappreciated by the Minister of Culture. From that point on the work settles into a mostly solemn tone accompanied by handsome visuals and mostly broad brush strokes. The government first try order Strzemiński to fall in line, then they more and more aggressively interfere with his life in retaliation for his obstinance. He remains adored by his pupils - even after being relieved of his lectureship - and venerated by contemporaries, but it becomes clear that this more due to his mind than his manner”21.

Magdalena Wróblewska, Władysław Strzemiński, Sun Afterimage,

20

Stephen Dalton, Afterimage (Powidoki): Film Review | TIFF 2016, „

Dennis Harvey, Film Review: Afterimage, „Variety”, 21.09.2016.

21

Ben Nicholson, Toronto 2016: Afterimage review, www.cine-vue.

Culture.pl, December 2010.

The Hollywood Reporter,” 11.09.2016. com/2016/09/.

“

“Polityka”

Zdzisław Pietrasik “It is one of Wajda most personal movies. Showing a lost battle of the avant-garde artist against oppressive communist authorities, he wanted to tell the story of the post-war generation of artists. Also about himself, although he won the battle. It is also the answer given to all of us who write today how wonderful it was to be an artist in the People’s Republic of Poland.

The very title of the movie has a new meaning. As you know, this term was taken from the “Theory of Vision”

by Strzemiński, in which the painter was convincing us, referring to the perception-like qualities of the vision, when we look at a new image, for a short period of time, we can still see the previous one. This is the case with movies that Andrzej Wajda has left. Watching the movies made by other Polish directors, we will keep seeing Afterimage from the Ashes and Diamonds, The Wedding, The Promised Land.22

The reasoning behind nominating the movie as the candidate for 2016 Oscar best foreign language film, Polish Film Institute:

“The movie Afterimage has a real chance to be appreciated by the American Film Academy as their members care about the idea of civic freedom.

Andrzej Wajda’s newest film is a piercing, universal story of the individual destroyed by totalitarian system. The director presented the world, in which beauty, art, artistic independence are persecuted (...).”23

22 23

Zdzisław Pietrasik, The last Romantic,“Polityka” , 2016, No 42.

As cited in: www.polskatimes.pl/kultura/film/a/

powidoki-andrzeja-wajdy-otrzymaly-nominacje-do-oscara,10679452.

Władysław Strzemiński’s grave on Old Cementry in Łódź (project by Karol Tchorek, 1962).

33

WAŁĘSA. CZŁOWIEK Z NADZIEI

WAŁĘSA. MAN OF HOPE Poland 2013

Production company: Akson Studio, Warsaw;

Feature Film

Coproduction: Canal+ Polska, Warsaw; Telekomunikacja Polska SA, Warsaw; Telewizja Polska (TVP), Warsaw;

AKA: We, the People (working title)

Narodowe Centrum Kultury (NCK), Warsaw;

Screenplay: Janusz Głowacki;

Funding: Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej (Polish Film

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Institute), Warsaw;

Cinematographer: Paweł Edelman;

Producer: Michał Kwieciński;

Original music: Paweł Mykietyn;

Executive producers: Małgorzata Fogel-Gabryś,

Editing: Milenia Fiedler, Grażyna Gradoń;

Katarzyna Fukacz-Cebula;

Sound department: Jacek Hamela, Katarzyna Dzida-Hamela;

Production manager: Paweł Gabryś;

Production design: Magdalena Dipont;

Distributor: Akson Distribution, Warsaw;

Costume design: Magdalena Biedrzycka;

www.walesafilm.pl; www.filmpolski.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Lighting design: Cezary Lisowski (master), Tomasz

Budget: 18 000 000 PLN / 4 155 000 EUR;

Frankowski, Maciej Giemza, Marcin Łaskawiec,

Box office: in Poland 2013: 954.914;

Marcin Macioszek, Adam Napora; Filming locations: Gdańsk, Warszawa, Żyrardów; Cast: Robert Więckiewicz (Lech Wałęsa), Agnieszka

1.12.2011-30.06.2012;

Grochowska (Danuta Wałęsa), Iwona Bielska (Ilona), Zbigniew Zamachowski (Nawiślak), Maria Rosaria Omaggio

Running time: 127 min;

(Oriana Fallaci), Ewa Kolasińska, Mirosław Baka (Klemens

Color: Color, black and white (Kodak);

Gniech, shipyard’s manager), Michał Czernecki, Remigiusz

Printed film format: DCP;

Jankowski (shipyard worker), Wojciech Kalarus (leader), Piotr

Aspect ratio: 2.35 : 1;

Probosz (Mijak), Marcin Hycnar (oppositionist Rysiek), Maciej

Sound format: Dolby Digital EX;

Marczewski (oppositionist), Maciej Konopiński (secret service officer), Cezary Kosiński (Majchrzak), Marcel Głogowski

Release dates: festivals: 5 September 2013, Venice Film

(Bogdan Wałęsa, age 8-10), Wiktor Malinowski (Jarosław

Festival; 11 September 2013, Toronto International Film Festival;

Wałęsa, age 3-5), Kamil Jaworski (Przemysław Wałęsa,

Polish premiere: 4th October 2013.

age 5-7), Katarzyna Ankudowicz, Maciej Stuhr (priest), Dorota Wellman (Henryka Krzywonos), Ewa Kuryło

Awards and distinctions: Silver Hugo, Best Actor: Robert

(Anna Walentynowicz);

Więckiewicz, International Film Festival in Chicago, 2013; Pasinetti Award - Special Mention: Maria Rosaria Omaggio,

Second director: Michał Piłat;

Venice Film Festival 2013; Audience Award, Polish Film

Assistants director: Katarzyna Krzysztopik, Bartosz

Festival in Chicago, 2013; Golden Ticket, Award of Polish

Nowacki, Janusz Kojro, Ewa Bzdęga, Agnieszka Drożdżyk;

Cinema Association, 2013; Eagle, Polish Film Awards 2014,

Camera operators: Tomasz Kuzio, Kacper Zieliński, Maciej

nominations: best production design (Magdalena Dipont),

Lisiecki;

best costume design (Magdalena Biedrzycka), best editing

Still photographer: Marcin Makowski;

(Milenia Fiedler, Grażyna Gradoń), best actress (Agnieszka

Makeup artists: Waldemar Pokromski, Tomasz Matraszek;

Grochowska), best actor (Robert Więckiewicz); Bridging the Borders Award: Andrzej Wajda, Palm Springs International Film Festival, 2014.

35

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“Vimagazino”, Athens

Andrzej Wajda Greek film critic: “Why make film about Wałęsa today? What new thing can you say about the history of the Polish leader?

Wałęsa has not only been pushed out of the political life in Poland, he is still being slandered by total nonentities, people who attribute to themselves his historical merits and at all cost want to erase him from the history of Poland. With this film I want to do him justice which he fully deserves”.1

“

“CineVue”

Ben Nicholson “His fifty-fourth feature as director, Wałęsa. Man of Hope (2013), is a gripping biopic of a national and personal hero, humming with an infectiously rebellious energy that belies his advanced years.

The film’s subtitle places Wałęsa in exalted company within Wajda’s canon, creating a cord between itself and his previously lauded diptych about communist resistance from workers elevated to iconic status. Both Man of Marble (1977) and Man of Iron (1981) are, ultimately, fictional narratives within the real-life orbit of Lech Wałęsa. The latter film’s protagonist is clearly a stand-in for the ship-worker turned politico, but here he gets to take centre stage - and boy, does he seize that opportunity. Framed by a subsequent interview with a foreign reporter, this is the story told from the point of view of the bullish and principled Wałęsa (Robert Więckiewicz), a common man who, as it transpires is somewhat fond of the spotlight” 2.

1 2

38

Yannis Zoumboulakis, interview with Andrzej Wajda, „Vimagazino” (Vima), Athens, 9.12.2012, p. 2.

Ben Nicholson, Wałęsa. Man of Hope, “CineVue”, 11.2014.

“

“Critics Notebook”

James Rocarols “Generally the film is a very outward-looking one — certainly in comparison to the insular initial entries in the trilogy — despite emanating from a director who could be considered Poland’s national filmmaker in a sense that’s almost unique in world cinema. The film is constructed to appeal to modern international audiences, and Mr. Wajda again proves himself fully capable of converting Polish stories into globally accessible fare as he did with Katyń.

Mr. Wajda and screenwriter Janusz Głowacki punctuate the story with enough dramatic, empathetic incidents to enliven what could have been a dry and parochial story, focusing on Mr. Wałęsa’s home life and relationship with his wife, Danuta (Agnieszka Grochowska), who becomes a central figure when she’s sent to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on his behalf. Visually the film resorts to the rather familiar palette of gloomy greys and browns that seems to define most films set in this period of European history period, but cinematographer Pawel Edelman enlivens proceedings by mixing up media, from authentically scratchy 16 mm to newsreel-style black and white” 3.

3

James Rocarols, Spit and Polish. Wałęsa. Man of Hope (2013), “Critics Notebook”, September 28, 2013.

Wałęsa was the most eagerly awaited premiere of 2013.

The film plot spans twenty years – it starts in 1970 and finishes in 1989 with the scene when, in November, Lech Wałęsa gives his speech in the US Congress starting it with the words “We, the people”. The maker of Ashes and Diamonds admitted that it had been the most difficult film in his life. Asked by journalists why he decided to make it, he said, “I don’t want to but I have to”, referring to the famous words Wałęsa had said.

Over forty years after Hunting Flies, the screenplay for Wajda was written by Janusz Głowacki. The writer disclosed that the picture would not be a ‘shrine’ of Lech Wałęsa, but it would not be too strict for the Noble laureate, either.

He confessed that he had not skipped the accusations of the ex-president of being a secret police informer. “After

all, he himself said that he’d signed something”, Głowacki mentioned in an interview with TVN24.

Wajda met Wałęsa during his first visit at the Gdańsk Shipyard in August 1981. He remembers, “I was astonished by his composure and sensible assessment of the situation, so distant from the intelligentsia arguments we conducted in Warsaw” 4. In his interviews he mentioned that Wałęsa was a complex and controversial figure, so it makes him an ideal hero of a film screenplay. The artist wants it to be a picture for the young generation, which will show Wałęsa as a symbol and also as an interesting man.

The role of the legendary leader is played by Robert Więckiewicz, who – in Wajda’s opinion – has created an outstanding acting creation. “I often asked him on the set 4

Wajda. Moje filmy, ed. Janusz Fogler and Joanna Słodowska,

Stowarzyszenie Filmowców Polskich, Warsaw 1998, p. 160.

39

‘Where have you learnt to play so well?’ It was Więckiewicz who created this role in the film, you could say it practically wasn’t directed”, Wajda said during a press conference5.

“

“Andrzej Wajda belonged to the generation of Bronisław Geremek, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Władysław Bartoszewski, a generation that understood how tragic history can be.

Please, accept words of solidarity. I say solidarity, because this word was as important to Wajda as it is to me. The movie Man of Marble was the beginning of revolution, in which he himself took part. I am grateful he made Man of Iron and Wałęsa. Man of Hope. Three generations of Poles were brought up watching his movies, including me. He will remain in our thoughts forever.”6.

“I am concerned that this film should evoke a sense of justice. (...) This film should have been made a very long time ago because the situation which has arisen around

Lech Wałęsa is sorely unjust. Regardless of his mistakes, Wałęsa is a hero of our times (...), he is a personification of a movement which carried Poles to freedom. (...) I always watch Wałęsa with great friendliness. All the spiteful remarks, the dislike towards him... A lot of people now want to attribute to themselves a greater role than they played in those days. And Lech Wałęsa stands in their way. And now there will also be a film about Wałęsa in their way”, Wajda judged.

LECH WAŁĘSA

“

“VARIETY”

ANDRZEJ WAJDA Leo Barraclough, April 28, 2014

For the main role actor it has been the first encounter with Andrzej Wajda and a great acting challenge because he portrays a contemporary hero, a living one. As he said the major challenge for him was capturing the special character of Lech Wałęsa, expressing all the contradictions intrinsic to him. Wajda still keeps wondering if he should not give the film a subtitle Man of Hope and make it a closure of the triptych after Man of Marble and Man of Iron.

“I am very well aware of the fact that Wałęsa is the most difficult topic I have ever come across in my 55-year film career, (...) Nonetheless, no director has made a film about him that I found satisfactory, so I simply had no choice.”

6 5

Press conference on July 3rd, 2012.

Lech Wałęsa, letter read by Jerzy Trela during Andrzej Wajda’s funeral in Kraków, as cited in: Monika Waluś, Małgorzata Skowrońska, Paweł Figurski, Andrzeja Wajdę żegnały w Krakowie tłumy ludzi, “Gazeta Wyborcza,” 19 October 2016.

42

“

I would prefer him not to touch upon some issues in the movie about me, but on the other hand he just couldn’t skip it – Lech Wałęsa talks about his relations with Andrzej Wajda.

“POLSKA THE TIMES” “Do you remember the moment when Andrzej Wajda showed up in Gdańsk’s shipyard, in August 1981? At the time I was undereducated, undertrained, so I had to play it by focusing. Were you focused on the strike mostly? Yes, hence I don’t remember much from the past, I didn’t even try to remember. I was busy with other things, but I remember a bit. What do you remember?

I was asked to play in the movie. That was a bit later. I don’t remember anything that happened before. You were the godfather of Agnieszka and Maciek Tomczyk, son of Mateusz Birkut, the main character in the movie Man of Marble. It was just a few seconds. This scene was not replayed?

No, I am single use man. I do it once and that’s it. But you’ve seen the movie: Man of Iron, right?

Yes. I don’t remember where. The problem with me is that fate put me in a difficult position and I was very ambitiously brought up and I wanted to be the best and made it my priority and everything beside, sentimental (…) the movie was not sentimental at all, it showed the victory of Solidarity, nonetheless. Wajda has always had some kind of message, he showed us patriotism.

In your comment after his death you said: “teacher of patriotism,” “we’ve learned from him.”

Which movies did you see? I saw quite a lot of his movies; though, I wasn’t interested in finding out who had directed them. Also: Andrzej Wajda shot 40 movies. Can you honestly say which one is the best? Have you seen Man of Marble? Sure, I also remember the movie about a horse.

In Ashes. No. In Speed? Yes. At the time I didn’t pay attention to the titles but to the logic behind.

I probably shouldn’t say it but I am always sincere. What sort of logic have you noticed in Man of Marble? That we have a long fight ahead of us, that we must do things in stages (…) that the system is quite strong. At the time it seemed so, but as it turned out later, it wasn’t as strong.”

More at: http://www.polskatimes.pl/opinie/wywiady/

a/lech-walesa-o-andrzeju-wajdzie-on-naprawde-byl-przyjacielem,10736768/

44

TATARAK

SWEET RUSH AKA: Der Kalmus Poland 2009 Feature film Distributors: theatrical: Akson Distribution, Warsaw; Screenplay: ANDRZEJ WAJDA, based on a short story by

Les Films du Losange (2010), France; Arc Films (2012); in

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz: Sweet Rush / Tatarak, short story by

association with Kinokuniya (2012), Medallion Media (2012),

Sandor Marai Rendelés előtt / Nagłe wezwanie and monologue

Japan; Videorama (2009), Greece (all media);

by Krystyna Janda Ostatnie zapiski / The last notices;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

www.filmtatarak.pl;

Cinematographer: Paweł Edelman; Original music: Paweł Mykietyn;

Budget: 5 800 000 PLN / 1 340 000 EUR;

Editing: Milena Fiedler;

Filming locations: Grudziądz, Dragacz, Piaseczno, Zalesie,

Sound Department: Jacek Hamela;

Warka, Białe Lake, Warszawa; 12.08.-15.09. 2008.

Set design: Magdalena Dipont; Lighting design: Cezary Lisowski, Maciej Giemza,

Color: color (Kodak);

Marek Macioszek, Piotr Macioszek, Krzysztof Szóstko;

Running time: 85 min;

Costume design: Magdalena Biedrzycka;

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP; Aspect ratio: 2.35 : 1;

Cast: Krystyna Janda (Marta, herself), Paweł Szajda (Boguś),

Sound format: stereo;

Jan Englert (Doctor), Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak (Marta’s friend), Julia Pietrucha (Halinka), Roma Gąsiorowska

The film is dedicated to Edward Kłosiński.

(Janitor), Krzysztof Skonieczny (Stasiek), Paweł Tomaszewski (bridge player 1), Mateusz Kościukiewicz (bridge player 2),

First screenings: festival premiere: 13.02.2009, berlinale

Marcin Łuczak (bridge player 3), Andrzej Wajda (himself);

- Berlin International Film Festival; 6.04.2009, Istanbul Film Festival; Polish premiere: 24.04.2009; also: 4.07.2009, Karlovy

Assistant directors: Jakub Mazurek, Marcin Starzecki;

Vary International Film Festival; August 2009, Montreal Film

Still photographer: Piotr Bujnowicz, Fabryka Obrazu;

Festival;

Production company: Akson Studio, Warsaw;

Awards and distinctions: Alfred Bauer Award for

Co-production: Agencja Media Plus;

Andrzej Wajda, nominated for Golden Berlin Bear,

Producer: Michał Kwieciński;

Berlin International Film Festival, 2009; FIPRESCI Prize for

Co-producers: Waldemar Dąbrowski, Sławomir Józwik,

Andrzej Wajda, European Film Awards 2009; Golden Duck

Dorota Rakowska-Kośmicka, Leszek Andrzej Wyszyński;

Award for Best Cinematography (Paweł Edelman), 2009;

Executive producer: Michał Szczerbic;

nominated for Eagle (Polish Film Awards) for Best Actress

Production managers: Ewa Brodzka, Magdalena Jaworska;

(Krystyna Janda), Best Music (Paweł Mykietyn), 2010.

47

“

“

“

Tatarak [Sweet Rush]

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz “Rush has two smells. If you rub between your fingers its green ribbon, sometimes shriveled, you will smell its scent, a gentle fragrance of ‘willow shaded water’, as Słowacki would say, only a little resembling eastern nard. If you pound a rush stem, when you put your nose in a groove as if lined with cotton wool, next to the incense aroma you can smell muddy clay, rotting fish scales, or simply mud.

At the beginning of my life, this smell became associated with the image of sudden death”1.

“Kino”

Andrzej Wajda “The widowed Krystyna (Janda) decided to accept the part. Her new situation didn’t mean, however, that the film was to be different than we had planned a year earlier. But once our adaptation of Iwaszkiewicz’s story had come together, Krystyna brought me a few pages; I read them, feeling amazed and shaken at how poignantly she described Edward’s last moments and his death on those pages. I believed she had poured out her feelings to me as a friend. But I asked her if she would agree to speak the text to the camera”2.

“

“Variety”

Jay Weissberg “The complex, self-referential structure of Andrzej Wajda’s long-gestating Sweet Rush is worth pondering, but the emotional elements largely slip through the master’s fingers. Slated as an adaptation of a postwar story about a middle-aged woman mourning the past who’s now suddenly taken with a young man, pic was held up in production when the star Krystyna Janda’s husband became terminally ill. After his death, thesp and helmer decided to graft her self-scripted monologue about processing the grief onto this period tale, acting as a non-specific commentary on the original film. (…) Wajda has a lot of material to work with in the main story: nostalgia, aging, sexuality and approaching death, among others. (…) For the (Janda’s) monologue, Wajda keeps the camera completely still, closed in on the darkened room, which is illuminated solely by artificial sunlight coming in through the windows. The period section is opened up, lensed by ace d. p. Paweł Edelman (The Pianist) to take advantage of the sweeping landscape; lighting is especially fine, as are Paweł Mykietyn’s musical compositions”4 .

Culture.pl

Konrad J. Zarębski April 2009

“The Village Voice”

Scott Foundas “The film, which Wajda had once planned to make as a straightforward drama, was interrupted by the death of Janda’s real-life husband (and Wajda’s frequent cinematographer), Edward Kłosiński, prompting the director to reconceive the project as a film about filmmaking, very much in the vein of his 1969 valentine to his former star, Zbigniew Cybulski, Everything for Sale. Now, the period romance is bracketed by a heartfelt, first-person monologue delivered by Janda in a bedroom that seems to have been lit by Edward Hopper”3.

50

“

1

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Tatarak (Sweet Rush), in: Opowiadania filmowe

2

Andrzej Wajda, Tatarak (Sweet Rush), ”Kino”, 2009, no 4.

3

“The several-page Tatarak / Sweet Rush is almost the quintessential Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz short story - a plot you can summarise in one sentence, a breath of the times in which the story is set, and plenty of food for thought.

Andrzej Wajda has long valued Iwaszkiewicz’s prose, treating its screen adaptations as a kind of counterbalance to his natural passion - political cinema. And, unexpectedly, this fascination with the great writer’s output has brought Wajda substantial success: a Gold Medal at the Moscow International Film Festival for Brzezina / The Birch Wood and an Oscar nomination for Panny z Wilka / The Maids of Wilko. However, this time his return to Iwaszkiewicz and his desire to shoot Tatarak / Sweet Rush is of personal significance”5.

(Film short stories), Zielona Sowa, Kraków 2009, p. 9.

Scott Foundas, New York Film Festival 2009: The Year of Over-80 Filmmakers, “The Village Voice”, 22.09.2009.

4 5

Jay Weissberg, Sweet Rush, “Variety”, 13.02.2009.

Konrad J. Zarębski, Tatarak / Sweet Rush, Culture.pl, April 2009.

Sweet Rush, like Everything for Sale, is a self-referential picture, “film in a film’. Like the title plant, it has several layers. It is a tale of people in the film industry and acting - in the part consisting of the heartrending monologue of the actress Krystyna Janda, who - sitting in an empty hotel room, stylized as the painting Morning Sun6 by the American painter Edward Hopper - tells about the illness and death of her husband, Edward Kłosiński, a cinematographer. The film is a tribute to Kłosiński, who had filmed inter alia The Promised Land, Man of Marble, Rough Treatment, The Maids of Wilko, Man of Iron, The Chronicle of Amorous Accidents7. He died of cancer in January 5th 2008.

After the poignant loss, the actress stands in front of the 6

Edward Hopper, Morning Sun, 1952, oil, canvas, 71,4x101,9 cm,

7

As well as other Wajda’s films: May the good spirit of the house be with

collection of The Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.

you... Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, As years go by, as days go by, Man of Hope in Solidarność, Solidarność... He was the cinematographer in the films of

Krzysztof Zanussi, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Janusz Zaorski, Peter Keglevic,

camera to play Marta, a character from Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s story, a lonely woman, neglected by her busy husband, a doctor, still mourning her sons who died in the Warsaw Rising. This mature woman enters a strange, a little motherly and a little erotic relationship with a young boy - Boguś. The young man for a moment revives her youth and sense of life. This is another layer of the film.

The literary story was used only as a pretext. The images of the movie being made alternate with the images of the filmmaking: Janda is working with the director on the text, the props are being prepared, she runs half-naked away from the set...

After Katyń, Wajda wanted a complete change of mood and that is why he reached for Iwaszkiewicz. Earlier, he had filmed his prose three times: in The Birch Wood, The Maids of Wilko and a TV theatre June Night. The short,

Bernhard Wicki, Hark Bohm, Lars von Trier and others.

51

only twenty-something-page-long story by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, written in 1958, was combined by Wajda with a short story of a Hungarian writer and poet, Sandor Marai8 Emergency Call. Its protagonist is a doctor who knows that his wife, infatuated with a young man, is terminally ill.

He does not want to tell her about it in order to allow her to enjoy the last moments of her life.

54

wicz’s Marta and the protagonist of Marai’s short story.

“When Iwaszkiewicz’s short story links with Krystyna Janda’s tale, the whole story acquires a new dimension”.9, the director observed.

The screenplay is supplemented with Krystyna Janda’s monologue, written specially for the film. The actress’ moving confession complements the story of Iwaszkie-

Janda emphasized that Sweet Rush reveals the truth about the acting profession. That is why in her monologue she said that her husband allowed her to photograph himself during his illness. They both understood the meaning it had. They wanted everything to be registered, so that it would not vanish because such is their profession. As

8

9

Sandor Marai (1900-89), Hungarian writer, since 1948 emigrant in Italy and the USA.

Andrzej Wajda’s speech at a press conference on 21 April 2009.

Marta from Iwaszkiewicz’s story, the actress dyed her hair and changed the colour of her eyes. For her Sweet Rush is more than a film. “Why did I play in the film, why did I give the film my life? I sold my intimacy? I did it because I’m an artist. And why did I do it? Out of love.

Out of business. Out of self-interest For it to stay. To be remembered. Understood. To leave something more, something higher than just a reminiscence. For me it’s more than a role, than a film, than work. I did it because a meeting with Andrzej Wajda after many years was for me something crucial, and Andrzej provoked it, made it possible, lifted to a level, transported into a new dimension, finally he ‘signed’ it. Because it became for me something more than I could predict, imagine, than a professional adventure could ever offer. I asked myself, and Andrzej

Wajda asked this question first, if I wanted it and if I was ready for the costs connected with it”10.

It is probably the most perfect and the most convincing performance in the whole film career of Krystyna Janda.

Her husband was played by Jan Englert (he played general in Katyń, and debuted in Wajda’s A Generation). Boguś was played by an American actor of Polish origin, Paweł Szajda. In the bit part of Marta’s friend, we could see Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak. The exquisite cinematography is the work of Paweł Edelman.

10

Muszę o nim opowiedzieć. Krystyna Janda w rozmowie z Krystyną

Pytlakowską (I must to tell about him. Krystyna Janda talked with Krystyna Pytlakowska)”, „Viva!”, 2009, no 7, p. 86.

KATYŃ AKA: Das Massaker von Katyn (Germany) Poland 2007 Feature film Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda, Władysław Pasikowski, Przemysław Nowakowski (based on the novel by Andrzej Młynarczyk Post Mortem); Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA; Cinematographer: Paweł Edelman; Original music: Krzysztof Penderecki; Editing: Milenia Fiedler, Rafał Listopad; Sound Department: Jacek Hamela, Marek Wronko, Leszek Freund; Set design: Magdalena Dipont; Lighting design: Cezary Lisowski, Artur Łapot, Adam Karczewski, Adam Napora, Tomasz Frankowski, Marek Macioszek, Piotr Malinkiewicz; Costume design: Magdalena Biedrzycka; Cast: Andrzej Chyra (Lt. Jerzy), Maja Ostaszewska (Anna), Artur Żmijewski (Andrzej), Danuta Stenka (Róża), Jan Englert (General), Magdalena Cielecka (Agnieszka), Agnieszka Glińska (Irena), Paweł Małaszyński (Lt. Piotr Baszkowski), Maja Komorowska (Andrzej’s mother), Władysław Kowalski (Professor Jan, Andrzej’s father), Antoni Pawlicki (Tadeusz), Agnieszka Kawiorska (Ewa), Siergiej Garmasz (Maj. Popov), Joachim Paul Assbock (Muller), Waldemar Barwiński (Polish officer), Sebastian Bezzel (Propaganda Abteilung officer), Jacek Braciak (Lt. Klin), Stanisława Celińska (Stasia), Leon Charewicz (UB major), Alicja Dąbrowska (actress), Aleksander Fabisiak (teacher), Wiktoria Gąsiewska (Weronika), Krzysztof Globisz (Professor of chemistry), Krzysztof Kolberger (priest), Zbigniew Kozłowski (militia officer), Olgierd Łukaszewicz (priest); Assistant directors: Agnieszka Glińska, Marek Cydorowicz, Ewa Brodzka; Set decoration: Wiesława Chojkowska; Makeup Department: Waldemar Pokromski, Tomasz Matraszek, Aneta Brzozowska, Alicja Kozłowska; Visual Effects Department: Jakub Knapik, Jarek Sawko, Vacek Szawdyn, Radosław Rekita, Kamil Rutkowski, Filip Styliński, Albert Szostkiewicz, Dorota Wolnicka-Szcześniak, Bruce Jurgens; Still photographers: Piotr Bujnowicz, Maciej Laprus, Monika Skrzypczak, Mateusz Wajda, Fabryka Obrazu; Production companies: Akson Studio, Warsaw; TVP S.A., Warsaw; Telekomunikacja Polska, Warsaw; Legion Entertainment, London; Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej (The Polish Film Institute), Warsaw; Producer: Michał Kwieciński; Co-producers: Dominique Lesage, Dariusz Wieromiejczyk; Executive producers: Katarzyna Fukacz-Cebula, Małgorzata Fogel-Gabryś; Production managers: Kamil Przełęcki, Dagmara Bończyk, Aleksandra Frosztęga, Jerzy Mizak;

Distributors: theatrical: TVP, Warsaw; Albatros Film (2009), Japan; Kanibal Films Distribution (2009), France; Koch Lorber Films (2009), (USA; Kurt Media (2009), Germany; Moviemobz Rain (2009), Brazil; Pandastorm Pictures (2009), Germany; all media: Artificial Eye (2009), UK; KinoVista (2008), France; MEED Films (2008), Lithuania; Mirada Distribution (2009), Argentina; Movimento Film (2009), Italy; Videorama (2008), Greece; DVD/Blu-ray: Atlantic Film (2008), Sweden; Pan Vision Oy (2009), Finland; Pandastorm Pictures (2009), Germany; Paramount Filmes do Brasil (2009), Brazil; Umbrella Entertainment (2009), Australia; Vii Pillars Entertainment (2009), Hong Kong; Yleisradio (YLE) (2009-10), Finland (TV); www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com; Budget: 15 600 000 PLN / 3 600 000 EUR; Box office: in Poland; opening weekend: (September 2007, 189 prints) 265 310 spectators, total 2 761 594 spectators; Gross: USD 14,723,313 (Worldwide) (19 April 2015), 35 200 000 PLN; Filming locations: Warsaw (Citadel, 11 Listopada Street, Złota Street, Senatorska Street, Oczki Street, ZASP Building, Ujazdowskie Avenues, Solariego Street), Wyszków (railway bridge), Poświętne near Spała, Kasina Wielka, Zielonka, Wesoła (Military Training Ground), Kraków (Main Market Square, Poselska Street, Planty, Św. Marka Street, Słowacki Theatre, Jagiellonian University, Dolnych Młynów Street, Grottgera Street, Music Academy, Poselska Street, Senacka Street), Stary Dzików; Color: color; Running time: 125 min; Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP; Aspect ratio: 2.35 : 1; Sound format: Dolby Digital EX; First screenings: Polish premiere: 17.09.2007, festival premiere: 14.11.2007, Festival du cinéma polonaise, Cat. Studios de Perpignan; 15.02.2008, Berlin International Film Festival; in the USA: April 2008, Tribeca Film Festival; 8.07.2008, Karolovy Vary International Film Festival; Awards: Nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, 2008; Eagle (Polish Film Award) for Best Cinematography (Paweł Edelman), Best Costume Design (Magdalena Biedrzycka, Andrzej Szenajch), Best Film, Best Film Score (Krzysztof Penderecki), Best Production Design (Magdalena Dipont), Best Sound (Jacek Hamela), Best Supporting Actress (Danuta Stenka), nominated for Eagle also in categories: Best Actor (Andrzej Chyra), Best Director, Best Editing (Milenia Fiedler, Rafał Listopad), Best Supporting Actor (Artur Żmijewski); European Film Award for Costume Design (Magdalena Biedrzycka), 2008; Audience Award at Ljubljana International Film Festival, 2008; Audience Award at Washington DC Filmfest, 2008; People’s Choice Award at Denver International Film Festival for Best Feature Film, 2008; Golden Globe (Italy) for Best European Film and Best Distributor (Movimento Film), 2009; Special Mention for Andrzej Wajda at Sannio FilmFest, nominated also for Golden Capital for Best Costume Design (Magdalena Biedrzycka), Best Director, Best Picture, 2009; nominated for Czech Lion for Best Foreign Language Film, 2009; nominated for ALFS Award (London Critics Circle Film Awards) for Foreign Language Film of the Year, 2010; nominated for Silver Condor (Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards) for Best Foreign Film, Not in the Spanish Language, 2010.

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ANDRZEJ WAJDA Director’s statement

“

“After many attempts and much thought, I am now certain that a film about Katyń cannot set a goal of discovering the whole truth about that event, since it is now a historical and political fact.

Those facts, to the viewer of today, could be a background for such events as human lots, since only they, shown on the big screen, can move the viewer in contrast to the relations of our history that has its place in the written stories of those times.

“

Therefore, I see my film about Katyń as a story of a family separated forever, about great illusions and the brutal truth about the Katyń crime. In a word, a film about individual suffering, which evokes images of much greater emotional content than naked historical facts. A film that shows the terrible truth that hurts, whose characters are not the murdered officers, but women who wait their return every day, every hour, suffering inhuman uncertainty. Loyal and unshaken, certain that it was only enough to open the door to see the long awaited man at it, as the tragedy of Katyń concerns those who live and lived then.”

“San Francisco Chronicle”

Mick LaSalle “Katyń, which Wajda directed when he was 81 years old - directed it as if he were half that age, directed it as if he were on fire - is a great movie. Moreover, Wajda’s intensity and passion, as well as his intelligence and craft, are unmistakable from the very first sequence. Virtually from the first shot. (…) Katyń was nominated for a foreign film Oscar in 2007 (…). One thing is clear. That Oscar nomination was not some perfunctory acknowledgment of an esteemed body of work. It was rather in recognition of the fact that, in his 80s, this filmmaker is at the height of his powers”1.

1

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Mick LaSalle, ‘Katyn’ shows Wajda’s passion, “San Francisco Chronicle”, 19.06.2009.

“

“Chicago Sun-Times”

Roger Ebert “The film ends with a scene of relentless horror, showing the assembly line of execution. Men are taken from the sealed buses one by one, their names checked off a list, then quickly walked to their place of death and killed with a bullet to the back of the skull. Their bodies fall or are heaved into mass graves in orderly progress, falling side by side, and buried by bulldozer. Now Wajda has brought some small measure of rest to their names, to Poland, and to history”2.

“The Village Voice”

J. Hoberman “A teenager in People’s Poland and then the most public of public artists, Wajda had to live with Katyń every day. Albeit indifferently staged and poorly written, the movie’s key postwar scene has a boy, applying for art school, refusing to alter his application so as not to conceal his father’s death at Katyń; the twist is that the stern young administrator urging his accommodation to the new reality herself lost a brother at Katyń. Wajda is both characters.

Making Katyń allowed him to imagine his father’s murder without telling us what it was like for him to live with it”3.

“

“Variety”

Leslie Felperin “Wajda (…) demonstrates a masterful ability to convey plot points, illustrate character and create atmosphere with just a few lines of dialogue and spryly rendered visual brushstrokes.

Precision-engineered editing (…) fluidly moves between time periods and locations. (…) Some will admire the general absence of sentimentality, but for others, pic might seem too cold and lacking in emotional punch until the final, flawlessly rendered scene that shows (and this is no spoiler) the massacre itself, a near-mechanical series of shootings that’s a veritable charnel house of horror. Thesping throughout is of a piece with Wajda’s restraint, and features fine work from all involved. Score by renowned Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki rumbles and sighs with rich poignancy without swamping the action”4 .

2

Roger Ebert, Katyn, “Chicago Sun-Times”, 22.07.2009.

4

Leslie Felperin, Katyn, “Variety”, 15.02.2008.

3

J. Hoberman, Katyn’s True Lies, “The Village Voice”, 18.02.2009.

On September 17 th 1939, the Red Army attacked Poland from the east, occupying the Polish territories from the line of the Bug river, according to secret protocols of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact5. Polish army which had been fighting against Germans since September 1st, was forced to start military actions on two fronts although in accordance with the order of the Chief Commander it tried not to enter direct battle against Soviets, which was not always possible or observed. After only a few days, German and Russian troops met on the territory of Poland and treated each other very cordially, organizing banquets and parades together. The pact of the two greatest 5

The pact signed by Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, the German and Russians foreign ministers, on 23rd August 1939, a

week before the beginning of WWII, in the presence of Joseph Stalin

in Moscow. Formally, it was a pact of non aggression between the Reich and the USSR, it included a secret protocol referring to the rules of

territorial partition or annexation of other countries, including Poland but also Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia as well as Finland and Romania.

totalitarianisms of the 20th century was signed as a form of the fourth partition of Poland.

The Red Army captured a quarter of a million Polish soldiers and officers, gendarmes, civil servants and representatives of the intelligentsia. From this great mass, the NKVD isolated officers who were imprisoned in a few POW camps on the territory of the USSR: Ostaszkowo, Starobielsk and Kozielsk. As most of the ordinary soldiers were released and The USSR had signed international agreements protecting prisoners of wars (which were respected e.g. by Germans, with all the lawlessness and barbarity in their actions in the occupied Poland), the Polish officers imprisoned in the soviet camps could count on being treated according to the Hague convention. For Stalin and the USSR executives planning a permanent occupation of Poland after the war, the POWs were first

of all a mass of class enemies who needed to be eliminated at all cost, disregarding the legal or human considerations.

The decree signed by Stalin on March 5th 1940 sentenced all of them to death. The order was duly carried out by the troops of NKVD in April 1940. The prisoners were killed by a shot into the back of their heads in prison cellars, then the corpses were transported to woods or secret centers of political police, where they were buried in huge graves with the use of bulldozers. The massacres were committed in Katyń, Kharkov, Tver and Mednoye. Till today, not all of the graves have been found, no traces have been found of the victims of the so-called Byelorussian list.

The Katyń crime is a term referring directly to the fact of killing 4,400 prisoners from the camp in Kozielsk, in a wood near the village Katyń near Smoleńsk, but it includes all the murders on the defenseless Polish officers and representatives of intelligentsia, committed by the NKVD in 1940, in total 21,700 educated, well qualified, usually young people, a significant part of the intellectual elite of the Polish nation (Poland lost another part of the elite, equally significant, as a result of the Warsaw Rising 1944, killed by Germans with the Soviets watching it happen).

In this respect Stalin was a far-sighted pragmatic: these people would hinder the introduction of communism in Poland after the war.

The perfidy of Generalissimo and NKVD knew no bounds.

When in 1943, the German army, until recently allied with the USSR, reached the Katyń wood on their way to Moscow and discovered the mass graves of Polish officers, Stalin announced that they were the victims of Germans from 1941. Although this lie was indisputably discredited by the results of the Red Cross international committee, witness statements and the findings of British and American intelligence, the allied forces decided that for the superior good, i.e. common fight against Hitler, the soviet version should be accepted. And this version was valid for the nest 50 years. During the whole period

62

of People’s Republic of Poland, the families of the victims could not pay homage to their loved ones; challenging the official version meant a danger of repressions.

It was not until 50 years later, in 1990 that the Russian Federation, as a legal heir to the USSR, officially admitted to committing the crime and president Yeltsin handed over to Poland the documents about it, including a copy of Stalin’s decision with his personal signature in pencil6. But it was a fact important at most for Poles and some groups of intellectuals in Russia. Only now, together with Andrzej Wajda’s film, has the world learned the truth about the Katyń crime, or at least its artistic interpretation. What is most important and more significant than the artistic form of this work (a top level work) is the open reminding of these most tragic and most propaganda-distorted facts in the history of the 20th century Europe.

Katyń is the first Polish feature film devoted to the Katyń crime and lie, a tale about the fight for the truth. For Wajda 6

The accepted proposal of Lavrentiy Beria to execute former Polish army and police officers in NKVD prisoner of war camps and prisons. March 1940.

TOP SECRET

From the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to comrade STALIN

In the NKVD POW camps and in the prisons of the western oblasts

of Ukraine and Belorussia there is currently a large number of former

officers of the Polish army, former Polish police officers and employees

of intelligence agencies, members of Polish nationalist c-r (counterrev-

olutionary) parties, participants in underground c-r rebel organizations,

defectors and so on. All of them are implacable enemies of Soviet power

and full of hatred for the Soviet system.

POW officers and policemen located in the camps are attempting to

continue c-r work and are leading anti-Soviet agitation. Each of them is simply waiting to be freed so they can have the opportunity to actively

join the fight against Soviet power.

NKVD agents in the western oblasts of Ukraine and Belorussia have uncovered a number of c-r rebel organizations. In each of these c-r

organizations the former officers of the former Polish army and former

Polish police officers played an active leadership role.

Among the detained defectors and violators of the state

(Signatures: In favor - Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, Mikoyan)

(In margin: Comrade Kalinin - In favor. Comrade Kaganovich - In favor.).

it was a very important and very personal film because his father, Jakub Wajda (soldier of the Great War, the PolishBolshevik 1920 war, Silesian Uprising and September Campaign 1939, Knight of the Silver Cross and posthumously awarded the Virtuti Militari Order) was imprisoned in Starobielsk, and then murdered in Kharkov, in the cellars of NKVD. Andrzej’s mother almost till the end of her life believed that her husband would return, because on the Katyń list there appeared the surname Wajda but the first name was Karol. Another artist working on Katyń, who lost his relative, in fact his uncle, there was the music composer Krzysztof Penderecki.

In his film, however, Wajda did not want to talk about himself but about the suffering and drama of many Katyń families. In Katyń, he recreated the events leading up to the massacre and its effects, showing it from two perspectives: the officers themselves - including a Major-General, cavalry captain Andrzej, lieutenant Jerzy, lieutenant pilot and constructor Piotr Baszkowski, all of whom till the end believe in their release - and women, deluding themselves that their loved ones: husbands, fathers, sons and brothers, live and one day would return home. We meet the general’s wife, Róża, Anna, Andrzej’s wife, his parents Maria and Jan, professor of the Jagiellonian University (soon he gets arrested by Germans and taken to Sachsenhausen camp, from which an urn with his ashes would return), as well as Agnieszka and Irena, Piotr’s sisters. In order to fund a tombstone for her brother, the former sells her hair, while the latter represents a completely different attitude - she does want to endanger herself and prefers to make a new life for herself in the new Poland.

In the final sequence, Wajda reconstructs the methodic crime in a naturalistic way: officers die of a shot in the back of their head, we watch the bodies placed one on another in ditches with lime, the corpses are covered with sand, and bulldozers run over them... This shocking scene and Penderecki’s music sounding in the darkness of the

final frame, are one of the most dramatic moments of the contemporary Polish cinema.

The cast of the film included: Artur Żmijewski (it was his second meeting with Wajda, after The Condemnation of Franciszek Kłos), Maja Ostaszewska, Maja Komorowska, Jan Englert, Andrzej Chyra, Danuta Stenka, Paweł Małaszyński, Agnieszka Glińska and Krzysztof Globisz.

Katyń had a large audience, it was watched by 2.7 million viewers in Poland but the critics were not so kind. The director was accused that his film resembles a television theatre, they complained that many characters were hardly sketched, without any psychological depth. Abroad, the film enjoyed greater recognition. It had its world premiere on Berlinale 2008 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel took part in the show. The film was nominated for Oscar in the category ‘best foreign language film’.

What Wajda considers his greatest success is the fact that Katyń was twice shown on public Russian television, first on the specialized channel Kultura and then (on 11th April 2010 - the day after the Smoleńsk crash, which took the life of president Lech Kaczyński with his wife and over 90 other people, including representatives of parliament, state offices, top army commanders and Katyń families) on the main channel at prime time. “In this way, over a dozen million Russians for the first time saw that it was not a German crime, as official interpretation claimed. I didn’t expect that may film could play such a role”7, the director said. The official premiere in Russia took place on March 17 th 2008, but Katyń was never found in official distribution. It was only presented in various cities at oneoff shows and festivals.

7

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director conducted on

23rd October 2012.

65

“

“Gazeta Wyborcza”

Tadeusz Sobolewski Antigone’s gesture - Tadeusz Sobolewski about “Katyń”, 17.09.2007

“I watched Katyń but not during the official opening, but silently, during a private screening for journalists.

Today, when Poland is artificially on fire, “bitten,” while patriots representing various groups toss around insults, a movie about Katyń may also be played politically. The tone of some of the statements is already indicating such possibility. Yet, whatever Andrzej Wajda is accused of – some sort of didacticism or staginess of some of the scenes – one thing that has always been the feature of his work is strikingly obvious: his strive for non-politicised art.

This movie does not want anything from us, does not try to convert us to anything. The colours of Paweł Edelman’s pictures, the music by Krzysztof Penderecki (perfectly selected fragments of existing works), low-key acting – everything makes an impression as if the movie was covered in ash. The tone of the movie is funereal, penitential. It will defend Katyń against the attacks of the spearheads whose weapon is aggression. An imminent feeling is that this movie is doing something good for Poland; it clears the air of hatred.

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The last scene: the shooting of officers. The whole movie

leads to it. Nobody has ever shown it before. We are seeing it for the first time. Just as once before – in The Last Stage by Wanda Jakubowska, a movie of 1948 – Poles saw the picture of crematoria for the first time. Katyń is half a century late. I remember from my childhood the word – it was mysterious, unspoken, as if using it could put one at risk. It came with the core that was associated with “torture.”

The picture of Katyń shown in the movie will become part

of collective imagination representing innocent Polish death, silently ignored or hushed up truth that has been shown in all its brutality. This one thing must have been an argument enough for Wajda to make this movie. To become the next Matejko, Grottger, Polish Goya who paints the shooting of patriots. In his movie, the Katyń scene is powerful but at the same time it is aesthetically modest. There is no forced symbolism, no additional effects except the prayer that is repeated by the officers, which seems only natural. The music is dies out. And then starts again. The last words that can be heard in the movie, coming up right after the images of hasty, production-like and automated killing come from Penderecki’s oratorio: Requiem Aeternam Dona Eis – Eternal Rest.”

“

FILM STATEMENT September 13th, 1939, Eastern Borderlands of Poland. Anna, a wife of a Kraków Cavalry Regiment captain Andrzej is looking for her husband. She travels with her daughter.

People are fleeing from both the Germans and the Soviets who have just attacked Poland from the east. The woman comes across her husband’s regiment which had been captured by the Soviets. Andrzej is unable to escape from imprisonment: he considers it desertion. Abandoning wife and daughter is extremely painful. The captive officers depart East on a Soviet military train.

The story of Anna, her family and the General’s wife:

Anna is trying to go back to Kraków. She is refused a permit to travel there by a local Soviet-German commission. She is offerred help by a Soviet officer who lives in the same house as her: he wants to marry Anna and thus save her and her daughter from being exiled. He knows that Polish officers are doomed. Anna refuses. Meanwhile, Anna’s sister in law is being arrested and taken away by the NKWD. Anna and her doughter are saved.

October 1939, Kraków: Andrzej’s father, professor at the Jagiellonian university, prepares for a meeting at which the German authorities are expected to announce new regulations concerning the functioning of the university.

During the meeting, all professors are arrested by the Germans.

The end of 1939, Christmas Eve. The family of the General, who was also taken prisoner, exchange Christmas greetings. They all share the feeling of loneliness due to the General’s absence. The pain of loneliness tights their throats. Similar emotions are experienced by the officers locked in Kozielsk’s monastery. The preparations for the

Christmas Eve supper only strengthen the feelings of homesickness of the imprisoned officers.

In the spring, Anna manages to get to Kraków to her mother in law. Together, they wait for any news about Andrzej and his father who is in Sachsenhausen. Professor’s wife receives a parcel. She is about to learn it contains the ashes of her husband who died in the concentration camp. Both Anna and Andrzej’s mother strongly believe Andrzej is alive.

In the meantime in Kozielsk, the NKWD announces

the list of officers to be transported first. Jerzy, Andrzej’s closest friend presents Andrzej, who is sick, with his warm jumper. Andrzej’s name is on the list. He pins his hope on the change of fate and says goodbye to his closest friend.

The story of the General’s wife:

1943. The Germans announce the list of the exhumed victims of the Katyń massacre. The names of the General and Jerzy are on it, Andrzej’s name does not figure there.

His family perceives it as a good sign. The Germans are trying to talk the General’s wife into signing a propaganda letter condemning the massacre. She is forced to watch the German film about the excavation of the Katyń graves for the first time. She refuses to collaborate with the Germans.

The story of Jerzy:

The end of the war; the Germans are fleeing Kraków.

Jerzy, currently an officer of the Polish People’s Army, comes to visit his friend’s wife and mother. He informs Anna about the mistake on the Katyń victims list. His name appeared on the list instead of Andrzej’s, because Jerzy, in Kozielsk, had presented Andrzej with a jumper, signed with his name. That’s how Anna learns about her husband’s death for the first time – however, she declines to believe it.

67

the secondary school Headmistress, who tries to bring her to her senses. Agnieszka, however, does not want to carry on leading a mendacious life – she, as Antigone, wants to bury her brother properly, even if only symbolically. She attaches the plaque commemorating the deceased brother onto their family tomb. After that she gets arrested by the secret police. The plaque gets broken by “unknown agents” so the words “Katyń, 1940” are no longer readable.

The story of Tadeusz:

The murder of Polish officers:

Anna is employed in a photographer’s shop in Kraków as a retouch woman. She is working on a tombstone portrait of a pilot murdered in Katyń. The photograph was ordered

by Agnieszka – one of the sisters of the deceased pilot.

Tadeusz - a young man who was a partisan through the war, steps into the photographer’s shop and recognizes Anna as his aunt. The relatives enjoy their reunion. The boy, whose father also died in Katyń, wants to finish school and enroll in the Fine Arts Academy. Tadeusz applies to a school to finish his secondary education. The school Headmistress tries to force him to lie about his father’s death and to change the date of his death on the CV, but he refuses. On his way home he provokes the secret police agents and runs away. He bumps onto Ewa who helps him to escape. They seem to get close to each other. Unfortunately, on the way home the boy is run over by a secret police car.

Anna is visited by an assistant of the Professor and presented with her husband’s diary, excavated from the mass grave in Katyń. That is how she learns about the circumstances of his death.

The story of Agnieszka:

Agnieszka visits the Canon who witnessed the exhumation in Katyń and brought her her brother’s rosary.

In order to pay for the plaque commemorating her brother’s death Agnieszka sells her hair to the theatre’s wig artist.

The commemorative plaque will not, though, be placed in the church since the secret police arrested the Canon.

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On her way to the cemetery, Agnieszka meets her sister,

Jerzy visits the University where Polish scientists work on the excavations from the Katyń graves. He asks the Professor – his former mentor – to give Andrzej’s wife any remnants from this grave which may pertain to Andrzej.

Jerzy meets with the General’s wife when she’s trying to stop the open-air projection of a Soviet movie about the Katyń massacre. They talk about the murder and she accuses him of a betrial of truth about this crime. Jerzy cannot stand the accusation. He commits a suicide.

Reconstruction of the murder - based on Andrzej’s diary.

The POWs from Kozielsk are on the train to Gniazdowo near Katyń. Andrzej continues to take notes about what is happening with the prisoners. They are taken off the train by the NKWD officers, put into huge prison lorries.

The General is conducted to a basement of a NKWD dacha and shot. Some of the captives follow the same path. Other officers are carried on the lorries to the forest - they are then tied up with a wire, and shot at the edge of huge ditches. The execution continues – one shot after another. The bodies in the ditches are covered with sand by bulldozers...

“

(Distributor’s materials)

“THE NEW YORK TIMES”

A. O. SCOTT Feb. 17 th, 2009

“Wajda focuses on the grief and confusion of his characters, and on the ferocity with which they hold on to the dignity that history conspires to strip from them. The result is a film with a stately, deliberate quality that insulates it against sentimentality and makes it all the more devastating.”

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KORCZAK Poland, Germany, UK 1990 Feature film

Producers: Regina Ziegler, Janusz Morgenstern, Daniel Toscan du Plantier;

Screenplay: Agnieszka Holland;

Executive producer: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Production managers: Marek Składanowski,

Cinematographer: Robby Müller;

Teresa Maleszewska, Robert Lipiński;

Original music: Wojciech Kilar;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw;

Editing: Ewa Smal;

Wavelength Pictures, London; Union Générale

Sound Department: Janusz Rosół, Krzysztof Jastrząb,

Cinématographique (UGC) (1991), France; New Yorker Films

Bogdan Nowak, Tadeusz Wosiński;

(1991), USA; Ovo Films (1995), Greece; Artificial Eye (UK);

Set design: Allan Starski;

Concorde Filmverleih GmbH, München;

Costume design: Wiesława Starska, Małgorzata Stefaniak; www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com; Cast: Wojciech Pszoniak (Henryk Goldszmit vel Janusz

www.filmportal.de;

Korczak), Ewa Dałkowska (Stefa Wilczyńska), Teresa Budzisz-Krzyżanowska (Maria Falska),

Filming locations: Warszawa, Łódź (Włókiennicza Street);

Marzena Trybała (Esterka), Piotr Kozłowski (Heniek), Zbigniew Zamachowski (Icek Szulc), Jan Peszek (Max Bauer),

Color: black and white;

Aleksander Bardini (Adam Czerniaków), Wojciech Klata

Running time: 115 min;

(Szloma), Krystyna Zachwatowicz (Szloma’s mother),

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

Jerzy Zass (German wachman on the bridge),

Sound format: mono;

Michał Staszczak (Józek), Agnieszka Krukówna (Ewa); First screenings: Polish premiere: 6.05.1990, festival Second unit directors: Krystyna Grochowicz,

premiere: May 1990, Cannes Film Festival; 12.09.1990,

Paweł Wierkowski;

Toronto Film Festival; 26.09.1990, Köln, Filmfest

Assistant directors: Ami Drozd, Jerzy Gerlee,

Nordrhein-Westfalen; UK: 26.10.1990, France: 9.01.1991,

Wieslawa Klata, Andrzej Kotkowski, Malgorzata Lisak;

Germany: 20.03.1991, Berlin; USA: 12.04.1991, New York City;

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

TV premiere in Germany: 01.04.1994, ZDF;

Production companies: Zespół Filmowy Perspektywa,

Awards and distinctions: Film Award in Gold for Best

Warsaw; Telmar Films Intl.; Regina Ziegler Filmproduktion,

Cinematography (Robby Müller), German Film Awards, 1991;

Berlin-Köln; Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF),

Special Jury’s distinction: Andrzej Wajda, International Film

Mainz; Erbograph Co.; Erato Films, Paris; British Broadcasting

Festival in Cannes, 1990; Award of Chief of Cinematofraphy in

Corporation (BBC), London;

Poland 1991: Andrzej Wajda, Wojciech Pszoniak, Wojciech Kilar.

71

“

Steven Spielberg “Emblematic of Wajda’s later career is Korczak (1990), one of the most important European pictures about the Holocaust. It is a moving drama of the legendary pediatrician and educator who wrote under the pen name Janusz Korczak, who fights a valiant but ultimately tragic battle to protect the 200 children in his care from the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto and deportation to the Treblinka death camp. Kevin Thomas, of the “Los Angeles Times”, called the film “Yet another triumph for Wajda, long regarded as one of the world’s greatest directors” and concluded that “Not only is Korczak one of the great Holocaust films, but it is also a great film”. “The Wall Street Journal’s” reviewer wrote “Wajda has proven that saints do not have to be boring. His Korczak is brave, stubborn and wise” 1.

1

Extract from Steven Spielberg’s letter to the Academy proposing Andrzej Wajda for a special Oscar.

“

Andrzej Wajda “The official screening at Cannes during the 1990 festival, followed by the standing ovation in the Festival Palace was, regrettably, the last success of Korczak.

By the next morning, the review in “Le Monde” had transformed me into an anti-Semite, and none of the major film distributors would agree to circulate the film outside Poland.

My good intentions were useless” 2.

“

“WSHINGTON POST”

RITA KEMPLEY August 16, 1991

“Stunningly photographed in black-and-white by Robby Müller (...) Korczak also serves as a richly detailed, hugely tragic document of Warsaw ghetto life. And like so many Holocaust films, it portrays the ultimate triumph of human dignity over incomprehensible barbarity.”

2

74

Andrzej Wajda, after: www.wajda.pl.

“

“The New York Times”

Andrzej Wajda “There would have been nothing easier than showing the death of the children in the gas chamber. It would have been a very moving scene. Everyone would have been crying. But do we have the right, does art have the right to show this? Is art for this? (…)

Isn’t art for telling it in some different way? Art has to stop short of certain facts, has to look for other possibilities.

“

It seems to me that it is beautiful that when we do not agree to the fact that the children were gassed, we create a legend that these children go somewhere, into some better world” 3.

New York City

Betty Jean Lifton “The irony and tragedy of the fate of Janusz Korczak, the Polish-Jewish doctor and writer who chose to go to his death with the orphans of the Warsaw ghetto, lie not so much in Andrzej Wajda’s film Korczak as in the international controversy that swirls around it. Rather than furthering a spirit of reconciliation between Poles and Jews, the film has reawakened painful emotions about the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations” 4 .

Korczak is a biographical tale of Janusz Korczak, a Polish doctor, writer and pedagogue of Jewish origin. Henryk Goldszmit, because that was his real name (Korczak is a pen name, others he used are: Stary Doktor [Old Doctor] 3

Andrzej Wajda, after: Stephen Engelberg, Wajda’s ‘

Korczak’ Sets Loose the Furies, “The New York Times”,

14.04.1991.

4

Betty Jean Lifton, a letter to editor: Wajda’s ‘Korczak’;

5.05.1991. The writer is the author of The King of Children:

Human Values, Inhuman Time, “The New York Times”, A Biography of Janusz Korczak (Schocken Books).

or Pan Doktor [Mr. Doctor]), worked for the promotion of children’s rights, emancipation and self-determination of children. In Warsaw he conducted an Orphans’ House, which at the end of the 1940s was moved to the ghetto.

The children organized their own parliaments and courts, they edited and published a magazine.

Korczak was supposed to be Wajda’s first American film, and Richard Dreyfuss was to play the main role. The star even grew a beard in which he was Korczak’s lookalike, yet with time he lost interest in the project. Eventually, the title role was played by Wojciech Pszoniak. The actor gave an outstanding performance; his Korczak is a deeply humane person, facing decisions in the situation of moral dilemmas of those inhumane times. It was on the set of Korczak, that Wajda was for the first time working with children. He had a lot of fears connected with it, first and foremost that he would run out of patience, but all of the worries turned out to be unjustified. The children approached their tasks very seriously and several of them later played in the Schindler’s List: Wojciech Klata, Anna Mucha and Adam Siemion.

Korczak’s screenplay was written by Agnieszka Holland.

She based it on Korczak’s diaries and letters as well as on relations of people who knew him. At that time Holland had already directed Angry Harvest (the film was nominated for Oscar in 1985 in the category of the best foreign film, and Wojciech Pszoniak played in one of the main roles), and another of her films Europe, Europe (Oscar nomination for the best adapted screenplay in 1990, Golden Globe for the best foreign film) had its premiere in the same year as Korczak. Holland wrote screenplays for both of these films dealing with the theme of the Holocaust.

The film concentrates on doctor Korczak’s war fate, although its opening scenes mention his lectures, popular radio programmes, which as a result of the prevailing anti-Semitic atmosphere get cancelled, as well as his military service in the Polish army in September 1939.

75

“Although around was hell, Korczak’s moral utopia was hoping...”

Bożena Janicka, “Korczak”, “Film”, weekly, 1990, No 4

Further scenes take place in the ghetto where Korczak leads his everyday heroic battle to provide children with the best care, and first of all a daily portion of food, to isolate them from the tragic events happening outside.

He tries to get some help from Adam Czerniaków, the head of Judenrat (Jewish council), from but he is also able to use the support of Jewish profiteers; as he says “I have no dignity, I have two hundred children”5. Even when the first information about the fate of the deported Jews reach the ghetto, Korczak believes that Germans will never close orphanages; neither does he want to select children of ‘good’ looks, who could find shelter on the Aryan side. Despite the recurrent offers of hiding him, he decides to stay with the children till the end. With them he boards the train which leaves for the Treblinka extermination camp...

smear campaign started. In brief: the difference comes down to the question of time, place and person. Polański is a Jew (the interview was conducted after the première of The Pianist, which was highly appreciated by critique, among others by the mentioned Claude Lanzmann – ed.) and experienced all the things he talks about so no one can accuse him of manipulating history or of the political abuse of the theme. Whereas Wajda is a Pole and since The Promised Land he has faced accusations of anti-Semitism, which is deeply unjust. The French have some problems with their own history, their own anti-Semitism and participation in the Holocaust. Poles are for them a scapegoat.

It is mainly the French Jews who do it: loving France and at the same time feeling endangered there, they transmit their aggression and fear onto Poland”7, Agnieszka Holland said many years later.

The last scene of the film aroused great controversies; the car with Korczak and his children, is disconnected from the train, then everybody cheerfully gets off and disappears in the fog. Although the film ends with a note informing that Korczak together with children died in Treblinka in August 1942, there appeared charges that such an ending suggests they were saved from the gas chambers.

The exquisite black-and-white cinematography of Robby Müller, who had been working with Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and Lars von Trier, in some scenes was complemented with authentic footage from newsreels. The heartrending music was composed by Wojciech Kilar.

Wajda considered this film his great achievement but the film met with fierce attacks of French critics. The director was accused of anti-Semitism, presenting Poles only in the positive light and inscribing Jewish martyrdom into Catholic eschatology. The most brutal attack was staged

by Daniele Heymann of “Le Monde”6 and Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah. It was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Marek Edelman who intervened and wrote a letter to “Le Monde” in which he accused the French critics of anti-Polish attitudes.

“The reasons for the attack on Wajda were of purely political and not artistic nature. I remember the great ovation Korczak received in Cannes. Later on, an absurd press 5 Korczak, fragment of dialogue scripts.

6

80

Daniele Heymann, “Le Monde”, Paris, 13 May, 1990.

“

“Film”

Bożena Janicka “The term: “non-accusable guilt,” I have heard it recently from Krzysztof Piesiewicz, a solicitor and screenwriter of the Decalogue (made by Krzysztof Kieślowski). It is the kind of guilt for which only you can blame yourself and nobody else has that right. An extreme example of that would be: somebody who failed to embark on saving somebody’s life, because he knew for sure that the person could not have been saved and as a consequence he can die himself.

Some people will overturn such guilt, others will not be able to live with it. Ordinary measures are simply ill-suited if somebody was able to meet such challenge.

Limits of innocence: can a heroic decision become in certain circumstances an obligation?8.

7

Agnieszka Holland talking to Jan Strzałka, „Tygodnik Powszechny”, 2003,

8

Bożena Janicka, Korczak, „Film”, 1990, nr 4, 28.01.1990, s. 4.

no 13 (2803), 30 March 2003.

DANTON

Costumers: Anne de Laugardiere, Wiesława Starska, Fanny Yakubowicz, Julie Lherm, Mimi Gayo, Anne le Moal, Katherine Dorr; Production companies: Les Films du Losagne; Zespół

France, Poland 1983

Filmowy X; Les Films Moliere; Gaumont (co-production);

Feature film

TF1 Films Production (co-production); S.F.P.C. (co-production); T.M. (co-production); Ministère de la

Screenplay: Jean-Claude Carrière (based on the play by

Culture (participation: Paris); Film Polski (participation);

Stanisława Przybyszewska: L’Affaire Danton / Sprawa

Producers: Margaret Menegoz (Les Films du Losange),

Dantona); in collaboration with: ANDRZEJ WAJDA,

Barbara Pec-Ślesicka (Zespół Filmowy X);

Agnieszka Holland, Bolesław Michałek, Jacek Gąsiorowski;

Executive producer: Alain Depardieu;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Production manager: Patrick Bordier, Jean-Marc

Cinematographer: Igor Luther;

Deschamps, Jean de Tregomain, Laurent Thiery, Alina Kłobu-

Original music: Jean Prodromides;

kowska, Maciej Wojtulewicz, Maciej Skalski, Anna Grot;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Sound Department: Jean-Pierre Ruh,

Distributors: theatrical: Gaumont (1982) (France),

Dominique Hennequin, Piotr Zawadzki, Louis Gimel,

Concorde Filmverleih (1983) (West Germany);

Bruno Charier, Gerard Lecas;

Gaumont Blu-ray Disc (2010) (France) (Blu-ray) (DVD)

Set design: Allan Starski; Costume design: Yvonne Sassinot de Nesle;

Filming locations: France: Château de Guermantes, Seineet-Marne; Grandes Écuries de Versailles, Versailles; Senlis,

Cast: Gerard Depardieu (Georges Danton),

Oise;

Wojciech Pszoniak (Maximilien de Robespierre), Anne Alvaro (Eleonora), Roland Blanche (Lacroix),

Color: color;

Patrice Chereau (Camille Desmoulins), Emmanuelle Debever

Running time: 136 min, 3733.8 m;

(Louison), Krzysztof Globisz (Amar), Ronald Guttman

Printed film format: 35 mm;

(Herman), Gerard Hardy (Jean Lambert Tallien),

Aspect ratio: 1.66 : 1;

Tadeusz Huk (Couthon), Stephane Jobert (Panis),

Sound format: mono;

Marian Kociniak (Lindet), Marek Kondrat (Barere de Vieusac), Bogusław Linda (Louis Antoine Saint-Just),

First screenings: 12.01.1983; festival premiere: 10.09.1983,

Alain Mace (Heron), Bernard Maitre (Legendre), Lucien Melki

Toronto International Film Festival; Polish premiere: 31.01.1983;

(Philippe Fabre D’Eglantine), Serge Merlin (Philippeaux), Leonard Pietraszak (Nicolas Carnot Lazare), Roger Planchon

Awards and distinctions: Prix Louis Delluc for Andrzej

(Tinville Fouquier), Angel Sedgwick (brat Eleonory),

Wajda, 1982; Cesar for Best Director, nominated for Cesar

Andrzej Seweryn (Bourdon), Franciszek Starowieyski

for Best Actor (Gerard Depardieu), Best Adapted

(Jacques Louis David), Jerzy Trela (Varenne Billaud),

Screenplay, Best Film, Best Sound, 1983; Award for Best

Jacques Villaret (Westermann), Angela Winkler

Actor for Wojciech Pszoniak and Gerard Depardieu,

(Lucille Desmoulins), Jean-Loup Wolff

Montreal World Film Festival, 1983; nominated for Gold

(Herault de Seychelles), Czesław Wołłejko (Vadier),

Hugo for Best Feature, Chicago International Film Festival,

Małgorzata Zajączkowska (Servant Duplay);

1983; Critics Award at Polish Film Festival, 1984; BAFTA Film Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 1984; National Society

Assistant directors: Hugues de Laugardiere,

of Film Critics Award for Best Actor (Gerard Depardieu),

Krystyna Grochowicz, Michel Lisowski, Elsa Chabrol;

1984; ALFS Award (London Critics Circle Film Awards) for

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

Director of the Year, 1984.

83

“

“Chicago Sun-Times”

Roger Ebert

“

“The two Poles of the French Revolution were the passionate idealism of the republic and the utter finality of the guillotine. Danton finds itself comfortable at those two extremes and leaves the parts in the middle - the facts, the issues, the minor personalities - to the historians.

This movie may not be an accurate record of the events of 1793 and 1794 (…). But as a record of the fiery passions and glorious personalities of the revolution, it is absolutely

“

superb. (…) Wajda shows Danton and Robespierre, each perfectly aware of the other’s motives and of the possibility of the guillotine, conducting an intellectual duel. The scene of the great confrontation between the two of them is so well acted and directed that, for the first time in any movie about the French Revolution, I felt I was listening to people and not speeches”1.

“

“Newsweek”

J.K. “Led by Wajda’s sure hand, the direction transformed that which might have been a wordy political dialectic into breathtaking cinema. (...) Wajda does not declare a decisive verdict on the subject of the battle between moderation and extremes. The tempo of revolutionary change is so intense that there is probably no way that an individual or even a political party can resist it. Even the pressure of the masses is incapable of deterring the guillotine. Neither Danton’s pragmatism nor Robespierre’s idealism are of any use. This is the gloomy lesson, which Wajda extracts from 18th century French history. It is more than likely that it can be applied to his own country today”2.

“

John Farr “Wajda directing this captivating political drama about the abuses of leadership in post-revolutionary France.

In one of his finest on-screen performances, Depardieu gives Danton a magnetism and moral gravity that quite convincingly reflects the courageous, historic efforts of Lech Wałęsa and the Solidarity movement to overcome oppression in Wajda’s homeland. It is a sterling tragedy, directed with passion and commitment by one of Europe’s greatest film artists”3.

Jean-Claude Carrière “Apart from being an acclaimed director and a Pole, Andrzej Wajda comes from a country which used to by ruled by a communist régime - and he screened a play written by a woman. She showed emotions which prevailed among the revolutionists. I have never found it in any other book about this topic”4 .

Andrzej Wajda “During a revolution, those who survive, win. You can’t allow yourself for a lapse in attention because the opposition are lying in wait to cut off your head. In Warsaw, just before the martial law was introduced you could feel such fever that is typical of revolution, so we brought Gerard Depardieu here, as he was to play Danton”5.

3 1 2

86

Roger Ebert, Danton, “Chicago Sun-Times”, 18.11.1983.

J.K., Danton, “Newsweek”, 24.01.1983.

4

John Farr, in: www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com.

Wajda z Carrierem w Gazeta Cafe: o Dantonie i rewolucji, „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 17.11.2011.

5 Ibidem.

88

89

“Revolution is like Saturn, it devours its own children”, these words spoken by Georges Danton proved to be prophetic for himself as well as for his main opponent, Maximilien de Robespierre6. By speaking about the confrontation of these two leaders of the French revolution, and two characters, Wajda decided to create a portrait of revolution as such. He felt entitled to it after he saw with his won eyes the revolutionary events in Poland, he felt the atmosphere which accompanied the formation of Solidarity in 1980.

by the French revolution and the figure of Robespierre. As it was a play written by a Pole, her outlook on revolution was close to Wajda’s. Some time before, he successfully staged this drama at the Powszechny Theatre (shown from 1975 to 1981). The shooting started towards the end of 1981 in Poland, but the introduction of the martial law made the director move the project to France. It brought very positive results because, in the director’s view, in the streets of Paris and in the historical interiors, Przybyszewska’s text gained in authenticity.

The action of the film starts in the Spring of 1794, at the apogee of the Jacobins’ terror. At the meetings of the Committee of National Safety, Danton and his group are accused of a plot against the government and high treason.

Initially, Robespierre does not agree to trying Danton, but other members of the committee are convinced about such a necessity. Soon Danton receives a secret warning that the government is going to have him arrested. On Robespierre’s initiative, the meeting of the two leaders takes place but they fail to reach an agreement. Robespierre comes to the conclusion that he must get rid of Danton at all costs but Danton understands that he cannot count on any of his rival’s favours. At the Committee of Safety, Robespierre demands that Danton be arrested. It happens soon afterwards; Danton stands trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Despite an excellent defense, he is sentenced to death and guillotined. On the way to the scaffold he says, “Don’t forget to show them my head. It’s worth it”7. Yet, Robespierre cannot stop the machine he triggered himself.

Before the filming started in Paris, in Poland there was an on-going carnival of Solidarity. Wajda invited Gerard Depardieu to Warsaw so that he could see with his own eyes a revolution taking place in the streets and committees (offices of Mazovia Region Solidarity). Wojciech Pszoniak, who played the role of Robespierre, did not need such an introduction as he had played the role in Wajda’s theatrical performance (for five seasons) so he knew everything about the person. Wajda believed that Pszoniak was so ‘integrated’ with this character that he did not want him to learn the role in French (after the premiere there were comments that he made Robespierre human). Since Danton and Robespierre meet only once in the play, the director decided to divide the cast into two groups - the group concentrated around Robespierre was played by Polish actors, while Danton and his friends were played by Frenchmen.

Danton’s screenplay was based on the play Danton’s Case written by Stanisława Przybyszewska8, who was fascinated 6 7 8

In the film we see Danton’s death on April 5th 1794, Robespierre was

guillotined several moths later, on July 28th 1794.

Danton, fragment of dialogue script

Stanisława Przybyszewska (1901 – 35), daughter of Stanisław Przy-

byszewski, one of the representatives of the decadent trend of European modernism in Berlin, and later in Kraków. She wrote short stories and

plays, mostly unfinished ones. Her greatest work is Danton’s Case, staged

at the Wielki Theatre in Lvov in 1931 and Polski Theatre in 1933. Wajda

90

directed this drama at the Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw (premiere on January 25th 1975).

According to French historians, the film too freely treated the historical truth; they considered it misleading because it did not show the background of the revolution. What they saw, though, was a metaphor of Poland. Wajda thought of Danton first and foremost as a psychological study of two strong individualities but he was doubtful whether the film might be too theatrical because the confrontation between Danton and Robespierre was presented mainly through a dialogue. Years later, the director defined Danton as “his only film from those years that has remained vivid till now”9.

9

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i reszta świata, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2000, p. 266.

91

CZŁOWIEK Z ŻELAZA

MaN OF IRON Poland 1981

Assistant makeup artists: Elżbieta Pietrzak,

Feature film

Janina Dybowska-Person; Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

Screenplay: Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski; Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Production company: Film Polski, Łódź;

Cinematographer: Edward Kłosiński;

Zespół Filmowy X, Warsaw;

Original music: Andrzej Korzyński;

Production manager: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling;

Unit production managers: Alina Kłobukowska,

Sound: Piotr Zawadzki;

Maciej Wojtulewicz;

Production Design: Allan Starski;

Production managers: Maciej Skalski, Iwona Ziułkowska,

Set Decoration: Magdalena Dipont;

Iwona Kłapińska, Wanda Helbert, Jacek Górnowicz;

Costume Design: Wiesława Starska;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw; Les Films Molière, Paris (1981); Artificial Eye, London (1982);

Cast: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz (Maciek Tomczyk, Mateusz

United Artists Classics, USA (1983); DVD: Films sans

Birkut), Krystyna Janda (Agnieszka), Marian Opania (Winkel),

Frontières, Paris (2008);

Irena Byrska (Mrs Hulewicz), Wiesława Kosmalska

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

(Wiesława Hulewicz), Bogusław Linda (Dzidek), Franciszek Trzeciak (Badecki), Janusz Gajos (vice chief of

Filming locations: Gdańsk (Central Station, Gdańsk

State Radio and TVn Comitee), Andrzej Seweryn

Shipyards, Fast Urban Railway station), Gdynia;

(capt. Wirski), Marek Kondrat (Grzenda), Jerzy Trela (Antoniak), Krzysztof Janczar (Kryska, Maciek’s friend),

Color: color;

Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda (Hanka Tomczyk),

Running time: 147 min;

Bożena Dykiel (staff manager), Adam Ferency (shipyard

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP:

worker), Maja Komorowska (actress), Janusz Zaorski

Aspect ratio: 1.66 : 1;

(Mundek), Lech Wałęsa (himself), Anna Walentynowicz

Sound format: mono / Dolby Digital;

(herself), Stanisław J. Borowczak (himself), Zbigniew Lis (himself), Teodor Kudła (himself), Tadeusz Fiszbach

First screenings: festival premiere: Cannes Film Festival,

(himself, uncredited);

2.05.1981; Polish premiere: 27.07.1981, Warszawa;

Assistant directors: Andrzej Chodakowski, Stanisław

Awards and distinctions: Palme d’Or, Prize of the

Kałużyński, Łukasz Zieliński, Krystyna Grochowicz;

Ecumenical Jury at Cannes Film Festival, 1981; Oscar

Camera operator: Janusz Kaliciński;

nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, 1982; nomination

Assistant cameras: Jan Ossowski, Krzysztof Ciesielski,

for Cesar Award for Best Foreign Film, 1981; Solidarność

Mieczysław Kozaczyk;

Award at Polish Film Festival, 1981; Golden Grape Award

Music consultant: Małgorzata Przedpełska;

at Lubuskie Film Summer - Łagów, 1981; nomination for

Music recording director, assistant music recording

Gold Hugo, Chicago International Film Festival 1981; Special

engineer: Sławomir Wesołowski, Mariusz Zabrodzki;

Award, For the artistry and independent spirit demonstrated

Assistant editors: Wanda Walerowicz, Danuta Leśniewska;

in his films, 2nd place, NYFCC Award, New York Film Critics

Assistant costume designers: Anna Szczęk,

Circle Awards 1981 (also for Man of Marble); CEC Award,

Donata Czerwik, Leszek Włodarczyk;

Cinema Writers Circle Awards, Spain, 1982; ALFS

Sound assistants: Ernest Zawada, Tadeusz Wosiński;

Award - Director of the Year: Andrzej Wajda, London Critics

Makeup artist: Anna Adamek;

Circle Film Awards 1982.

93

“

Andrzej Wajda “Other films seem to me to be more expressive artistically, but some seem to come at the right time. Man of Iron first became known in Poland, till December 1981 it had been watched by several million viewers, and then it reached the world interested in the events in Poland.

It is a film-report, inevitably more accidental, its power lies in the fact that we were filming what was in front of our eyes in statu nascendi. We still didn’t know what would happen and how the situation would develop. I was in a hurry because I was rather pessimistic. It turned out I was right – that wasn’t a moment for the victory of freedom yet”1.

1

96

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director, conducted on

23rd October 2012.

“

“France Soir”

Jacqueline Carter “It is not surprising that Man of Iron has won the Golden Palm. It has won unanimous praise for several reasons. The first of these is its perfection. The virtuosity of the Polish director in transforming the most burning current issues into a film masterpiece is another. And furthermore, this is a unique occasion. The fact that the Polish cinema could make such a statement at the Cannes festival is (perhaps) a guarantee of freedom” 2.

2

Jacqueline Carter, “France Soir”, Paris, 28.05.1981.

Man of Iron is a film-document, in which Wajda captured live the remarkably important moment in Polish history the triumph of Solidarity in August 1980. In the episodes we can see the heroes of those events: Lech Wałęsa and Anna Walentynowicz. The film turned out to be a historic triumph of the Polish cinema - in 1981 Wajda received for it the Palme d’Or of the Cannes festival and the Ecumenical Jury Prize, as well a nomination for Oscar (in 1982 the film was withdrawn from the Oscar competition by the Polish communist authorities).

The film was made in reply to current social expectations.

On 29th August 1980 Wajda appeared at the Gdańsk Shipyard where the striking workers were negotiating with the party bosses of the Polish People’s Republic and one of the workers asked him: “Why don’t you make a film about us...”. “What film?”, the director asked, “Man of Iron!”, the labourer replied. “I’ve never made a film to order but I couldn’t ignore this appeal”, Wajda reminisces.3 3

He made Man of Iron in record-time. He could not have known the sad finale of those events, the approaching act of violence prepared by the authorities for many months– the martial law which would be introduced on 13th December 1981, but intuitively he must have anticipated such course of events, that is why the production of the film was a race against time. In less than two months Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski wrote the screenplay, in fact during the shooting. Several scenes and dialogues were written by Agnieszka Holland. Wajda included in the film authentic footage with the speeches, discussions and conversations in the shipyard, poems and song from 1970 Janek Wiśniewski padł, sensationally performed by Krystyna Janda. He also used the documentary footage from the events in Gdańsk 1970, when the communist regime cruelly put down the workers’ protest, and what had not been photographed, he staged.

Cited after: www.wajda.pl/film24.

97

In Man of Iron, the director returns to the heroes and plots known from Man of Marble. The tale about the Birkut family is a condensed history of the stormy decades of Polish People’s Republic: from the footage showing student protests of 1968, the December Events on the coast in 1970, through June 1976 and the formation of Solidarity.

Maciek Tomczyk, Mateusz Birkut’s son is a labourer at the Vladimir Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, he is an active member of the independent trade unions and of the strike committee. He got married to Agnieszka, the journalist who tried to make a film about his father (Man of Marble), they have a child. We see the events through the eyes of a radio reporter Winkel, who is ordered by a state radio and TV boss to make a report that would slander Maciek.

Winkel tries to be a detective and using the communist special services he is to incriminate Tomczyk and his circle.

Addicted to alcohol, Winkel is a deeply unhappy, opportunistic journalist who makes propaganda pieces for his peace of mind and in order to keep his job, but he used

100

to be a decent reporter who spoke in defense of the truth (during the December ’70 events he supported the striking workers), but yielding to small, everyday compromises he has become completely confused. The reporter investigation, although commissioned by cynical provocateurs, gave him a chance to find himself in the centre of a peaceful revolution, which started in the striking shipyard but spread on the whole Tricity and the whole country. It also gave Winkel a chance for a moral rehabilitation. During his visit at the shipyard, very excited he calls Warsaw and says he resigns. He does not want to be a minion to the hypocritical system. Winkler believed when he saw with his own eyes that the truth and struggle for human dignity might win. He saw the act of signing the August Agreement by Lech Wałęsa and vice-prime minister of the communist government, ending the strike and beginning a new chapter in the Polish history and soon (after 8 years) also in the history of Europe. Yet, for Winkel it is too late. The moment he breaks with the past and wants to stand on the side of the striking people, he gets exposed and rejected. “No one will ever shake hands with

you”4, says Dzidek, a young cinema-projectionist who was helping him to collect materials, hoping that he wants to show the truth about the strike. This is probably the most excruciating moment of the film: the tragedy of a trapped, downhearted human being, happening against the background of a landmark event, in a way being the fulfillment of his youthful dreams.

For Marian Opania, playing Winkel, it was a dream role, the most important one in his life, although initially he was supposed only to take part in an episode.

Aleksander Jackiewicz wrote that “this almost a spokesman of the director, narrator and presenter of the film, its main character and, you are tempted to say, its main drama. Oh yes! With the figure of Winkel, Wajda himself and his professional circles settle accounts for their cooperation with so-called politicians of culture, ‘decision-makers’, with censors. He shows what pressure was put on him and on others and that everybody - including himself, 4 Man of Iron, dialogue scripts.

his works, his art - was at risk of getting crushed by the system. Winkel is not an attempt to lie his way out, as some people see it, but a tragic figure and an act of exoneration, not for Wajda himself, because he did not need it, but for many others”5.

Krystyna Janda, who played the role of Agnieszka said that Man of Iron was a complement to her civic education, and consolidated her way of thinking about the country and about the drama of our history: “Sometimes I realize with horror that if I hadn’t met the right people, hadn’t read the right books, I would have remained an idiot who has no idea about anything. In the film there is a similar thread: thanks to Birkut, Agnieszka enters the circle of the thinking people, which changes her completely. In this role I couldn’t allow myself for any of my favourite extravagance and I understood very well that it had to be that way”6.

5

Aleksander Jackiewicz, Moja filmoteka. Kino polskie, Wydawnictwa

6

Krystyna Janda, Tylko się nie pchaj, BGW, Warsaw 1992, p. 45.

Artystyczne i Filmowe, Warsaw 1983, p. 499.

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Opinion of Culture Dept. of Polish Communist Party on “Man of Iron”: “The film does not receive widespread interest abroad because of the mediocre artistic value and banal for Western audience political pronounced”, 19.05.1981

Cannes Film Festival, 2nd May, 1981, Awards ceremony, from left: Sean Connery, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Andrzej Wajda with Golden Palm

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PANNY Z WILKA

THE MAIDS OF WILKO LES DEMOISELLES DE WILKO AKA: Young Girls of Wilko; The Young Ladies of Wilko;

Make up department: Grażyna Dąbrowska,

The Girl from Wilko; Die Mädchen von Wilko (West

Anna Włodarczyk;

Germany); Die Mädchen vom Wilkohof (East Germany);

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel; Music supervisor: Anna Grabowska;

Poland, France 1979

Assistant editor: Barbara Grodner;

Feature film

Production companies: Films Molière, Paris; Pierson Productions; Polish Corporation for Film Production,

Screenplay: Zbigniew Kamiński, based on short story by

Warsaw; Zespól Filmowy X, Warsaw;

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz Panny z Wilka / The Maids of Wilko,

Production managers: Tony Molière, Barbara Pec-Ślesicka;

ed. 1932;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Artificial Eye (1982), UK; Asociace Ceských Filmových Klubu

Cinematographer: Edward Kłosiński;

(ACFK), Czech Republic; DVD: Vanguard Cinema,

Music: Karol Szymanowski, 1st String Concert;

Los Angeles (2003), USA; Silver Screen (2007), Brazil;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Sound Department: Piotr Zawadzki; Production designer: Allan Starski;

Filming locations: Radachówka, near Kołbiela,

Set Decorator: Maria Osiecka-Kuminek;

Mazovian District;

Costume design: Wiesława Starska; Color: color (Eastmancolor); Cast: Daniel Olbrychski (Wiktor Ruben), Anna Seniuk

Running time: 116 min, 3168 m;

(Julcia), Maja Komorowska (Jola), Stanisława Celińska (Zosia),

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

Krystyna Zachwatowicz (Kazia), Christine Pascal (Tunia),

Sound format: mono;

Zbigniew Zapasiewicz (Julcia’s husband), Zofia Jaroszewska (Wiktor’s aunt), Tadeusz Białoszczyński (Wiktor’s uncle),

First screenings: Polish premiere: 4. 09.1979, Warsaw;

Paul Dutron (Jola’s husband), Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (himself),

festival premiere: 11.10.1979, New York Film Festival; Finland:

Andrzej Łapicki (doctor), Joanna Poraska (mother);

2.11.1979; West Germany: 9.05.1980;

Assistant directors: Krystyna Grochowicz, Jolanta Jedynak, Magdalena Holland, Marek Netzel;

Awards and distinctions: Nominated to the Oscar, Academy Award 1980, Best Foreign Language Film; Special

Camera operators: Ireneusz Hartowicz, Janusz Kalicinski;

Jury Prize (Andrzej Wajda) ex aequo with Do krwi ostatniej by

Assistant camera operators: Bohdan Borewicz,

Jerzy Hoffman, Best Production Design (Allan Starski, Maria

Jerzy Tomczuk;

Osiecka-Kuminek), Polish Film Festival, Gdańsk 1979.

105

“

Andrzej Wajda “I often reached for the prose of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (The Birch Wood, The Maids of Wilko, Sweet Rush, June Night) because as a writer he chooses remarkable themes, expressive characters and the background which speaks for itself. Unfortunately, it was the political films that were noticed in the world and not these ones. As for The Maids of Wilko, initially I wasn’t very keen on it, it’s only now that it’s slowly growing on me. It’s a completely different film, it doesn’t try to vehemently convince the viewer of anything.

There is this life that flows, has its own order and suddenly in this stable life there appears a man who arouses the hopes of some women. It’s a beautifully written story, so compact; the film dialogues were taken straight from it, it was a wonderful material for a film. Iwaszkiewicz was sometimes signed under the screenplay but he didn’t like to participate in the process of writing. He always left freedom to directors, especially to me because we worked earlier on The Birch Wood. The Maids of Wilko had something that is missing from other Polish films, and Polish literature is not too rich in it either, namely - the women characters.

In this film, there’s one of the best scenes I’ve ever filmed.

I mean the scene when the sisters are having a Lithuanian dish for breakfast - cucumbers with honey and they are talking. It was so natural that suddenly the man who introduced so much turmoil was no longer necessary.

Something happened that when I was directing it I thought: I’m going home, and you can go on playing without me. It was interesting because it meant that the film was acquiring such power, that it lived with its own life. It turned out that all the answers that actors and producers demand from the director, were already given by the author of the short story. The actresses were saying their dialogue and they knew what resulted from it”1.

1

106

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director conducted on 23rd October 2012.

“

Aleksander Jackiewicz “The Maids of Wilko came to symbolize all the girls we once loved, and who seem to us, when we meet them again after many years, so mysteriously changed as to be nearly unrecognizable”2.

“The story The Maids of Wilko had been on my mind for a long time. The idea sprang up following the success of The Birch Wood at home and abroad. Yet the final decision was also motivated by political necessity. After producing the politically charged Man of Marble it seemed advisable to put the censor off the scent for a while”3.

Andrzej Wajda

“

“The New York Times”

Vincent Canby “Wiktor, the hero of Andrzej Wajda’s fine new comedy, dark comedy, The Maids of Wilko is as exasperating as he is appealing. He’s the kind of man who, in all seriousness, regrets that everything that has passed can be seen only in hindsight”4 .

2

Aleksander Jackiewicz, Panny z Wilka, „Życie Warszawy”, 13.10.1979.

4

Vincent Canby, ‘The Young Girls of Wilko,’ From Poland; A Dark Comedy,

3

Andrzej Wajda, after: www.wajda.pl.

“The New York Times”, 11.10.1979.

One of Wajda’s most visually beautiful films, based on a reflexive short story by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, a classic of the 20th century Polish literature; Wajda used his works many times and encouraged the young directors from his X Film Company to do the same in the 1970s5.

It is an intimate, reflexive tale about human attitude to transition.

Looking for the traces of old emotions, or even love, the protagonist visits a place where he spent his youth and which he left over a dozen years before.

Wiktor Ruben (excellent performance of Daniel Olbrychski), veteran of the Great War in France and the Kiev campaign in 1919, who was unable to complete his studies due to these historical events and now works as an estate administrator, comes to spend his holiday in the country at his uncle’s and visits a nearby manor, a typical Polish gentry palace where he spent his youth in the company of young ladies. Of course, almost all of them were in love with him.

“You should know that in Wilko you’ve become a legend.

We always say ‘ if Wiktor was here he’d repair it, or if Wiktor was here then this or that would happen..’. Even a while ago I said to Jola that in Wiktor’s time it would never have happened”6, says one of the sisters, Julcia. Ruben pretended that he did not notice that. “Well, I never expected that. You see, I thought that my person passed through Wilko like a shadow. And that’s why I didn’t try to get in touch, I thought nobody remembers me here”7.

Apparently, little has changed in the last 15 years that passed since he left Wilko. Now, when he is forty and the girls have become wives and mothers, the old sentiments reappear. Everybody wants the return of their old intimacy but so much has changed... They are a group of dispirited people who act out different roles for one another but they cannot hide that they are not happy or even pleased with their life.

5

Warsaw, 10.VIII.78

director from the X Company, Agnieszka Holland, filmed Evening at

dozen of films and TV dramas, among them masterpiece Mother Joan of

8

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s (1894-1980) short stories were the bases of

Wajda’s The Birch Wood, June Night and Sweet Rush, while the young

the Angels by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Kochankowie z Marony by Jerzy Zarzy6

“Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz to Andrzej Wajda:

Dear Andrzej!

I have read the screenplay and I liked it a lot. I don’t doubt you are able to make a beautiful thing out of it. Of course, you will work on some details while you proceed. E.g. the conversation between Wiktor and Kazia, should it be kitchen or pantry? You can’t decide which one to choose.

I am in favour of pantry, anyways, it’s the reproduction of my conversation that I had with Nula Szymanowska, in a pantry. And the pantry in Tymoszówka was a sort of a living room, something that you would see in Swiss houses as the first, the real belly temple. Also the issue connected with vehicles needs some additional work. They can’t go to shoot ducks by a carriage, they need to use a chaise, cab; anyways you have a one-horse chaise that can be used for the night return of Ruben and Julcia. It’s fairly easy to write additional scenes. The scene with Tunia on the grass can be done by almost anyone. However, the scene showing the night chaise trip is very difficult, you have to do a lot of work here, you need time to do it. Unfortunately, the illness has wracked my brain a bit and not everything is working properly at the moment.

I am afraid that it will be difficult for me to write this scene. Do you think you could wait a bit? Because I can see that you are in a rush. “Wajda and not only Wajda,”

Abdon’s. Iwaszkiewicz’s novels and short stories were adapted into several

108

Including Ruben who, like years before, this time also escapes from love, leaving in tears the desire to commit suicide yet another girl of Wilko in love with him, the lovely Tunia (subtle interpretation of Christine Pascal8).

When he leaves, his uncle warmly says his goodbye but he knows that Wiktor will never return. He takes the ferry across the river of oblivion and boards a train. One of the passengers of an almost empty carriage is Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz in a contemporary, elegant jacket and striped shirt. The writer looks at his lost and confused protagonist with liking and with worry...

cki and Ryś by Stanisław Różewicz.

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Panny z Wilka, in the volume: Opowiadania filmowe, Wydawnictwo Zielona Sowa, Kraków 2009, p. 166-167.

7 Ibidem.

Christine Pascal, born 1953, French actress, writer and film director

(won Prix Louis Delluc, 1992). In 1996, staying in a psychiatric hospital, she committed suicide.

the article is great, that [?] they force you to rush. I would like to warn you that repetition will never be the same.

So that you do not get fooled by the idea that a success can be the same. Of course, the movie may be perceived as great, both by us and by the foreigners – visually and philosophically. What has this Grzelecki written, Poles failed to praise this movie because for them Iwaszkiewicz and Malczewski are just a daily bread. It couldn’t be sillier.

So maybe somebody could write those missing scenes?

Because I would need time and you want to strike while the iron is hot. And you’re right.

Andrzej Wajda to Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz: Warszawa, 3.3.1979

Dear Jarosław, Thank you for your letter and all the praise that I didn’t deserve. I am still anxious that my movie is just a faint shadow of the story that is so beautiful and rich. Hence, I am even more grateful for every word of appreciation you give, for every single comment you provide that I may use.

After the screening, I made some improvements. As to the landscapes showed at the beginning of the movie, I uncovered them by removing credits – and at the end I reinstated the scene with Jola. It’s much better now.

When you get back home, please come to visit me again and we’ll talk.

Be well. (…)

During the recent years, I have lived chasing, afraid of failing to achieve “everything,” as if it was possible at all.

This condition did not help to direct The Maids of Wilko.

Struggling with myself, with the changing rhythm, with the necessity to have a deeper and more natural look at the world. Yes! I owe a lot to this movie, much more than this movie owes me.”9

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz to Andrzej Wajda Stawisko, on 23.2.1979

Dear, dearest Andrzej!

I am still impressed by your movie and I can’t stop thinking about it. At the same time I suddenly got afraid that you may feel offended by my little comments. Indeed, it’s very bold of me to comment on such great artist and professional. But in a way, you have given me the proxy to do it, by dragging me into working and collaborating in this great work. I am a bit surprised that you used me, at the same time downgrading the export-like value of your work (who would know who is Iwaszkiewicz!) but at the same time you gave me a full satisfaction as the author of the story. I would like to thank you for that and I will continue to feel grateful in my heart. I only feel sorry about the end and the landscape shortcuts; they were so beautiful in the previous version. I still hope that you are not angry with me and I am still amazed by your work, but irritabilegenus vatum – and I consider you the great vates of our art.

“

“V.S.D.”, Paris

CLAUDE MAURIAC 31 May, 1979

“One can feel Chekhov’s presence (...)

O Slavs! All it takes are a few men and women still enjoying some privileges but already relegated to oblivion, living on the banks of the river of life! A few unhappy souls who love but are unloved! And the sweetness of a new spring, the hypnotic spell of a bygone summer, tenderness in vain, and unexpressed despair. Also, birdsong (...), of which one cannot say whether it opens the gates of hope, or closes them. (...) It is sad, beautiful and poetic. Yes, poetic, in the now often contested but irreplaceable meaning of that beautiful word - poetry.”10

Hugs, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz

110

9

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Andrzej Wajda, Letters, Zeszyty Literackie,

10

Cited after www.wajda.pl.

Warszawa 2013, p. 42-43, 46-47.

BEZ ZNIECZULENIA

ROUGH TREATMENT AKA: Without Anesthesia;

Assistant editor: Maria Kalicińska; Sound assistants: Małgorzata Lewandowska,

Poland 1978

Tadeusz Wosiński;

Feature film

Assistant costume designer: Anna Włodarczyk;

Screenplay: Agnieszka Holland, ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Assistant makeup artist: Grażyna Dąbrowska;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

Makeup artist: Halina Ber;

Cinematography: Edward Kłosiński; Original music: Jerzy Derfel;

Production Companies: Film Polski, Łódź;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling;

Zespół Filmowy X, Warsaw;

Sound Department: Piotr Zawadzki;

Production Manager: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka;

Production Design: Allan Starski;

Unit production managers: Alina Kłobukowska,

Set Decoration: Maria Osiecka-Kuminek;

Małgorzata Pakuła, Bożena Michalska, Tomasz Bek;

Costume Design: Wiesława Starska; Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw; Cast: Zbigniew Zapasiewicz (Jerzy Michałowski),

New Yorker Films, New York City (in the USA, 1982);

Ewa Dałkowska (Ewa Michałowska), Andrzej Seweryn (Jacek

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Rościszewski), Krystyna Janda (Agata), Roman Wilhelmi

www.stopklatka.pl;

(Broński), Emilia Krakowska (Wanda Jakowicz), Kazimierz Kaczor (Editor-in-chief), Magda Teresa Wójcik

Filming locations: Warsaw;

(Joanna Cichoń), Jerzy Stuhr (Jerzy Porębowicz), Iga Mayr (Anna Łukasik, Ewa’s mother), Aleksandra Jasieńska

Color: color (Eastmancolor);

(Oleńka), Marta Salinger (Gabcia), Stefania Iwińska (Józefa),

Running time: 131 min;

Halina Golanko (Halina Łukasik), Danuta Balicka-Satanowska

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

(judge), Jolanta Kozak-Sutowicz (Stenia), Zygmunt Kęstowicz

Sound format: mono;

(secretary), Krzysztof Bauman (Student), Tomasz Stockinger (student), Jerzy Radziwiłowicz (student), Andrzej Wajda

First screenings: theatrical in Poland: 27.11.1978;

(tv programme’s participant, uncredited);

international festival premieres: Chicago International Film Festival, 10.1979; New York Film Festival, 9.10.1979;

Assistant directors: Krystyna Grochowicz, Krzysztof Tchórzewski, Jolanta Jedynak;

Awards and distinctions: Grand Prix - Golden Lions at

Camera operator: Janusz Kaliciński;

Polish Film Festival, 1978; nomination for Palme d’Or,

Assistant cameras: Jan Ossowski, Jerzy Tomczuk;

Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes Film Festival, 1979;

Assistant production designer:

nomination for Gold Hugo for Best Feature at Chicago

Maria Lubelska-Chrołowska;

International Film Festival, 1979; Warsaw Siren 1979,

Assistant set decorator: Magdalena Dipont;

Film Critics Award, Warsaw.

115

“

“

“

“The Village Voice”

Michael Atkinson “In Wajda’s typical sideways-glance manner, we see the narrative coalesce piecemeal: after a smug TV appearance, a famous war-zone journalist finds his life mysteriously crumbling. For no reason, his wife leaves him, his classes are canceled, and his job comes under question; mostly, we realize late, it’s a divorce story - and a walking metaphor for living under Communism, where secret decisions could alter your world forever”1. „Le Point”, Paris

Krzysztof Wolicki “Rough Treatment presents the first daringly critical portrait of the country’s present-day reality.(...) After the Grand Prix award in Gdańsk Festival, the film was attacked by the Party press. (…) After a special showing for foreign journalists, a Soviet critic complained that the characters “lacked psychological credibility”. To which Wajda responded with uncharacteristic ferocity: “What are you talking about? It’s about politics, not psychology!”. All party critics conspired to treat the film as a “fairy tale”, claiming it had nothing whatsoever to do with real life”2.

Andrzej Wajda “Rough Treatment. What is most personal in his film is its title. I drew it from my talks to Daniel Olbrychski, who complained about his difficulties in relations with his beloved women, who were giving him ‘rough treatment’”3.

In Rough Treatment, once again Wajda reaches for a contemporary theme, depicting the process of destroying some independently thinking, outstanding individualities of the Polish People’s Republic. Wajda turned to Agnieszka Holland to write a screenplay for him; she is a daughter of Henryk Holland, a well-known journalist who jumped out of the window of his Warsaw flat during a house search conducted by Security Service. Rough Treatment was one of the first films from the trend of the ‘Cinema of Moral Anxiety’4 .

“What are you most scared of?”, a question is asked. “Defeat. I’ve had several failures in my life, but never a real defeat”5, says Jerzy Michałowski, the main character of Rough Treatment, in an interview at he beginning of the film. He is a well-known war correspondent (a character modeled on Ryszard Kapuściński, called ‘the emperor of reportage’6) and in the opening television sequence of the film we can see him as a man of success, generally respected and recognized, an authority who talks to millions of viewers about the wars and revolutions he saw from close-up. His life seems ideal, he has gained esteem at work, besides, his private life is settled, he raises two daughters. On his return from one of his foreign trips, he is in for a painful blow – his wife tells him she is leaving. The man is absolutely astonished by this situation, especially as his wife has got involved with his younger colleague and chief antagonist – Jacek Rościszewski, a man full of complexes, a demagogue jealous of his rival’s position, whom he accuses of “polishing the language of lies in cafes and salons”7.

4

The name for his trend was coined by director Janusz Kijowski. The

beginning of the new trend in Polish cinema was marked by Krzysztof Kieślowski’s full-length debut Personnel from 1976, and its end came

1

Michael Atkinson, Storm Warnings: Resistance and Reflection in Polish

2

Krzysztof Wolicki, “Le Point”, Paris, 5th March.1979.

3

118

Cinema, “The Village Voice”, 2nd February, 2010.

Cited after: www.wajda.pl.

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director, conducted on 23rd October 2012.

with the introduction of the martial law and putting aside on the shelf, i.e. banning the distribution, of inter alia Ryszard Bugajski’s 5 6 7

Interrogation.

Rough Treatment, fragment of dialogue script.

In reference to on of his best known books Emperor about Haile

Selassie I (published in 1978). Ryszard Kapuściński died in 2007.

Rough Treatment, fragment of dialogue script.

The crisis in his private life coincides with his professional crisis - the influential journalist from one day to another falls into disgrace. It starts with small things; he does not get a subscription for “Newsweek”, his lectures at the university are suspended “due to a planned journey abroad’, which also gets suddenly called off... We can see the process of the protagonist’s slow fall, until his divorce case, during which witnesses give false, incriminating testimonies (in a brilliant, episodic role of a lawyer we could see Jerzy Stuhr).

120

In a small role, atypical of her, there appears Krystyna Janda. After the excessive expression she demonstrated in Man of Marble, in Rough Treatment she remains silent (she only says one sentence after the tragic finale, “I only left for a while”9).

“In the gentle years of late Gierek there often happened such revolting things. Suddenly, from one day to another man lost his anchorage. All the doors got closed for him.

The telephones fell silent. He remained at the mercy of the closest ones, if they were going to take on a collective responsibility. There often happened a breakdown of marriage, and then the solitude turned out to be ultimate”, the director explained the genesis of his film8.

Wajda was inclined to have the married couple reconcile at the end, he wanted them to leave the court together.

However, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz did not make a single gesture of reconciliation, walking he unexpectedly accelerated and did not let the film wife catch up with him.

This is how Andrzej Wajda summed up this incident. “(Zapasiewicz) said later that ‘It would have been false.

After all those things, a reconciliation is not possible’. For the first time in my career, an actor has disregarded my instructions. I understood I had to trust him. I accepted this solution and now I consider it right”10. He said the actor understood the character perfectly well and treated it extremely personally, as if it was a story about himself.

8

9 Rough Treatment, fragment of dialogue script.

Wajda. Moje filmy, eds. Janusz Fogler and Joanna Słodowska, Stowarzyszenie Filmowców Polskich, Warsaw 1998, p. 136.

10 Wajda. Moje filmy, op. cit., p. 139.

Człowiek z marmuru

Man of Marble Poland 1976 Feature film

Production Company: Zespół Filmowy X, Warsaw; Film Polski Film Agency, Warsaw;

Screenplay: Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski;

Production manager: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Unit production managers: Andrzej Smulski,

Cinematography: Edward Kłosiński;

Alina Kłobukowska;

Original music, conductor: Andrzej Korzyński;

Production managers: Elżbieta Kozłowska,

songs performed by: Alibabki;

Janusz Dziumowicz, Waldemar Król;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling; Sound: Piotr Zawadzki;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw;

Production design: Allan Starski, Wojciech Majda;

Asociace Ceských Filmových Klubu (ACFK) (1977), Czech

Set decoration: Maria Osiecka-Kuminek;

Republic; New Yorker Films (1981), USA; VHS: New Yorker

Costume design: Lidia Rzeszewska, Wiesława Starska

Video (1990), USA; DVD: Vanguard Cinema (2003), USA;

(Konopelska);

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Cast: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz (Mateusz Birkut, Maciek

Filming locations: Warsaw (TVP headquarter); Nowa

Tomczyk, Birkut’s son), Krystyna Janda (Agnieszka), Tadeusz

Huta, Kraków; Katowice; Zakopane; Kozłówka Palace;

Łomnicki (film director Jerzy Burski), Jacek Łomnicki (young

Gdańsk (Gdańsk Shipyard, Fast Urban Railway station

Jerzy Burski), Michał Tarkowski (Wincenty Witek, Birkut’s

Gdańsk Stocznia);

friend, in 70s direktor of Huta Katowice), Piotr Cieślak (Michalak, sercet service offic er, in 70s in Pagart

Color: color, black and white;

Entertainment Agency), Wiesław Wójcik (comrade Jodła),

Running time: 153 min;

Krystyna Zachwatowicz (Hanka Tomczyk, Birkut’s wife),

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP (2012);

Magda Teresa Wójcik (editor), Bogusław Sobczuk (TV

Aspect ratio: 1.33 : 1;

producer), Leonard Zajączkowski (cameraman), Jacek

Sound format: mono / Dolby Digital (DCP);

Domański (soundman), Zdzisław Kozień (Agnieszka’s father), Wiesław Drzewicz (Hanka’s husband);

First screenings: 25 February 1977, Warszawa; 30 May 1978, Cannes Film Festival;

Second assistant directors: Krystyna Grochowicz, Witold Holtz;

Awards and distinctions: Critics Award (unofficial as a

Second second assistant directors: Leszek Tarnowski,

brick) at Polish Film Festival, Gdańsk 1977; FIPRESCI Prize

Magdalena Stelmaszczyk;

at Cannes Film Festival, 1978; New York Film Critics Circle

Camera operators: Jacek Łomnicki, Jan Ossowski,

Awards - Special Award for “the artistry and independent

Jerzy Tomczuk;

spirit demonstrated in his (Wajda’s) films”, also for Man of

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

Iron; Grand Prix, best actor: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz,

Music consultant: Małgorzata Jaworska;

International Film Festival FEST in Beograd, 1979; Crystal Star,

Editor assistant: Maria Kalicińska;

best actor: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, International Film Festival in

Makeup artist: Anna Adamek; Makeup assistant:

Brussel, 1979; Special Jury’s Award, International Film Festival

Iwona Kamińska;

in Cartagena, 1980.

123

“ “

Andrzej Wajda “A film like that would have been unthinkable in any other socialist country. Because it couldn’t have happened that a labourer comes to the working class government with some grudges. It caused total astonishment”1.

Alberto Moravia “The beauty of this exceptional film lies in the complexity of the director’s attitude towards Birkut, a representative - perfect in his submissiveness - of the whole miserable, alienated period. Wajda wants to communicate two opposing truths: first, that stalinism was a disaster and second, that the people who believed in it - and whom it consequently crushed - were driven by an honest spirit of idealism. It hasn’t been easy to juxtapose these two messages, but Wajda has succeeded completely. Like every artist worth his name, he began not with the typical, but with the individual. Before Birkut became a lead labourer he possessed all the virtues and vices which have always been a constant element of humanity, regardless of place and time. Disguised by the label of socialist hero were humility and decency - qualities which made him a real hero”2.

Wajda considers his Man of Marble one of his most perfect films in terms of artistic aspects and at the same time it had a huge political ‘striking power’. The project was conceived in the early 60s, but for over a decade it stood no chances of realization (according to the director it was due to the fact that the screenplay had been earlier, on August 6th 1963, published in the “Kultura” weekly and “it was read by many comrades who were keen on showing off their party

126

1

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director, conducted on

2

Alberto Moravia, “L’Espresso”, Rome, 29 April, 1979.

October 23rd 2012.

vigilance”3). It was Józef Tejchma, minister of culture and art, who took the risk and supported this initiative. The idea for the screenplay was drawn from an anecdote told

by Jerzy Bossak 4. He mentioned a certain bricklayer who came to a job office, which he left empty-handed because in Nowa Huta they only needed people for a steel foundry.

Soon, one of the clerks realized that he had been a hero of socialist labour, famous in the previous political season.

Agnieszka, a film school student, (it was Agnieszka Osiecka5, in those days studying at the Łódź Film School, who was an inspiration for this expressive figure) is making her diploma film. Its protagonist is a bricklayer, Mateusz Birkut - an over-achieving worker from the 50s, a hero of the Nowa Huta6 construction, one of the symbols of the transformations which were happening during the communist regime. Agnieszka’s and Birkut’s plots are told in the film parallel to each other. The labourer’s course of life is being unveiled during the filmmaker’s investigation, her conversations with the people who knew him – it is a narrative construction known from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. Agnieszka slowly discovers that Birkut, initially the hero of propaganda film chronicles, later on became a victim of the communist system.

3

Wajda. Moje filmy, ed. Janusz Fogler and Joanna Słodowska, Stowarzy-

4

Jerzy Bossak (1910-89), born Burger-Naum, documentary film direc-

5

6

szenie Filmowców Polskich, Warsaw 1998, p. 126

tor, professor of Łódź Film School, artistic chief of Documentary and Feature Film Production Company in Warsaw.

Agnieszka Osiecka (1936-97), poet, writer, author of screenplays, film

director, songwriter of circa 2000 songs, one of the most significant icons of Polish culture in 60s and 70s.

Nowa Huta is a district of Kraków, but started in 1949 as a separate town near Kraków, town of new industry - a huge steel mill, the

Vladimir Lenin Steelworks, the biggest in Poland, and new kind of

people: “The town was to become an ideal town for the Communist propaganda and populated mostly by industrial workers”( Jerzy

Aleksander Karnasiewicz, Nowa Huta. Crumbs of Life and the Meanders of History, photo anthology; Wydawnictwo Towarzystwo Słowaków w Polsce, Kraków, 2003.

The screenplay was written by Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski7, who had earlier collaborated with Wajda during The Ashes, but he was also the author of, inter alia, a socialist-realistic novel Coal and... a series Heroes of Socialist Labour, presenting the profiles of well-known bricklayers.

However, Wajda’s film is not only a tale of the 50s, it is also a portrait of the Gierek era. Poland of the 70s, contrasted with Stalin era seems to be an oasis of freedom and modernity; gradually, but together with the young filmmaker we discover that it is only an illusion. We still face the same communism, only in new settings. At the end of the film, the two tales and two epochs come together, when it turns out that (although it is not said overtly) Mateusz Birkut died in Gdynia in December 1970, shot by police bullets. Agnieszka will not finish her film.

The authorities were alarmed by the film in this form, that is why it was decided that Wajda’s film be released without any mention in the media8. There was only one show of the film at the “Skarpa” cinema, after the premiere the film was playing for a few days at the “Wars” cinema. However, people were passing the information to one another by word of mouth and in front of the ticket offices there were long queues, even special waiting lists were made for the tickets. The precautions used caused that Wajda’s film became even more popular. Yet, it was out of the question that the film should represent Poland at international festivals. It was only due to the clever tricks employed of Wajda and his French distributor, Tony Moliere, who bought the film and received a copy of Man of Marble to prepare for distribution. Thanks to this, the film was seen by the director of Cannes Film Festival and as a result Man of Marble was presented at an out-of-competition show during this festival in 1978, where it received FIPRESCI prize. The fact that the film also received special journalists’ award at the Festival of

130

Polish Feature Films in Gdańsk in 1977, was met with discontent of the authorities.

“I was lucky that I came across the best artists who could play in it, and nobody knew them then. That Jurek Radziwiłowicz and Krystyna Janda played in it was an extraordinary stroke of luck...9”. Radziwiłowicz and Janda are a couple to whom Man of Marble owes most, according to Wajda. “They gave this film the sincerity and courage of youth as well as their first love for the cinema”10, the director believes. And he goes on, “There were voices in the crew that Janda plays in a caricatural way. I didn’t agree for a moment, I wanted to have the present day on screen, not only in the shooting and way of narration, but first of all in Agnieszka’s behavior. Knowing that young audiences will look through her eyes at the dusted-off topic of a hero of socialist labour, I counted most on her way of behaving in front of the camera”11.

Man of Marble is one of the most important movies among Andrzej Wajda’s achievements and generally in the history of Polish post-war cinema. Its construction is brilliant.

Maybe the very long time it took the project to “mature” helped it to become nobler. Fantastic production: screenplay and dialogues, scenography, cameras and finally the perfect directing and acting. It’s not a surprise. In a sense, it was a movie that was a dream of Andrzej Wajda and the whole crew. They waited a decade to be able to produce it and now understood the sense of their work and mission.

Yes, we can keep travestying Lenin’s Bolshevik slogan that “a movie is the most important of arts.” Of course, it meant “the most important for us, Bolsheviks.” But as it turned out, not only for them. It proved that it was the most important art for every 20th century man, also those who failed to accept the vision of “humanity’s happiness.”

7

Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski (1928-83), writer, author of screenplays

9

8

Andrzej Zawistowski, Jak rzeźbiono ‘Człowieka z marmuru’,

10 Ibidem.

(e. i. for 3 Wajda’s films), film director.

„Biuletyn IPN”, No 3 (110), March 2010, p. 65.

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i reszta świata, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2000, p. 168.

11 Ibidem.

In the system of state cinematography, controlled by the communist party, state authorities, censorship and partially subject to the security apparatus as the political police was euphemistically called, it was difficult to produce a movie that would be completely in line with the official political and cultural doctrine. In fact, it wasn’t possible at all. Why did Andrzej Wajda succeed?

Firstly, because he was a good director, his movies were appreciated by Polish – and what’s more important – international audience. Because he won many prestigious

awards on various important festivals around the world and additionally, his movies made quite a lot of money on international distribution.

Secondly, because one communist politician who became the minister of culture and art, respected by many people until today, decided, maybe for humanitarian, aesthetic reasons or simply out of political interest, that the time for the “new thaw,” similar to the 1956 one has come. That politician, today his name is not really important - he realised it at the time, in the mid-1979s and didn’t care

131

about becoming famous - decided to support, against the opinion of many of his comrades in the Central Committee, the project of an experienced artist, Andrzej Wajda, and his crew, who wanted their movie to “move” both the people and the system of power. And he gave consent to the production of antisocialist movie in the communist system; moreover, the communist system has financed it.

Keeping in mind Lenin’s words, we may finally say, that it was about a movie, a fleeting art, which may be appreciated or not, and the fact is that it is always followed by a new one… And in this framework of political and financial decision, Minister Józef Tejchma, because at the end, we want to share the name of the perpetrator, as well as Andrzej Wajda, the scriptwriter Ścibor-Rylski and other people involved in the production, realised that it was a ground-breaking work. At the time, when it was supposed to be made and when it was made, they were aware that it was a unique action, mission that should be fulfilled.

At that time and by them.

It was one of the most important phenomena of the Man of Marble. A genetic phenomenon, just to put it right. Or in fact: perpetual. Because the pure process of writing a screenplay and a willingness to produce it is not enough to make a movie. There are numerous great screenplays and ideas. Andrzej Wajda has once said that he has a special drawer, where he puts unproduced projects. There are over a hundred of them.

Moving back to reality. It was a real miracle that Józef Tejchma managed to force Man of Marble and Andrzej Wajda produced it. But it happened.

Another phenomenon was how the movie was received by the audience. I would call it receipt phenomenon. Because even the best movie, produced with the help of perpetual miracles happening at the top-most authority levels and a hard work of the most talented artists, may be simply unappreciated by the audience. And then what? What

132

for were the miracles, what for were all the efforts? Those who fail to notice such risk, quite frequent in the cinematography, also Polish cinematography, would be wrong.

But what happened? Yes, again a miracle happened. Not only was the movie appreciated, people almost got crazy about it. Of course, the authorities who as usual operated in culture like an elephant on delicate balance, helped to promote the movie, sentencing it to just one cinema theatre in Warsaw, and in a consequence, going to the cinema was an act of civic insubordination and a way of “tasting forbidden fruit.”

And it was 1976. A breaking moment for Poles and communist authorities in Poland. Gierek’s promises of “small stabilization,” or rather: prosperity, bought for the money borrowed from the West, which by the way, nobody was planning to pay back, turned out to be completely uncovered. And the workers’ protest in Ursus and Radom, brutally suppressed by the Militia, only discredited the weakening regime. In 1976, Workers Defence Committee was launched, the civic resistance was on the go, people started to fight for the civic rights, for the social and national cognizance, the ferment begun that later led to Solidarity and liberation of Poland in 1989-1990.

Did Wajda’s movie influence in any way those political and social events? Surely not. They were growing for decades and sooner or later they would end up in strikes, resistance, riots. Movies do not call people to barricades.

And yet, works of art or literature, just as in the 19th century, at least the great ones, are capable of rendering the spirit of their time. I believe that the same happened to Man of Marble – it was signum temporis of the time before Solidarity, time of great change that was supposed to come and lead to free Republic of Poland, the Velvet Revolution in Hungary, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and all transitions in the Ost block.

Andrzej Wajda at students film club (DKF) “Kwant” after show of “Man of Marble”, Warsaw 1977.

ZIEMIA OBIECANA

THE PROMISED LAND AKA: Land of Promise;

Production companies: Zespół Filmowy X (Film Polski); Production managers: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka, Janina

Poland 1975

Krassowska, Kazimierz Sioma;

Feature film

Production assistants: Alina Kłobukowska, Elżbieta Kozłowska, Jerzy Szebesta, Waldemar Król,

Screenplay: Andrzej Wajda (based on the novel by

Barbara Pietrakowska;

Władysław Stanisław Reymont Ziemia obiecana, ed. 1897-98); Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw; Tinc

Cinematographers: Witold Sobociński, Edward Kłosiński,

Productions (1988), USA; Asociace Ceských Filmových Klubu

Wacław Dybowski;

(ACFK), Czech Republic; Video: Divisa Home Video (2005),

Original music: Wojciech Kilar;

Spain: DVD: Vanguard Cinema (2003), USA;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling, Zofia Dwornik;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com; en.wikipedia.org;

Sound Department: Krzysztof Wodziński, Leszek Wronko, Andrzej Hanzl, Jerzy Szczeciński, Józef Tomporek;

Budget: 31 300 000 PLN;

Set design: Tadeusz Kosarewicz, Piotr Dudziński, Andrzej Haliński, Adam Kopczyński;

Filming locations: Łódź: Księży Młyn, Moniuszki Street,

Art direction: Maciej Putowski, Maria Kuminek-Osiecka;

Źródliska Park, “Polonia” cinema, Scheibler’s Palace, Poznański’s

Lighting design: Jerzy Klimkiewicz;

Palace and Factory at Ogrodowa Street, Scheibler’s Factory

Costume design: Barbara Ptak, Danuta Kowner;

(“Uniontex”) at Tymienieckiego Street, Poznański’s Palace

Cast: Daniel Olbrychski (Karol Borowiecki), Wojciech

Okulickiego Street, “Pawelana” Factory; Cieszyn; Bielsko;

Pszoniak (Moryc Welt), Andrzej Seweryn (Maks Baum),

Wrocław (Zoo);

(Music Academy) at Gdańska Street); Pabianice: Lipowa Street,

Kalina Jędrusik (Lucy Zucker), Anna Nehrebecka (Anka), Bożena Dykiel (Mada Müller), Andrzej Szalawski (Herman Bucholc),

Color: color (Orwocolor), Kodak (re-release);

Stanisław Igar (Grünspan), Franciszek Pieczka (Müller), Kazimierz

Running time: 179 min, 138 min (re-release), 204 min (4 episodes);

Opaliński (Maks’ father), Andrzej Łapicki (Trawiński), Wojciech

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

Siemion (Wilczek), Tadeusz Białoszczyński (Karol’s father),

Aspect ratio: 1.66 : 1;

Zbigniew Zapasiewicz (Kessler), Jerzy Nowak (Zucker), Piotr

Sound format: mono, Dolby Digital (re-release);

Fronczewski (Horn), Jerzy Zelnik (Stein), Maciej Góraj (Adam Malinowski), Grażyna Michalska (Zośka Malinowska),

First screenings: Polish premiere: 21.02.1975, 21.05.1978 (edited

Włodzimierz Boruński (Halpern), Danuta Wodyńska (Mrs

version); 9.10.2000 (Warsaw, director’s cut); festival premiere:

Müller), Marian Glinka (Wilhelm Müller), Jadwiga Andrzejewska

07.1975, Moscow Film Festival; 11.1975, Chicago International Film

(Mrs Buchholc), Aleksander Dzwonkowski (priest),

Festival; East Germany: 2.09.1976; Finland: 1.10.1976; Hungary:

Kazimierz Wichniarz (Zajączkowski), Zdzisław Kuźniar

23.12.1976; West Germany: 26.11.1977; Portugal: 12.04.1979;

(Kaczmarek), Halina Gryglaszewska (Malinowska), Jerzy Obłamski

Denmark: 11.08.1980; in the USA: 5.02.1988, New York City;

(Malinowski, Zośka’s father), Marek Walczewski (Bum-Bum),

Turkey: 10.01.1992;

Lidia Korsakówna (widow), Emilia Krakowska (Gitla); Awards and distinctions: Golden Lion at Polish Film Festival, Assistant directors: Andrzej Kotkowski, Jerzy Domaradzki,

awards also for: Best Actor (Wojciech Pszoniak), Best

Krystyna Grochowicz, Jerzy Obłamski, Michał Ratyński;

Production Design (Tadeusz Kosarewicz), Best Score (Wojciech

Camera operator: Janusz Kaliciński;

Kilar), 1975; Golden Prize at Moscow International Film Festival,

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

1975; Golden Grape Award at Lubuskie Film Summer (Łagów),

Makeup Department: Halina Ber, Anna Adamek,

1975; nominated for Oscar (Academy Awards) for Best Foreign

Alicja Kozłowska, Jolanta Sołtysiak;

Language Film, 1976; Golden Spike at Valladolid International Film Festival, 1976.

135

“

“

Andrzej Wajda “The Promised Land is a valuable and interesting film, which had a great significance for me. It was a coincidence which happens only to those directors who are lucky. And I am lucky. Firstly, because there was a realistic novel, a novel-photograph, which is not so common in Polish literature. Secondly, because it could be filmed in a city which has not changed much since the 19th century. It was a good idea to make it a tale of three young men, each representing a different nation but when they want to set up business together then everybody is against them. It’s all in the book but there are some other plots too, which I skipped, coming to the conclusion that if Borowiecki had stayed with his fiancée Anka, he wouldn’t have become a Łódź manufacturer. To do that he had to marry Mada - a German. It is these three protagonists, played by young actors who after this film entered artistic life more confidently, that gave this film such power. I’m happy that they hit the screens with such expressiveness.

It’s an important film and making it required great filming experience from my crew”1.

“The New York Times”

Caryn James “At first glance, the mid-1970’s seems like the least inventive phase in the career of Andrzej Wajda, the brilliant, prolific Polish director. (…) films such as A Wedding and The Promised Land, both set in the 19th century, seemed to signal, if not a retreat from the political wars, at least an escape from the pressure of recent events. (…) Mr. Wajda seems to enjoy abandoning himself to 19th-century caricatures and narrative strategies, but his visual strength and authorial control redeem the story from its clichés.

The partners, in top hats, drink champagne as they break ground for their factory; across the land, workers stream toward the other mills, dwarfed by buildings whose grayness is broken only by the pillars of black smoke that pour from them.

Such heavy-handed juxtaposition hasn’t been done very well since Dickens, but Mr. Wajda makes it work because

136

1

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director conducted on October 23rd 2012.

he is too smart to dwell on the smokestacks. He keeps moving his story ahead as the partners scheme to get more money and consider double-crossing one another, and as Karol wonders whether to betray his beautiful fiancee for a simple-minded, wealthy woman. (…)

Not all of Mr. Wajda’s 19th-century excesses sit comfortably in the 20th century. Too many secondary characters are stereotypes of Jews, especially a repulsive, piggish woman with whom Karol has an affair, and her merciless, vengeful husband. There is so little historical perspective on these characters that Mr. Wajda’s own judgment seems to have failed him.

Though his film’s narrative power is unquestionable, Mr. Wajda clearly wants to do more than replay history. Yet only in the final scene is there an unmistakable, overt reference to contemporary politics. When the now wealthy partners order police to shoot striking workers, Mr. Wajda is surely looking back to the 1970 protests in Gdańsk, when Government troops fired on shipyard workers. (…)

“

The Promised Land remains a foray into the 19th century, but in spirit it is as political as any of Mr. Wajda’s more pointed films. And if its artistry is finally too bound by the last century, it still bears the signature of a director whose every camera move has something to intrigue us”2. “Écran”, Paris

Max Tessier “Wajda presents a shocking image of the city, with its dirty and dangerous factories and ostentatiously opulent residences devoid of taste and culture, like Möller’s house.

We are reminded of the descriptions by Dickens, Zola, Gorki, as well as of naturalist paintings of that period (Corot, early Van Gogh, Edvard Munch) and the later German expressionists, Knopf, Meidner, Grosz who gave testimony to social protest”3.

138

2

Caryn James, ‘Land of Promise,’ by Wajda, “The New York Times”,

3

Max Tessier, „Écran”, March 1976.

5.02.1988.

The Promised Land is an adaptation of a realistic novel written by a Polish Nobel laureate Władysław Stanisław Reymont, one of the most outstanding in his oeuvre (published in installments in the Łódź newspaper “Kurier Codzienny”, from 1897 to 98, it appeared in print in 1899).

The main hero of the novel is the title Promised Land Łódź, a dynamically developing capitalist city, also called ‘the Polish Manchester’. The writer had studied Łódź very thoroughly; endowed with an excellent visual memory, he noticed the tiniest details of the streets, home decoration, clothes and also the characteristic language of its inhabitants, who were representatives of diverse cultures.

It was Andrzej Żuławski who suggested that Wajda read the novel which was a ready-made material for a film, because it meticulously represented reality, at times in a naturalistic way. It had already been screened in 1927 by Aleksander Hertz and Zbigniew Gniazdowski (the film has not been preserved).

Wajda’s work is one of his greatest artistic achievements - a masterpiece of the mature artistic period, but also one of the most outstanding achievements of the Polish film ever. It was recognized abroad, too - it received an Oscar nomination in 1976. The picture enjoys unfailing popularity with audiences - in 2007, in a popular vote of the “Film” monthly, it was honoured with the Golden Duck Award as the best film of the last 50 years; it has also had several versions, as a serial (4 parts, television premiere on 21st May 1978), in 2000 a premiere of its remastered film version was held (30 minutes shorter, the order of some scenes has been changed, new takes have been added, known from the TV series). The film owes its style to the cinematography of Witold Sobociński, and Wojciech Kilar’s Waltz is one of he most popular musical score in the Polish film music.

The Promised Land was shot in record time of 77 filming days. When the film was shown in Hollywood, everyone

was sure that the production must have been extremely expensive, that the weaving mills shown on screen had been specially built for the film. While in Łódź there were (and still are) authentic 19th century buildings, with magnificent palaces and huge manufactures. “It sufficed to fix stronger bulbs over the weaving machines and a floor with thousands of looms was ready for filming”4, the director reminisces. The panorama of the city is also presented in the masterly and awfully laborious sequence of the main protagonist’s fiancée and his father’s journey from the country to Łódź.

“I have nothing, you have nothing, and he has nothing; that means together we have enough to start a factory”5, says Karol Borowiecki to his friends, a German Max and Moritz, a Jew. Although they are divided by origins, they all feel they are representatives of a special kind of people - Lodzermensch. Their aim is making money, and they pursue this end ruthlessly. To win a fortune, they are ready to pay any price. The main character, who comes from the gentry, sacrifices his relationship with a noble girl Anka, to marry Mada, daughter of a rich manufacturer. Wajda has additionally sharpened the meaning of the ending – in Reymont’s work, Borowiecki and Anka happen to meet each other after many years and the protagonist feels that he has wasted his life; in the film he does not harbour any quandaries. The director has also considered other variants of the ending, in one of them Karol dies of a stray bullet which shoots him in a manufacturer’s villa during a ball.

Wajda was accused that he showed the figure of the Pole, Karol Borowiecki, as a ruthless and cynical bastard, while his friends, representatives of other cultures were treated with more understanding. The performance of Daniel Olbrychski, playing Karol is one of the best in his career.

The roles of Wojciech Pszoniak as Moritz and Andrzej Seweryn as Max have also gained a cult status. The role of 4

5

140

Andrzej Wajda, Powtórka z całości, Oficyna Literacka, 1986, p. 18.

The Promised Land dialogue script.

Lucy Zucker played by Kalina Jędrusik, also went down in history mainly because of two extremely bold, for those years, erotic scenes with Daniel Olbrychski. Preparing the remastered version of the film, Wajda cut out the more famous scene on the train, the other - a scene of oral sex takes part in a carriage (it is crucial for the film, because Mrs. Zucker passes to Karol a telegram addressed to her husband, from which he learns that the prices of cotton will go up and thanks to it Karol can make a fortune).

Olbrychski decided to play a joke on his partner. In Denmark he had bought a packet of black condoms and put one on before the shooting. Jędrusik commented on the prank saying “Black is beautiful, too”6.

During his studies Wajda lived in Łódź for four years but he did not like the city. Maybe this is why Łódź, despite its splendour, seems to be soulless.

The chances of The Promised Land for an Oscar were ruined by accusations of anti-Semitism; it was believed that the director showed representatives of Jewish manufacturers like a caricature. The director said years later, “A journalist who came from Israel, one who criticized my film most severely, asked where he had seen it, answered “I don’t have to watch it, it’s enough that the film comes from Poland’. I understood then that the tragic legacy after the Holocaust on the Polish land cannot be closed by any film and definitely, not a Polish one. I understood too that nothing will ever change these judgments. Jews from the USA don’t want to be descended from the coldblooded businessmen from The Promised Land, they prefer to be descended kind-hearted Fiddler on the Roof ”7.

6

Sławomir Koper, Życie artystek w PRL, Wydawnictwo Czerwone

7

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i reszta świata, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2000,

i Czarne, Warsaw 2013, p. 168. p. 162.

141

WESELE

THE WEDDING Poland 1972 Feature film Screenplay: Andrzej Kijowski, based on the play by

Set decoration: Maciej Putowski;

Stanisław Wyspiański Wesele / The Wedding, ed. 1901;

Lighting design: Aleksy Krywsza;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Make-up Department: Halina Ber, Irena Czerwińska,

Cinematographer: Witold Sobociński;

Maria Dziewulska;

Original music: Stanisław Radwan;

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling; Sound Department: Wiesława Dembińska, Małgorzata

Production company: Zespół Filmowy X (Film Polski);

Jaworska, Anna Grabowska, Kazimierz Kucharski;

Executive producer: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka;

Set design: Tadeusz Wybult;

Production manager: Tadeusz Drewno;

Costume design: Krystyna Zachwatowicz; Distributors: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw; Cast: Marek Walczewski (Host), Izabela Olszewska

POLart Distribution;

(Hostess), Ewa Ziętek (Bride), Daniel Olbrychski

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

(Bridegroom), Emilia Krakowska (Marysia), Mieczysław Stoor (Wojtek), Kazimierz Opaliński (Father), Henryk Borowski

Filming locations: Czosnów, Obory;

(Old Man), Marek Perepeczko (Jasiek), Janusz Bukowski (Kasper), Andrzej Łapicki (Poet), Wojciech Pszoniak

Color: color (Eastmancolor);

(Journalist / Stańczyk), Andrzej Szczepkowski (Nose),

Running time: 102 min;

Mieczysław Czechowicz (Priest), Barbara Wrzesińska

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

(Maryna), Gabriela Kwasz (Zosia), Małgorzata Lorentowicz

Aspect ratio: 1.66 : 1;

(Mrs. Councillor), Maria Konwicka (Haneczka), Franciszek

Sound format: mono;

Pieczka (Czepiec), Hanna Skarżanka (Klimina), Bożena Dykiel (Kasia), Leszek Piskorz (Staszek), Anna Góralska (Isia),

First screenings: Polish premiere 8.01.1973, Kraków;

Mieczysław Voit (Jew), Maja Komorowska-Tyszkiewicz

Hungary: 28.03.1974; Finland: 29.03.1974; West Germany:

(Rachel), Czesław Niemen (Chochoł; voice), Olgierd

25.04.1974; East Germany: 26.07.1974; Sweden: 6.10.1975;

Łukaszewicz (Ghost), Czesław Wołłejko (Hetman), Wirgiliusz Gryń (Szela), Artur Młodnicki (Wernyhora);

Awards and distinctions: Silver Seashell at San Sebastian

Assistant directors: Andrzej Kotkowski,

awards for Best Screenplay (Andrzej Kijowski), Best Set

Krzysztof Bukowski, Witold Holtz;

Design (Tadeusz Wybult, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Maciej

Camera operators: Sławomir Idziak, Jan Mogilnicki;

Putowski), Best Cinematography (Witold Sobociński) at

International Film Festival, 1973; Golden Grape Award, also

Lubuskie Film Summer Festival, Łagów 1973.

143

“

Andrzej Wajda “Many years after the premiere, I met in Paris the master of American film, Elia Kazan. When I said my name, he asked me: Did you make the movie that takes place during one night? I immediately thought that he meant Ashes and Diamonds. As it turned out, he meant The Wedding.

Who wrote you such a good screenplay? He asked. I was happy and proud that I was able to make a theatre play feel so much like a movie and that Elia Kazan was able to appreciate so much the genius of Stanisław Wyspiański’s dramaturgy.”

The Wedding is one of the most famous work of Polish literature. Staged for the first time in the Autumn of 1901 at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków, this national drama written by Stanisław Wyspiański, a versatile artist from the period of Young Poland Movement – playwright, poet (sometimes he is called The Fourth Bard, after Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński), painter and graphic artist, became an element of Polish national identity. Over seventy years after the premiere of the drama, on January 8th 1973, the premiere of Wajda’s film took place in the very same theatre.

Starting the production, the director regretted that Wyspiański’s play was not known in the world, but the screening has successfully popularized it.

In Poland, within several months the film was watched by more viewers than had watched it in all theatres since the premiere (Wajda had also staged The Wedding in Kraków ten years earlier, in 1963). Before the director set to work, many people thought that adapting this difficult, rhyming The Wedding for the screen was impossible. The play is partially realistic (inspired by a real wedding reception of Wyspiański’s friend, the poet Lucjan Rydel to a peasant girl Jadwiga Mikołajczakówna in the village Bronowice;

most of the characters had their real prototypes), partially symbolical and visionary (there appear characters-symbols, such as: a Straw Man, Stańczyk, a Phantom, Wernyhora as well as symbolic objects: golden horn, feathered cap, as well as symbolic scenes like the dance of straw-men).

Introducing these dramatis personae served to explicate the spiritual situation of the nation and indicate why Poles cannot gain independence.

According to his initial idea, Wajda wanted to transfer the action to the present days (he even wrote same samples of such a screenplay with Andrzej Kijowski and Jerzy Andrzejewski), finally he rejected this solution. Kijowski, a literary critic, essayist and prosaic finally ‘condensed’ the play, abridged the dialogues, he left the best-known ones, fragments fixed in the social consciousness. Their form was preserved - actors speak rhymes.

The artist did his best to render the atmosphere of the Bronowice cottage, all the hustle and bustle and crush which is part and parcel of a country wedding reception.

He also used the advantage a film offers over a theatre: a room full of dancing people could become the focus of attention and did not have to be hidden somewhere in the wings in order not to drown out the actors. He engaged two folk groups, so together with the actors there were almost a hundred people on the set. “When everybody came on the set, there was some room at the walls. Not thinking too long, we tore out one of the walls and moved it towards the standing people until they were crammed like sardines in a can”1. He also managed to show the differences between the social classes and all those tricks did not limit the complex historiosophic problems and pro- independence ideas inherent in the play.

The wedding guests, representatives of intelligentsia and peasants, leave Kraków in a colourful procession. The Groom and Bride are wearing festive folk costumes, the carriages and wagons are passing through the Polish land1

146

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i reszta świata, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2000, p. 152.

scape, finally the reach Bronowice. The party quickly goes with a swing, gallons of vodka are being drunk, at the same time you can also hear serious conversations about politics. Soon, invited by the Poet and Rachela, a Straw Man appears at the wedding...

The film is exquisite visually. Writing The Wedding, Wyspiański was inspired by the painting of Jacek Malczewski, Maksymilian Gierymski and his master, Jan Matejko.

Wajda styled the frames on these painters as well as on Wyspiański himself.

very centre of a wedding reception, among the jubilant, drunk guests. Besides the rhymes and cinematography, the rhythm of the film is enhanced by Stanisław Radwan’s music.

This film version of The Wedding aroused the fury of the ancient Antoni Słonimski. “The historical truth was neglected, the poetry slaughtered”2, he wrote in “Tygodnik Powszechny”. According to the poet, Wajda brought Wyspiański to the level of “scream and babbling”3.

The director was not pleased with the final effect, either.

He wrote to his wife, “I’ve just watched the ready copy of The Wedding in a lab. Terrible. I’m awfully depressed by that. It turned out that I had no idea how to make this film. Nothing. I sat, scared stiff and petrified with horror that this is what my, quite considerable, talent amounts to.

I’ll describe it to you in more detail but not today, because this fresh wound is still aching!”4 .

Witold Sobociński (cinematographer in Everything for Sale, The Promised Land, The Shadow Line but also in Wojciech Jerzy Has’ The Hour-Glass Sanatorium, Roman Polański’s Frantic and Andrzej Żuławski’s The Third Part of the Night), displayed remarkable inventiveness and imagination, he shot many scenes with a handheld camera, sometimes his camera seems to be twirling with the dancers. The viewers have an impression that they have found themselves in the

Yet, Słonimski’s voice was isolated. The critics praised excellent cast, in particular Daniel Olbrychski (it was his seventh film with Wajda) who managed to express the Groom’s fascination, enthrallment with this alien world and a certain naïveté in his relation to peasants. At the same time the actor was playing in The Deluge and - as Wajda said it - he seemed ‘little interested‘ in this role. “It’s really odd that it is this very role that is so compelling, so incredibly psychologically rich and expressed in the most mature acting form I’ve ever seen in Daniel”5, the director summed years later.

Andrzej Łapicki also enjoyed good reviews and he remembered his work on The Wedding as the best in his entire film oeuvre. “The text is excellent and Andrzej approached it very creatively, he did what seemed to be 2

Antoni Słonimski, „Tygodnik Powszechny”, 25.02.1973.

4

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i…, op. cit., 156.

3 5

148

Ibidem.

Ibidem, p. 153.

impossible: he photographed this crowd, this noise and drunkenness. It was extraordinary. I liked it very much and it was The Wedding although master Antoni Słonimski didn’t think so. It was the purest Wedding, the closest to Stanisław Wyspiański I’ve ever seen. Oh, those critics...

Each one only mouths off. Especially the old ones”6, he said in a book published after his death. Other excellent performances were created by Franciszek Pieczka as Cze-

piec, Maja Komorowska as Rachela, Wojciech Pszoniak as Journalist-Stańczyk and Marek Perepeczko as Jasiek.

It was the film debut of Ewa Ziętek, playing the Bride.

“Wyspiański’s play opens with a wedding between a bourgeois intellectual from Kraków and a peasant girl from a nearby village (Wyspiański actually lived similar events himself when a fellow Krakowian poet called Lucjan Rydel married a village girl and many of the characters in the play directly refer to real people of the fin-de-siècle Krakowian society). These conjugal arrangements were not uncommon during the time. In the second half of the 1800s, Polish intellectuals became increasingly fascinated with Polish peasantry (aka. chłopomania, lit.

6

Łapa w łapę. Z Andrzejem Łapickim rozmawia Kamila Łapicka, Wydawnictwo Czerwone i Czarne, Warsaw 2012, p. 57.

“peasant mania”). Some even had Romantic aspirations for the large peasant population to participate in the Polish national movement, as Poland was partitioned between the Habsburg Monarchy, Prussia and the Russian empire throughout most of the 19th century.

The play starts off realistically. Although written in verse, the peasants speak the dialect of the Kraków region while the Krakowians converse in an exalted lingo demonstrating their intellectual superiority. As the wedding guests drown in alcoholic mist, they start having mythological and historical visions. The groom is the first to see a “Black Knight” who is symbolic for Poland’s past military glory.

Second is the journalist, who sees a court jester called Stańczyk (c. 1480–1560) active under the reign of King Alexander, King Sigismund the Old and King Sigismund Augustus. The third vision introduces itself to the guests as “the Devil” but a peasant recognizes Jakub Szela (17871862 or 1866) who was a Polish leader of the pro-Austrian peasant uprising in Galicia of 1846. Finally, there is the “Ghost of Wernyhora” who presents a golden horn to the Host symbolizing the national movement and calls the guests to a revolt. One of the farmers is dispatched to sound the horn at each corner of Poland, but loses the Horn and with it the aspirations for a social movement”7.

The film ends with the Straw Man’s song (his voice belonged to the famous Polish singer Czesław Niemen): “You had, boor, a golden horn; you had, boor, a feathered cap.

Cap is blowing with the wind Horn is playing in the wood Now you’re left with just a string”8.

7

8

150

Moritz Pfeifer, Conservatism and Intellectual Elites. Andrzej Wajda’s The Wedding (Wesele, 1973), “East European Film Bulletin”, October 14, 2014.

The Wedding, fragment of dialogue script.

KRAJOBRAZ PO BITWIE

LANDSCAPE AFTER BATTLE AKA: Landscape After the Battle;

Makeup Department: Halina Turant-Ber; Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

Poland 1970 Feature film

Production companies: Zespół Filmowy Wektor

Screenplay: ANDRZEJ WAJDA, Andrzej Brzozowski,

Production manager: Barbara Pec-Slesicka;

based on short stories by Tadeusz Borowski;

Production assistants: Janina Krassowska, Wiesława

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Dyksińska, Zbigniew Ronert, Janusz Szela;

(Film Polski, Łódź; Polish Corporation for Film Production);

Cinematographer: Zygmunt Samosiuk; Original music: Zygmunt Konieczny;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw;

Music: Antonio Vivaldi: Le quattro stagioni; Fryderyk

Asociace Ceských Filmových Klubu (ACFK), Czech Republic;

Chopin: Polonaise As-dur;

New Yorker Films (1978), USA; DVD: Silver Screen (2007),

Performed by Orkiestra Polskiego Radia (Polish Radio

Brazil;

Orchestra), conductor: Stefan Rachoń; Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Sound Department: Wiesława Dembińska, Kazimierz Kucharski;

Color: color (Eastmancolor);

Production design: Jerzy Szeski;

Running time: 109 min;

Set decoration: Leonard Mokicz;

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

Costume design: Jerzy Szeski, Renata Własow;

Sound format: mono;

Cast: Daniel Olbrychski (Tadeusz), Stanisława Celińska

First screenings: festival premiere: 14.05.1970, Cannes Film

(Nina), Aleksander Bardini (Professor), Tadeusz Janczar

Festival; Polish premiere: 8.09.1970; Sweden: 6.12.1971; in the

(Karol), Zygmunt Malanowicz (priest), Mieczysław Stoor

USA: 9.02.1978, New York City;

(Ensign), Leszek Drogosz (Tolek), Stefan Friedmann (Gypsy), Jerzy Obłamski (prisoner), Jerzy Zelnik (American

Awards and distinctions: nominated for Palme d’Or at

commandant), Małgorzata Braunek (German girl), Anna

Cannes Film Festival, 1970; awards for Best Director (Andrzej

German (American woman), Agnieszka Fitkau (Nina’s friend),

Wajda), Best Actress (Stanisława Celińska), Best Sound

Alina Szpak (German woman), Józef Pieracki (cook);

(Wiesława Dembińska), Audience Award at Lubuskie Film

Assistant directors: Jan Budkiewicz, Krystyna Grochowicz,

Summer Festival, Łagów 1971; Golden Globe, III International

Jerzy Obłamski;

Film Festival Cineteca Italiana, Milano 1971; Golden Duck for the Best Polish Film, 1971; First Prize at International Film

Assistant camera: Eugeniusz Maciaszek;

Festival in Colombo, 1972.

153

154

“

156

“New York Times”

Vincent Canby

“

“Film” 1969

Andrzej Markowski

“Landscape After Battle, is a movie whose sorrow is sealed off by its beautiful images as if behind thick, protective glass. We see the sorrow - its expressions and movements - but it’s so special that it seems silent and remote.

How can anyone who was not in the Holocaust begin to comprehend it? Even to attempt to understand it seems an impertinence, as if this would be an invasion of an especially privileged privacy. (…)

The landscape of the title is postwar Europe, whose mood is caught in the film’s opening sequence, when Mr. Wajda shows us how the prisoners of a concentration camp, at first jubilant with their freedom, come to realize at the end of that first day that they have no place to go but back to the camp.

Landscape After Battle has no dominant story line. Some of its sequences may mystify those of us not familiar with Polish history or with the spheres of influence that were allocated after the war. Yet it’s so beautifully composed, so elegiacal, it compels attention and will be likely to stay in the memory for a very long time”1.

“They run down from the gigantic coal heap that looks like the fairy-tale, dreaming monster, they run right to the border between light and shade; beyond is the flowery, autumn meadow and the evanaged high forest, golden and red oak forest, which they entered just as if they were entering the Biblical Eden, holding hands. In the pitch-black shadow, he cuddled her. He kissed her eyes, lips, hair, wildly, with anguish and hope. It happened too fast; so he bent down and then slowly dropped down on his knees, covered his face in hands and we could see his shoulders trembling. She bent over him with affection.

Who are they, this boy and this girl, two people who didn’t know each other yesterday and today they are bound by the most mysterious of the human mysteries; their faces so young and yet already denatured with pain?

Can it be that they are Tristan and Isolde of the time of contempt?”2.

1

2

Vincent Canby, Wajda’s Study Of War’s Aftermath: No Place to Go, “New York Times”, 10.02.1978.

Andrzej Markowski, Tristan and Izolda 1945 (Tristan i Izolda 1945), „Film”, 1969, no 48, p. 7.

“

“New York Times”

Vincent Canby “Wajda’s film is about a young poet named Tadeusz who goes through this landscape trying to convince himself of the validity of the advice he gives a Jewish girl he loves: “To live, one must forget.” (…)

Tadeusz from the day his camp is liberated until he decides to strike out from a benignly mismanaged displaced-persons camp to return to Poland.

Because Tadeusz is obsessed with a sense of homeland, which has less to do with conventional nationalism than with mythic roots, there is throughout the film the unstated irony contained in our awareness of what eventually happened to Tadeusz”3.

This is Wajda’s film most resembling a painting and at the same time addressing one of the most fundamental issues of the 20th century - the Holocaust. However, this time not only the extermination of Jews but also the extermination of Poles. An average cinemagoer in the world knows much less about it.

The screenplay was based on the short stories of an acclaimed Polish writer, Tadeusz Borowski who was a prisoner of German concentration camps Auschwitz and Dachau; he survived but could not get over the post-camp trauma and in 1951 committed a suicide (his personal problems also contributed to it). Borowski’s camp stories, although first-rate literary works are little known all over the world but they are the compulsory reading in Polish secondary schools so they are an element building the identity of Poles. They also have a great universal value and this is what the screenplay and Wajda’s film refer to. This is a universal tale, additionally, about love.

The main character is a young poet who went through the hell of Hitler’s camps and after the liberation he is 3

158

Ibidem.

still stuck in a camp. It is a transitory camp, a temporary one helping the people to assimilate with the postwar everyday life. Yet, it is a camp. With the walls, barbed wire, sentry and death penalty for insubordination. This is how Tadeusz’s girlfriend dies when she fails to obey the guard’s order.

Tadeusz finds himself in an area between camps (it is extraordinary, but Wajda was working on the set of a real camp and he used to sit in the zone between the fences); he is no longer a prisoner of the enemies, the Nazi but his existence is controlled by the allied forces, friends.

However, neither the ex-prisoners, now ‘residents’ - to use a euphemism, nor the camp-authorities trust one another.

What enhances this mistrust it is an unclear (at least for some) political situation. The postwar Poland is in the zone of Soviet influence, while they are in Germany, in the Western zone. The hell of the camp, where regardless of everything it was clear who was an enemy and who a friend, is followed by a hell of uncertainty of the budding cold war. Who is an enemy and who is a friend? Now the answer to this question gets more and more difficult.

Are the fellow-prisoners his friends? Tadeusz cannot stand them for their narrow-mindedness, nationalism and stupidity. The anniversary of the battle of Grunwald with the kitschy patriotic theatre was supposed to boost the morale of the locked Poles but for Tadeusz it was an example of the Polish attachment to symbols, distant from real life.

Can he see friends in the American guards who kill his girlfriend?

This is a beautiful and powerful film. Probably astonishing for the world audiences, for the Poles too. One is certain nobody is surprised by the decision of Tadeusz who, with a cart full of books, sets off on his way back to Poland.

Even, if this return is to have a tragic dimension, like in the case of Borowski.

“In postwar Germany, at DPs’ (displaced persons) camp, young Polish intellectual who wants to go back to Poland and Jewish girl who escapes from Poland...”, “Film”, weekly, 1969, No 44, back cover

“Tristan and Izolda 1945”, Andrzej Markowski, “Film”, weekly, 1969, No 48

BRZEZINA

THE BIRCH WOOD Poland 1970 TV feature film Screenplay: ANDRZEJ WAJDA, based on short stor by

Distributors: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw; Asociace

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz Brzezina, ed. 1932;

Ceských Filmových Klubu (ACFK), Czech Republic; TV:

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) (1972), West Germany;

Cinematographer: Zygmunt Samosiuk;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Original music: Andrzej Korzynski; performed by: Łucja Prus (vocal), Janusz Sent (piano); conductor: Jan Pruszak;

Filming locations: Kampinoski Park Narodowy, near

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling;

Warsaw;

Sound Department: Wiesława Dembińska; Production design & Set decoration: Maciej Putowski;

Color: color (Eastmancolor);

Costume design: Renata Własow;

Running time: 99 min, 2710 m; Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

Cast: Olgierd Łukaszewicz (Stanisław), Daniel Olbrychski

Aspect ratio: 1.33 : 1;

(Bolesław), Emilia Krakowska (Malina), Marek Perepeczko

Sound format: mono;

(Michał), Elżbieta Żołek (Ola), Danuta Wodyńska (Katarzyna), Mieczysław Stoor (piano owner’s brother),

First screenings: Polish premiere: 10.11.1970; festival

Alina Szpak (piano owner), Jan Domański (Janek), Andrzej

premiere: July 1971, Moscow International Film Festival;

Kotkowski (man), Jerzy Obłamski (Jew), Jerzy Próchnicki

Hungary: 20.01.1972; West Germany TV premiere: 13.09.1972;

(Jew), Irena Skwierczyńska (Malina’s mother, cook);

Finland: 19.01.1973, East Germany: 26.10.1973; in the USA: 18.02.1981;

First assistant director: Jan Budkiewicz; Assistant directors: Andrzej Kotkowski,

Awards and distinctions: FIPRESCI Award, International

Krystyna Grochowicz;

Documentary and TV Films Fair (MIFED), Milano 1970;

Camera operator: Edward Kłosiński;

Golden Prize for the direction (Andrzej Wajda), Actor’s Prize

Assistant camera: Franciszek Łokaj, Mieczysław Kozaczyk;

– Best Actor (Daniel Olbrychski), Moscow International Film

Makeup Department: Mirosław Jakubowski;

Festival 1971; Prize for the direction (Andrzej Wajda), Prize

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel (uncredited);

for the best actor (Daniel Olbrychski), Lubuskie Film Summer festival, Łagów 1971; Honour diploma, “Filmaur” Association

Production companies: Studio Filmowe Tor, Warsaw (P.P.

of Finnish Filmmakers, Finland 1973; Golden Seal (Award of

Film Polski, Warsaw);

the City of Milano), VII International Film Festival, Milano 1975.

Production manager: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka; Production assistants: Janina Krassowska, Janusz Szela;

163

“

Andrzej Wajda

The Birch Wood is one of the most beautiful films about dying in the whole contemporary cinema. The screenplay is based on a short story of the unfailing Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, a master of mood and philosophical reflection. As well as of the excellently chosen contrasting juxtapositions.

We meet two brothers: the serious and responsible forester Bolesław, always in uniform and officer’s boots, who is a single father to his daughter whom he brings up rather strictly, and his brother Stanisław, a cabaret artist, who - having spent many years performing in Switzerland decides to visit his brother in his little cottage, lost in the remote wood. The young, beautiful, subtle, elegant and cheerful Stanisław breathes life into his brother’s gloomy house; in addition, he falls in love and makes Malina fall in love with him; Malina, a beautiful peasant girl who is no longer satisfied with the courtship of the local farmhands and dreams about romantic love. Stach likes playing funny songs on the piano, standing in his small room in the cottage, loves wandering in a birch grove, tap dancing on a wooden bridge over a stream. Winter has just ended and everything is blooming. A wonderful time for new life, love and... death. Because Stach is ill with tuberculosis and he came to Bolo from Davos in order to die. Among the blooming birch shoots and marsh marigold, cut by the barefoot and skimpily dressed Malina, like the beautiful and attractive Death from Jacek Malczewski’s paintings from the series Thanatos, especially the one from 1898-992.

1 2

166

Andrzej Wajda, www.wajda.pl.

Jacek Malczewski, Thanatos, ca. 1898-99, oil on canvas, 45 x 57,5 cm, collection of the National Museum in Warsaw.

There are no marigolds in this painting but blooming lilacs, but Malczewski painted a maid with a scythe who is even more naked and worthy of desire than Malina in Wajda’s film.

Jacek Malczewski (1854 -1929), one of the most revered painters of Poland, father of Polish Symbolism. Malczewski combined the predominant style of his times, with the historical motifs of Polish martyrdom, the Romantic ideals of independence, the Christian and Greek traditions, folk mythology, as well as his love of natural environment (Wikipedia).

“Perhaps “Birch wood” will be the most faithful film adaptation of a literary work in Polish cinema”, Bożena Janicka, “Iwaszkiewicz’s “Birch wood” in Wajda’s movie”, “Film”, 1970, No 34.

“We were making a film like no other: fresh and surprising even to me. Inhaling deeply, I watched the film on screen feeling a strange lightness and amazement, as if it were not my own. A trace of that freshness has been captured both in the acting and in the camerawork”1.

“

“

The illusion of an idyll bursts like a bubble, Stanisław dies in convulsions and Jewish creditors come to retrieve the piano, which was bought on credit. The last weeks of his life were lived on unpaid credit, too.

“France Nouvelle”

Albert Cervoni “The Birch Wood is violence, delicacy, passion, resignation, doubt, and lust for life, even in such an ill equipped world, woven together to defy the certainty of death. (...) The Birch Wood is beautiful not only with the beauty of the forest landscape, but also, and above all, with an unheard of force of human gestures and emotions. A ray of sunlight is as important here as a final breath. This film, pulsating with the agony of parting gestures, is also pulsating with life”3.

“Film” 1970

Bożena Janicka “A very important layer of Iwaszkiewicz’s story involves images that are simply transpired with the awe for the nature and the world; in this state of bewilderment, the protagonist is living his last months before he dies. The scenes and images used for that purpose have been much more condensed than those described in the short story: rains passing over the woods became a torrential downpour; the vision that Stanisław has right before he dies, instead of reflexes of the river, forest and the sky, it reflects only one fascination – the beauty of the birch wood. However, Wajda shows this enchantment with the world not just in individual scenes; he saturates each take with it. He applied an aesthetic key – as he said it in interviews – of Malczewski’s paintings.”4

“Andrzej Wajda to Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz: Warsaw, 13.4.1978

Dear Jarosław, (…) The Birch Wood was appreciated in Paris so much that it was the fourth most popular movie in terms of the number of viewers. It also found some supporters in Italy and Moravia wrote a review of the movie. Whereas, Daniel (Olbrychski), who came back from Paris just a few days ago, was (as he puts it) recognised on the streets and in other places as the artist who took part in this movie.

It is so nice because it’s so unexpected. And just as every success, it makes you think. (…)

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz to Andrzej Wajda: Stawisko, 18.4.1978

Dear Andrzej! (…) The Paris success of The Birch Wood was not news for me, at the time I was abroad and I did read the press. The most important moment for me was when it was announced that in addition to the three original cinema theatres, The Birch Wood will be played in the fourth one as well. I also received enthusiastic reviews from my French friends from Paris. It is a great joy for me, because I particularly like this story, written forty five years ago, and I believe that that you made it beautiful the way you made it, as “New York Herald” wrote, faithful to the spirit of Iwaszkiewicz, while everything you’ve put in the movie (Malczewski, this whole Easter) is so wonderfully intertwining with what’s mine. I am very grateful for it and continue to admire your intuition, your work, everything that made my story your movie.”5 5

3 4

170

Albert Cervoni, “France Nouvelle”, Paris, 13.02.1978.

Bożena Janicka, Iwaszkiewicz’s “The Birch Wood” in Wajda’s movie, “Film,” 1970, no. 34, 23.08.1979, pp. 6-7.

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Andrzej Wajda, Letters, Zeszyty Literackie, Warsaw 2013, pp. 39, 40.

WSZYSTKO NA SPRZEDAŻ

EVERYTHING FOR SALE Poland 1968 Feature film Screenplay, direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Assistant makeup artist: Anna Adamek;

Cinematographer: Witold Sobociński;

Still photographer: Renata Pajchel;

Original music, conductor: Andrzej Korzyński;

Production Company: Zespół Filmowy Kamera,

Music perfomed by: “Trubadurzy”, rock group;

Warsaw;

Sound: Wiesława Dembińska;

Production manager: Barbara Pec-Ślesicka;

Production design, Set decoration: Wiesław Śniadecki;

Unit production managers: Tadeusz Szarski,

Costume design: Katarzyna Chodorowicz;

Bogusław Kozakiewicz;

Editing: Halina Prugar-Ketling;

Assistant production managers: Danuta Iwanowska-Moczydłowska;

Cast: Beata Tyszkiewicz (Beata), Elżbieta Czyżewska (Ela), Andrzej Łapicki (Andrzej), Daniel Olbrychski (Daniel),

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw;

Witold Holtz (Witek), Małgorzata Potocka (The Little),

New Yorker Films, New York City, in the USA (1987); DVD:

Elżbieta Kępińska (actress in theatre), Bogumił Kobiela

Vanguard Cinema, Los Angeles, in the USA (2003); Silver

(Bobek), Irena Laskowska (forester’s wife), Tadeusz

Screen, Brazil (2007);

Kalinowski (Forester), Wiesław Dymny (Wiesio), Wojciech

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Solarz (man on the set), Józef Fukś (film crew), Witold Dederko (taxi driver), Andrzej Kostenko (Kostek, camera

Filming locations: Bogusławice, near Łódź; Warsaw: Hotel

operator), Tadeusz Baljon (production manager), Jacek

Europejski, ZPAP (Union of Polish Artists) Headquarter,

Domański (man on the funeral), Bohdan Ejmont (man in

„Kamieniołomy” Night Club; Racot, near Poznań (railway

locker-loom), Krzysztof Fus (stunt), Andrzej Gawroński

station);

(production sssistant); Color: color, Eastmancolor; First assistant directors: Andrzej Jerzy Piotrowski,

Running time: 105 min; 94 min, 2863 m;

Andrzej Kostenko;

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

Assistant director: Krystyna Grochowicz;

Aspect ratio: 1.66 : 1;

Camera operator: Maciej Kijowski;

Sound format: mono;

Assistant cameras: Bohdan Borewicz, Lech Zielaskowski, Aleksy Krywsza;

First screenings: Polish premiere: 28.01.1969, Warsaw;

Set designers: Mariusz Kowalski, Hanna Rechowicz,

festival premiere: Adelaide Film Festival, Australia, 28.08.1969;

Gabriel Rechowicz;

Finland: 19.12.1969;

Sound assistants: Kazimierz Kucharski, Zbigniew Kowalczyk;

Awards and distinctions: Syrenka Warszawska Award,

Assistant editors: Grażyna Pliszczyńska;

Warsaw Association of Film Citics, at Lubuskie Film Summer

Makeup artist: Jadwiga Świętosławska;

Festival, Łagów, 1969.

173

“ “

Andrzej Wajda “This is a hotchpotch of authentic scenes from our filmmaking work. The title was taken from the frequent charge against us, artists, that we are able to give everything for money. Such is our job, it can’t be helped”1.

“Film”

Krzysztof Mętrak “Everything for Sale is, in my opinion, an excellent and ex-

“

ceptional, not to say (I hate the word) a ground-breaking film. But contrary to the public wisdom, it is not a film about Zbigniew Cybulski and the impression he made on the minds of those closest to him; it is simply a film about Andrzej Wajda. And also the most personal film that creative cinema has known since 8 ½”2.

“The New York Times”

Vincent Canby “At times, Everything for Sale looks like correspondence-course Fellini. At other times it’s so soberly and rather meanly self-concerned that it’s far more about the awful trials of being a famous, successful, living director than about the finality of being a famous, successful, dead actor, who, otherwise, is never characterized with any substance. (…) As someone says when news of the offscreen actor’s death is heard: ‘Today it’s a tragedy.

Tomorrow it’s the story of a film’”.3

1

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director, conducted on

2

Krzysztof Mętrak, „Ja” na sprzedaż, „Film”, 1969, no 6, p. 6.

3

176

A self-reflexive film, described as the Polish Eight and a Half (8½). Initially the film was supposed to be an homage for Zbigniew Cybulski, who tragically died the previous year (on January 8th 1967, the actor died under the wheels of a train at the Wrocław Główny Station), but finally it turned out to be a faithful portrait of the whole milieu, “a film about the life of screen stars”, as Everything for Sale was advertised on posters.

Cybulski played four times in Wajda’s films, and it is to him that he owes his film debut. In A Generation he appeared in a bit part of a Warsaw boy, Stach and Jasio Krone’s peer, but as a result of the changes introduced during the editing, almost all his role vanished from the film. He also played in Ashes and Diamonds, Innocent Sorcerers and a short from Love at Twenty. In the first film he created a myth of Maciek Chełmicki and he was unable to part with this character - a little hybrid because it connected features of the past and the future - till his tragic death, and it is with this role that he is mostly associated in Poland and abroad. Later, he did not play in Wajda’s films for a long time. He was supposed to call out once “Tell him, that he will miss me once...” And Wajda was planning other films with his participation. “I thought he deserves from me something more than one role. (...) So, a film about Him. Film in which He would be himself ”4 . The death of ‘the Polish James Dean’ was a shock for Wajda.

He remembers “One night in London, I was encouraging Mercier, an eminent English playwright befriended with Zbyszek, to write it. We kept on laughing for hours, remembering the funny stories that Zbyszek was so willingly telling about himself. Later, a phone called at the hotel.

We were planning a movie and He had been dead for 24 hours”5. It was Roman Polański who called to tell the tragic news, and Wajda decided that, despite everything, a film about the still fascinating Cybulski must be made, although he had died.

23rd October 2012.

4

Vincent Canby, Everything for Sale, “The New York Times”, 13.03.1987.

5 Ibidem.

Andrzej Wajda, cit. after: Aleksander Jackiewicz, Moja filmoteka. Kino polskie, Wydawnictwa Artystyczne i Filmowe, Warszawa 1983, p. 44.

“It will be a film about the actor without an actor, it will be a film about actors in general, about the director full of unrest, it will be also a film about the artistic environment of Warsaw”, Elżbieta Smoleń-Wasilewska, “What’s this film?”, “Film”, weekly, 1968, No 13

180

In many places of his film, Wajda improvised. The final shape of the picture differs considerably from the screenplay, many scenes were rejected, others were added. On the screen, the fiction, i.e. making a film, intertwines with reality. We watch a search for a famous actor who disappeared without trace, his family and friends speak about him, repeat anecdotes about him, find props from his life and films, follow his tracks. The main roles were played by actors who had been Cybulski’s partners or friends. Beata Tyszkiewicz, Elżbieta Czyżewska, Bogumił Kobiela or Daniel Olbrychski play themselves, they

appear with their own names, use their own texts or such which express them, some were improvised in front of the camera. After the Actor’s unexpected death, Daniel is geared up by the milieu for his successor, but finally the dead man’s friend escapes from the set, he does not decide to step into Cybulski’s shoes. Cybulski is not on the screen, even by name. By the fuzzy foreground, directing the viewer’s attention at what is deeper, at the end of the frame, Witold Sobociński managed to capture the time of mourning, and longing and then the time of accepting that nobody is irreplaceable.

181

According to Aleksander Jackiewicz, this film should also be treated as a document about Wajda. It is his sale, “the image of what he wanted to say and what he didn’t want to say; what he created and what was made by itself ”6.

The director himself denies that it is the most intimate of his films.

What proved to be a problem was casting the role of the director. For a long time, Wajda thought that he should play it himself, but finally he decided not to. He realized that he would not do it so well as Andrzej Łapicki, for whom it was the first film with Wajda. “Immediately, he said that I would have two partners and it is them who insisted that I should play with them in this film because both of them have had romantic memories connected with me”, Łapicki reminisced in his last interview given to Magdalena Żakowska7 before his death. These past relations with the actresses were to bring to the film an additional value.

After visiting Andrzej Wróblewski’s exhibition, it is Łapicki who says the monologue which is supposed to express the idea of the film. He tells about the accursed, war generation about which others should be talking and not its representatives.

It is also Wajda’s very intimate confession; he was Andrzej Wróblewski’s friend at the Kraków Fine Arts Academy, where they both studied painting. In the film, he pays homage to the great artist. He highly valued his painting, to such a degree that, having realized that he would not be as good a painter as Wróblewski, he moved to the Film School. Wróblewski committed a suicide, he had no chance to make a career abroad. The director blames the system for his untimely death: “He had no chance to make a career abroad. He died only because the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic never sent him to any major exhibition”8.

6 7

182

8

Aleksander Jackiewicz, Moja filmoteka…, op. cit., p. 48.

Kogo gryzłem w palec u nogi. Z Andrzejem Łapickim rozmawia Magdalena Żakowska, „Magazyn Filmowy”, 2012, no 2.

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview…, op. cit.

According to the director, what constitutes the greatest value of Everything for Sale is Elżbieta Czyżewska’s performance: “She alone is enough to make the film what it is. Ela is absolutely captivating in this film”9. This is how Andrzej Łapicki remembered the actress, who died in 2010. “A Warsaw child. A girl from an orphanage. In the literal sense – Ela spent some of her childhood at a children’s home. Apparently her mother had no money for the maintenance of Ela and her sister. That is why we saw in her something like Edith Piaf, such a sparrow. One day she showed me her family house. In Tamka, there stood some pre-war ramshackle houses. It was as if I moved to the 19th century. It was very different from what we had. (...) She had the easy-going manner of the street. Contrary to Beata Tyszkiewicz, who kept her distance. This ease of manner gave her incredible charm”10.

“

“Film”

Elżbieta Smoleń-Wasilewska “At the core of Wajda’s screenplay was the thought about the tragically deceased Zbigniew Cybulski. However, since the very beginning, the director was convinced that he should not use his name, photography or any fragment of his movies. He could only show his traces. (…) (For instance) the scene in Warsaw’s Bristol bar, at the counter.

Participants include: Daniel, an actor who was appointed to be the deceased’s successor and the director’s assistant – surprised by the fact that the new movie is made according to his concept: about the Actor but without the Actor. On the counter, there are three shots of spirit.

They light one of them in memory of the deceased Actor.

And they quickly gulp the other two.”11

9 Ibidem.

10 11

Kogo gryzłem w palec…, op. cit.

Elżbieta Smoleń-Wasilewska, What is this movie? Making “Everything for Sale,” “Film” 1968, no. 13, 31.03.1968, p. 10.

Distribution poster to film filled in (manually described by every cinema in Poland) with projection’s place, date and hour, age classification.

POPIOŁY

THE ASHES Poland 1965 Feature film Screenplay: Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski, based on novel by

Makeup artists: Tadeusz Schossler, Mieczysław

Stefan Żeromski Popioły / The Ashes;

Pośmiechowicz, Kirył Trajanow, Zofia Macińska,

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Janina Sękowska;

Cinematographer: Jerzy Lipman; Music, conductor: Andrzej Markowski;

Production Companies: Film Polski, Łódź; Zespół Filmowy

Performed by National Philharmonic Orchestra, Warsaw;

Rytm, Warsaw;

Sound Department: Jan Czerwiński, Jerzy Neugebauer;

Production managers: Włodzimierz Śliwiński,

Editing: Halina Nawrocka;

Konstanty Lewkowicz

Production Design: Anatol Radzinowicz;

Distributor: Film Studio Zebra, Warsaw;

Costume Design: Ewa Starowieyska, Jerzy Szeski; www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com; Cast: Daniel Olbrychski (Rafał Olbromski), Bogusław Kierc (Krzysztof Cedro), Piotr Wysocki (Jan Gintułt), Beata

Filming locations: Walewice, Wyszogród, Sandomierz,

Tyszkiewicz (Princess Elżbieta Gintułtówna), Pola Raksa

Warsaw, Bulgaria;

(Helena de With), Władysław Hańcza (Rafal’s father), Jan Świderski (General Sokolnicki), Jan Koecher (General

Color: black and white;

de With), Zbigniew Sawan (Krzysztof’s father), Józef Duriasz

Running time: 226 min, 6400 m (part I: 103 min, part II:

(Piotr Olbromski), Zbigniew Józefowicz (Michcik), Janusz

123 min.); international version (USA) (also DVD): 160 min;

Zakrzeński (Napoleon Bonaparte), Józef Nalberczak (Soldier

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

Wanderer), Stanisław Zaczyk (Józef Poniatowski), Zofia

Aspect ratio: 2.35 : 1;

Saretok (Helena’s aunt), Jan Nowicki (Captain Wyganowski),

Sound format: mono;

Edmund Fetting (Austrian official), Jadwiga Andrzejewska (Rafal’s mother), Barbara Wrzesińska (Zofka, Rafal’s sister);

First screenings: Polish premiere: 25.09.1965 Warsaw; festival premiere: May, 1966, Cannes Film Festival (opening

Second directors: Andrzej Żuławski, Andrzej Brzozowski;

screening); West Germany premiere: 24.03.1967; in Finland:

Second assistant directors: Petar Batałow, Władysław

4.04.1969;

Ikonomow, Halina Lachowicz, Włodzimierz Olszewski; Camera operators: Andrzej Kostenko, Franciszek

Awards and distinctions: nomination for Palme d’Or at

Kądziołka, Zbigniew Raplewski;

Cannes Film Festival, 1966; Gold Duck (Polish award

Assistant editor: Anna Rubińska;

presented by the magazine „Film”) for Best Polish Film, 1966.

185

“

Rafał Marszałek “The Ashes is a sum of Wajda’s and Żeromski’s historiosophic views, it does not claim to be a thorough analysis of the problem of ‘Poland’s chances in Napoleonic epoch’, which became a tinderbox in the many arguments around the film. However, even accurate understanding of the film artistic premises would not have saved the director from the accusations of historical deformations. (...) The director of The Ashes reveals the bitter truth about the history and it defines him as an active participant of the

“

argument (...) (referring to - K.S.) the Polish history”1 .

Andrzej Żuławski “In the very determination of the story, in this action with young actors, there appeared something which is a continuity. This film has its own continuity, it exists. And I admit after all those years that it is its value. (...) Then a horrible discussion started in Poland. (...) Yet, this discussion was connected more with people pushing to get power than with what The Ashes is really about”2.

The Ashes is an adaptation of one of Stefan Żeromski’s most famous books and the greatest enterprise of the Polish cinematography since Krzyżacy [Knights of the Teutonic Order] (1960) by Aleksander Ford. “I’ve never made such a large-scale film before”, Andrzej Wajda said. “And that is why everything was to a large extent an imponderable. The difficulties of the shooting? The first and most fundamental one is inherent in our consciousness, it’s a result of realizing all the general processes of world cinematography. An ambitious film moves towards 1

Rafał Marszałek, Filmowa pop-historia, Wydawnictwo Literackie,

2

Piotr Kletowski, Piotr Marecki, Żuławski. Przewodnik Krytyki Politycz-

188

Kraków 1984, p. 348-349.

nej. Wywiad-rzeka, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, Warsaw 2007, p. 61.

atomization of phenomena, and here we’re making an epic film. If we wanted to tell the plot of the novel in details, the film would last for about five hours. The action is vast, you could easily find materials there for about... twenty films. But none of them would really be The Ashes. For example, the story of the Olbromskis’ estate, Cedro and Rafał’s crossing the Pilica, meeting Elżbieta - this is a sufficient screenplay material for a ‘small’ or contemporary film...”3. Translating Żeromski’s prose into the language of film was a daunting challenge which is shown by the fact that the work on the screenplay lasted for six months and the whole making of the film took over two years.

The film is four-and-a half hours-long - then it was the longest film in history, out of necessity it was divided into two parts, although devised as a whole.

The Ashes was filmed in black and white. This decision was explained by a shortage of money for the colour tape.

Andrzej Żuławski, the second director at The Ashes, explains it in a different way. “Wajda didn’t want colour and Sovcolour or Orwo cost little more than black-and-white tape. And he could make this film in colour, and was even strongly persuaded to do so. But then black-andwhite meant artistic. And The Ashes was supposed to be an artistic film”4 .

The action starts in the summer of 1797, when duke Jan Gintułt, who is touring Italy, meets a strange army, wearing shreds of old Polish uniforms. This is an introduction. The real action starts with a scene of a sleigh ride which stops at Olbromskis’ manor. During a ball, Rafał Olbromski falls in love with Helena, a young noble girl from the neighbourhood. In the night he rides his horse to his lover, but during the return he gets attacked by wolves and has a narrow escape. Soon he meets duke Gintułt who employs him as his secretary. The young man is introduced in to the circle of gilded youth gathered around duke Józef 3 4

Andrzej Wajda, interview for „Ekran” weekly, 1964, no 32.

Piotr Kletowski, Piotr Marecki, op. cit.,. p. 59.

“Film”, weekly, 1964, No 46, cover.

The costume of Napoleonic cavalryman was supposed to enable a look into the Polish ‘soul’. “The three protagonists constitute a (...) sum of characters, attitudes and environments - from poor noblemen to aristocracy. One day, all of them abandon their everyday life and daily duties, they shatter their possibilities - in order to serve Napoleon on whom they pin their hopes for the fulfillment of their greatest dream - regaining their homeland. I think that thanks to this, the film could be understood not as a portrait of the fates of three men but a film about Poles”5, Wajda explained the idea of the film.

The protagonists of The Ashes are fully contemporary, the director showed how their naivety was used. “Our protagonists are young, immature people, from such an ‘immature’ country as we inherited after the Great War and after our first independence. This young man is the hero of both Ferdydurke and the Warsaw Uprising”6.

5

192

Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski, Andrzej Wajda, Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski, Andrzej Wajda mówią o ‘Popiołach’, „Film” 1963, no 50-51, p. 10.

6 Ibidem.

Wajda cast the three main, most difficult roles with debutantes, of whom Daniel Olbrychski outshone the others.

“Adults, playing the young would have made the whole subject matter of The Ashes artificial and infantile. It would have been against the whole novel. In its heroes there is immaturity, some understatement and incompleteness”7, he explained in an interview with Janina Zdanowicz in “Polityka”. Years later, the only thing that the director evaluated positively was Olbrychski’s performance. “Apart from the dazzling debut of Daniel Olbrychski playing Rafał, who experienced his first initiations into the acting profession, the other actors failed to successfully impersonate the characters from The Ashes”8.

Wajda remembers the time of making The Ashes as particularly difficult. “Starting from the hounds who went out into the forest in the first sentence of the novel. In those days, in Poland there was no pack of hounds we could use in this film. Everything had to be reconstructed. The Noblemen’s Poland ceased to exist with the agricultural reform and the total destruction of thousands of Polish manor houses. It only remained in our eyes, yearning for that view”9. Such a vast book as The Ashes could not be filmed literally. “Obviously we had to skip many scenes but we didn’t resign from anything that is characteristic of the spirit of the book and is significant in it”10, said Ścibor-Rylski. The filmmakers often used flash-backs because it is a trick allowing for maximum shortening the course of narration. There were other scenes, absent from the book, that were added to the film, e. g. the charge at Samosierra or the final scene in which the blind Rafał wades through the snow, passed by the indifferent Napoleon. The finale was the most criticized addition to the contents of the film. “The film is closed by a retreat from Russia and not Napoleon setting out on his Moscow expedition. Due to this, some matters which were left by the novel as open-ended and waiting for their continuation, in the film version gained a definite closure”11.

7

Andrzej Wajda, Janina Zdanowicz w rozmowie z…, „Polityka” 1965,

8

Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski, Andrzej Wajda, op. cit.

no 38, p. 11.

9 Ibidem.

10 Ibidem.

11

Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Wajda o ‘Popiołach’ - przed premierą, „Kino” 1966, no 1, p. 33.

Andrzej Wajda and Andrzej Żuławski

Poniatowski. Krzysztof Cedro, his school mate becomes his guide. He joins a Masonic lodge whose master is general de With. Rafał recognizes his young wife as Helena. His old love revives with great power but the romance ends tragically. Rafał and Cedro join Napoleon’s army - Rafał takes part in the battle of Raszyn while Krzysztof fights at Saragossa. Near Sandomierz, the young Olbromski meets duke Gintułt. He saves his life but the duke soon dies at Olbromskis’ manor, burnt by the Austrians. Rafał leaves the army and devotes himself to the rebuilding of the family estate. In 1812 Krzysztof Cedro, a faithful Napoleon’s soldier, takes part in his military expedition to Russia. He visits Rafał and persuades him to enlist in the army. Against himself, Rafał sets out on the Moscow campaign which ends with the winter retreat of Napoleon’s army. Indifferent, cold and silent, the Emperor rides on the sleigh surrounded by a small retinue. Cedro is part of it. From the snow, rises Rafał Olbromski, wrapped in straw, blind and dying. Krzysztof does not see him, and the ways of the two friends part forever.

Andrzej Żuławski, “Why not with color?”, “The Ashes’ Diary (3)”, “Film”, weekly, 1964, No 21

Andrzej Żuławski, “About battles: big and small ones”, “The Ashes’ Diary (6)”, “Film”, weekly, 1964, No 48

“

“

The film was a great box-office hit but first of all it was a cause of unprecedented in post-war culture, passionate discussion which erupted the moment the film hit the screens. The initial, uncritical admiration later turned into thunders and voices of condemnation. No other artistic event became an object of such widespread debate and confrontations of ideological attitudes, which far transgressed the professional circles.

“THE Ashes’ Journal” (6)

Andrzej Żuławski “During five months, the crew of the The Ashes has changed their location ten times, which means that almost every two weeks they were in a different place, here and their dragging into the whirl of fight Polish, Bulgarian, Austrian, French armies, Dąbrowski Legions, light cavalry and Prussian police. The Gypsy spirit hovered over the campers tossed from Vidyń to Rembertów… Waking up at his home, after the Bulgarian excursion, Andrzej Kostenko, the second camera man, felt somewhat uneasy: today they weren’t supposed to have any cannons, smoke, dead bodies and horses, just a lunch and cutting flowers in the garden. Who could stand it?”12.

“

“THE Ashes’ Journal” (9)

Andrzej Żuławski “After the first screening of the whole movie, the author of the screenplay, Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski, has noticed that it is the most truthful adaptation of the novel that he has ever seen. (…) The Ashes have not been used as a food for any intellectual or artistic concepts. As the movie progressed, the book The Ashes was a frequent guest at the movie set, replacing the screenplays and scene descriptions. Everyone felt the dialogues must represent contemporary language, as it would be unbearable to listen to Żeromski on the screen. As a consequence – a day before the shooting, scene description provided almost no dialogues – updated dialogues sounded like cotton. And now there are no dialogues heard on the screen, just the lines from the book, and they are flowing really well – or maybe our ears just got used to it.”14 .

“the Ashes’ Journal” (7)

Andrzej Żuławski “What was the real Somosierra like? Despite numerous descriptions, nobody knows for sure. When asked by his contemporary men, Niegolewski – one of the three officers of the squadron – said that he can only remember fog and rain. It was calculated that it took seven minutes for the cavalry to pass fifteen kilometers of the rising gorge divided by four batteries, four cannons each. They were followed by the army.”13.

196

12

Andrzej Żuławski, O bitwach wielkich i małych. Dziennik „Popiołów” (6),

13

Andrzej Żuławski, Nasza Somosierra. Dziennik „Popiołów” (7), “Film,”

“Film,” 1964, no. 48, 29.11.1964, p. 10.

1965, no. 8, 21.02.196

14

Andrzej Żuławski, Klimat. Dziennik „Popiołów” (9), “Film,” 1964, no. 21, 24.05.1964, p. 10.

“This movie hooked, annexed, consumed him. As all of us. It were good years” Andrzej Żuławski, “Climate”, “The Ashes’ Diary (9)”, “Film”, weekly, 1965, No 26

NIEWINNI CZARODZIEJE

INNOCENT SORCERERS Poland 1960 Feature film Editing assistant: Aurelia Rut; Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, Jerzy Skolimowski;

Production assistants: Romuald Hajnberg,

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Arkadiusz Orłowski;

Cinematographer: Krzysztof Winiewicz; Original music: Krzysztof Komeda;

Production company: P.P. Film Polski;

Singer: Sława Przybylska;

Production unit: Studio Filmowe Kadr;

Editing: Wiesława Otocka;

Producer: Stanisław Adler;

Sound Department: Leszek Wronko;

Distributor:Film Studio Kadr, Warsaw;

Set design: Leszek Wajda www.filmpolski.pl, www.wajda.pl, pro.imdb.com; Cast: Tadeusz Łomnicki (Bazyli), Krystyna Stypułkowska (Pelagia), Wanda Koczeska (Mirka), Kalina Jędrusik

Filming locations: Warsaw: Chmielna Str., Old Market

(journalist), Teresa Szmigielówna (Teresa), Zbigniew

Square, Mirowska Hall;

Cybulski (Edmund), Roman Polański (Dudek “Polo”), Andrzej Nowakowski (musician), Krzysztof Komeda

Color: black and white;

(Komeda; uncredited), Jerzy Skolimowski (boxer,

Running time: 83 min, 2371 m.;

uncredited), Andrzej Trzaskowski (trumpetplayer,

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

uncredited), Jan Zylber (uncredited);

Aspect ratio: 1.37 : 1; Sound format: mono;

Assistant directors: Paweł Komorowski, Jerzy Karwowski, Urszula Orczykowska;

First screenings: Poland: 17.12. 1960, Warsaw; Finland:

Camera and Electrical Department: Wiesław Zdort,

12.10.1962; Denmark: 6.04.1963; Australia: 23.05.1963 (Adelaide

Tadeusz Jaworski;

Film Festival); West Germany: 7.10.1963 (TV premiere);

Set design assistant: Franciszek Garczyński; Make-up department: Zdzisław Papierz;

Awards and distinctions: Diploma, XVth International Film

Sound assistant: Leonard Księżak;

Festival in Edinburgh 1961.

199

“

Andrzej Wajda “Nowadays, Innocent Sorcerers seems to be the most politically indifferent film I’ve made. Yet, the authorities from the times of Gomułka, evaluated it in a completely different way. The innocent theme of a young doctor who likes nylon socks and good cigarettes, has a tape recorder and records his dialogues with girls, whose only passion is playing the drums in Krzysztof Komeda’s jazz band, turned out to be more touchy for the ideologists-educators than the Home Army and Warsaw Rising”1.

With this film Wajda opens a dialogue with the French

Nouvelle Vague. Associations with Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless from the same year are fully justified. As with the works of other ‘new wave’ filmmakers and Michelangelo Antonioni.

nickname – Basil. Krystyna Stypułkowska, an amateur playing Magda, although is not equal her partner in acting skills, in some scenes is absolutely enchanting.

The plot of the film is limited to one evening and night which the couple, fascinated with each other, spend together in Basil’s flat (although it is a squalid cubbyhole it is equipped with a tape-recorder, in the frame we can also see interesting furniture and modern design). The young talk and keep putting on new masks, then they start a game in which they are throwing a box of matches.

Who loses must strip of a piece of clothing chosen by the partner. When, after another loss, Pelagia asks “Top or bottom?” and wants to take off either her pants or bra, the erotic tension between the partners reaches its climax.

Yet, Andrzej does not take advantage of the situation; it turns out that the nonchalance and sexual liberation of the protagonists is only a pose.

This is a story of two young people, rebellious and at the same time lonely in the surrounding world, who conduct a love game with each other. These are completely new characters in Wajda’s art, who so far was speaking about the war and his protagonists had war history. On the screen we can see the post-war generation of ‘cynics’ – blasé ‘sorcerers’, egoists concentrated on themselves, embittered at their own request, who in spite of everything have remained innocent. The perfect Tadeusz Łomnicki with his hair dyed blond, plays Andrzej, a young sports doctor who rides a Lambretta scooter, and after work plays in a jazz band. He leads a lighthearted, easy and pleasant life, and is a regular customer of cult bars. As he says, he cares only for “comfortable shoes, good cigarettes, good socks”2.

And, of course, women, with whom he only engages in brief romances. In a club he meets Magda, or actually Pelagia, because the girl about whom we know nothing, introduces herself so. In such case, he also makes up a

What builds the atmosphere of the film is its sophisticated takes, dreamy ‘happening of things’, without cheap tricks or fireworks, as well as Krzysztof Komeda’s excellent score, stylistically close to John Coltrane’s and Miles Davis’ cool jazz. The young pretend mutual indifference but at some moment they realize that their hearts have started beating faster. The final scene suggests that their relationship has a happy future. Such an ending, however, was enforced on the director who preferred it to be more ‘ambiguous’, the girl was supposed to disappear3.

1

3

Andrzej Wajda, cited after: Wajda-filmy, WAiF, Warsaw 1996.

The screenplay of Innocent Sorcerers was written by Jerzy Andrzejewski. He took the title from Mickiewicz, it is a fragment of the monologue of a Virgin from the drama Dziady. “This film looks the way Jerzy Andrzejewski wrote it. I never had a problem of racking my brain how to transform a literary work into film, because all my life I’ve been a servant of authors”4, Wajda says today. And he

2 Innocent Sorcerers, dialogue scripts.

However, such an attitude was regarded as ‘socially harmful’ (it is in such categories that Janusz Wilhelmi was writing about the film in

the main party newspaper “Trybuna Ludu”, 23rd December, 1960). The policy-makers were of the same opinion, and they demanded that the

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ending should be changed for the film to approved for the screens.

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director, conducted on October 23rd, 2012.

adds that he is pleased with a new life of this film which now finds new fans among youth5. “I think that it’s due to the fact that the film shows the colorful world of the 60s which is now watched with interest by the young. I had a lot of doubts shooting this film because it was about contemporary days then, and I was so busy with my films that I had no time for socializing, I didn’t take part in the sexual revolution, I didn’t notice what was around me. I’m really glad that the weaknesses, as they seemed to me, did not determine its reception”6. It was not until he was preparing the documentation that he had come for the first time to ‘Largactil’ club in the basement of the Old Town Market or onto the stands of Gwardia club 5

After a digital reconstruction, Innocent Sorcerers was published as DVD in a large circulation, in the series Masters of Polish cinema, distributed as an accompanying publication by Polish largest daily newspaper

6

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“Gazeta Wyborcza”.

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, op. cit.

sports hall where boxing matches were held, or to Stodoła [students’ club], then a wooden building vis a vis Palace of Culture – all of these cult places which appear in the film.

This is how Krzysztof Komeda’s wife remembers the making of the film: “Even Łomnicki used to visit us. Krzyś (Komeda’s nickname) would lend him his only sweater he wore. Łomnicki was made-up to look more or less like Krzyś, he had his hair bleached. He approached his role in a very diligent and professional way... He wanted to see how we lived, how we behaved. He took the drums playing lessons. I think though that the film wasn’t Wajda’s success.

For me it is untrue maybe because of the dialogues. They were written by Jerzy Andrzejewski, who was a literary director of the film company which made the film. They’re false. We never spoke such language...”7.

7

Zofia Komedowa-Trzcińska, Komeda, Zośka i inni, J. P. Poland, Warsaw 1996.

The work on Innocent Sorcerers was the first professional film experience for Jerzy Skolimowski, who was a co-author of dialogues and appeared in two episodes as a boxer. Years later, Wajda regretted that it was not Skolimowski and Elżbieta Czyżewska who played the main roles in the film because, as he said it, “they were the innocent sorcerers of those days”8. In the memorable supporting roles there appeared Zbigniew Cybulski, Krzysztof Komeda, who played himself, Roman Polański, Sława Przybylska, the singer, and Kalina Jędrusik.

In 1960 Warsaw looks like other European cities before 1950: in the centre you can still see the ruins of houses, in the streets there are hardly any cars, and if so they are models of Warszawa, mutations of the Russian Pobedas.

People rushing to work are dressed in poor, grey clothes,

But the social and cultural life was flourishing - in the night clubs with poetry set to music, on jazz concerts in large halls, on boxing matches, attracting crowds. In Wajda’s film you cannot see communist emblems: the ubiquitous propaganda posters, red flags or militia have vanished. The director created a universal world, understandable for the young in England, France and the USA. Because it is a film about love, about a modern approach to it, full of poses and distance, but ultimately about a pure, overwhelming feeling, even if, and maybe because, the first night of two lovers did not finish in bed.

Andrzej Wajda, cited after: Wajda. Moje filmy, Warsaw 2008, p. 34.

“Innocent Sorceres” - film premiere in Warsaw: flowers and kisses as usual. 17th December, 1960.

8

although there are some elegant guys in clothes bought in markets selling foreign clothes from UNRRA parcels or from families from the West.

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Because everyone reacted as this: you cannot spend a night with a man and turn up virgo intacta.

“WYSOKIE OBCASY”

KRYSTYNA STYPUŁKOWSKA 23.01.2016

“Why at the end of the movie Pelagia returns to Bazyli?

Because of the censorship. The ending had to be changed.

After a night spent on playing games with words, a night filled with understatements, in the morning Pelagia leaves Bazyli’s apartment. Oh, how much more interesting it would be to see her leave forever: they met and they missed each other. But when still on the stairs, she suddenly turns back and, smiling, she knocks on his door.

Happy end completed.

She was not supposed to come back. According to the original version, it was like that: in the morning I leave him, I go to the station, pick up my school uniform and a bag with textbooks from the box in the left luggage room and go to school. The camera is filming 30 girls sitting in a classroom; all of them look like me.

And was it filmed?

Yes! Agnieszka Osiecka, who at the time was one of Wajda’s assistants, kept founding girls who resembled me. The other ending was shot after a year. It was the condition under which the censorship allowed the movie to be distributed.

But why did this new ending seem more decent correct?

Since she comes back to him, it’s obvious: there will be sex.

Typical Gomułka-like absurd. It was the time of Gomułka’s puritanism. Maybe Gomułka believed that since they spent a night with each other, something should come out of that!

When I was telling the story during the Venice Festival, the journalists were rolling on the floor with laughter.

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Because of the ending, the movie spent a year on the shelf.

When it finally premiered, I was in Italy. I saw Innocent Sorcerers in Milan. For the Italian premiere I borrowed a fur from my Persian friend, the wife of a movie producer.”9

ANDRZEJ WAJDA “Is the title Innocent Sorcerers suppose to suggest anything?

Andrzej Wajda: Well, it derives from The Great Improvisation (part three of Dziady by Adam Mickiewicz – info by KS), but in a way, it refers to young people’s slang. Surely, you must know the saying: “don’t try to charm me,” or “oh, he’s charming his way to get her,” therefore, “innocent sorcerers” “charm each other,” without even realising it.

Hence, their tragedy, common for all humans, tragedy of missing each other.”10 9

10

Violetta Szostak, Where and why did Krystyna Stypułkowska, the star of the movie “Innocent Sorcerers,” dissapear? A conversation with Krystyna Stypułkowska, “Wysokie Obcasy,” 23.01.2016.

Wiesława Czapińska, Innocent Sorcerers. A report from Andrzej Wajda’s new movie. “Ekran,” 1959, no. 36, 6.09.1959, p. 5.

LOTNA

SPEED Poland 1959 Feature film Makeup artists: Stefan Szczepański, Romualda (Romana) Screenplay: Wojciech Żukrowski, based on his short story

Baszkiewicz;

Lotna (Speed), ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

Military consultant: Karol Rómmel;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA; Cinematographer: Jerzy Lipman;

Production Company: Studio Filmowe Kadr;

Original music: Tadeusz Baird;

Production manager: Stanisław Adler;

Conductor: Witold Rowicki;

Production assistant: Zdzisław Mrozowicz,

Editing: Janina Niedźwiecka;

Arkadiusz Orłowski;

Sound department: Leszek Wronko; Production design: Roman Wołyniec;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Kadr, Warsaw; Pol-Ton,

Costume design: Lidia Gryś, Jan Banucha;

USA (1966); DVD: POLart Distribution, USA (2006); Silver Screen, Brazil (2007);

Cast: Jerzy Pichelski (cavalry captain Chodakiewicz),

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Adam Pawlikowski (lieutenant Witold Wodnicki), Jerzy Moes (cadet Grabowski), Mieczysław Łoza (sergeant major Latoś),

Filming locations: Nieborów; Zegrzynek, near Warsaw;

Bożena Kurowska (Ewa), Wiesław Gołas (soldier), Roman Polański (musician), Wojciech Żukrowski (soldier,

Color: Black and White | Color (Agfa Wolfen) | Color (Sovcolor);

uncredited);

Running time: 85 min; Printed film format:negative format: 35 mm; DCP;

Second director: Janusz Morgenstern;

Sound format: mono;

Assistant director: Sylwester Chęciński; Camera operator: Andrzej Gronau;

First screenings: 27.09.1959, Zielona Góra; Finland:

Assistant camera: Czesław Grabowski, Antoni Nurzyński,

8.02.1963; Great Britain: November 1965; USA: 26.05.1966,

Leon Jankowski;

New York City.

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Aleksander Jackiewicz “This film lives in the mind of the viewer. (…) Wajda, essentially a cold creative artist, is looking for “hot” subjects which give him the opportunity to introduce various “oddities.” But because he is very talented, these grow into artistic problems, and begin to obscure issues which the artist himself cannot control. (...) Is Speed, then, a failed effort? It is difficult to say. In art, the most interesting works are often some kinds of failures. For me, the conflict between the artist and his creative material exemplified by in Lotna is more interesting than the conflict within the work itself”1.

In Speed, Wajda once again comes to terms with the war past. This time he takes up the theme of the beginning of war in 1939, through an allegorical tale about a beautiful, full-blood Arab horse which passes from hands to hands during the stormy course of events of the September Campaign. The film was made on the basis of Wojciech Żukrowski’s realistic short story about the last troop of the Polish cavalry2. The plot is very simple, but while filming the story in a linear way, Wajda does not settle for following the main thread of the plot. He imbued the film with symbolism, added intense images, rich in meanings.

The title Speed is offered as a gift to a cavalry captain, Chodakiewicz, by a dying aristocrat. Although she becomes an object of desire of other officers, she does not bring luck to her owner. After the captain’s death, who dies in a charge onto German tanks, there is a draw which decides that Lotna falls into the hands of a young cadet, Jerzy Grabowski. The troop has a brief stop in a village where the man meets a young teacher, Ewa. He falls in love with her and they get married. After the reception, the cavalry troop set out on their way. Soon, during a 1 2

Aleksander Jackiewicz, Lotna, „Film”, 1.11.1959.

Wojciech Żukrowski, Lotna, a short story, originally published in the monthly „Twórczość” 1945, no 2, and then in a collection of stories Z kraju milczenia, 1946.

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German bombing, the terrified Lotna runs away and Grabowski dies trying to stop her. Lieutenant Witold Wodnicki exchanges his own horse for Lotna. But sergeant Łoś, taking advantage of lieutenant’s tiredness, who fell asleep for a while on a river bank, tries to steal the horse.

During the escape, Lotna stumbles and breaks her leg.

Lieutenant Wodnicki has to kill her. The two desperate soldiers cover Lotna with leaves and each goes his own separate way.

In the film there returns, typical of ‘the Polish film school’, motif of history determinism which says that ill-fate cannot be changed even at the price of the highest sacrifices.

However, the theme of a national drama was not expressed in Speed in such a perfect artistic form as it happened in a year earlier Ashes and Diamonds, on the basis of Jerzy Andrzejewski’s novel, but what remains embedded in our memory is the aesthetic, beautiful images. Alicja Helman writes that Speed is a film about death, a tale about the end of a certain world which, crushed and annihilated, will never return to its original form. “It will be crowned by an Apocalypse of blood and iron, because Wajda talks about the destruction of the world in apocalyptic dimensions, the world of his childhood”3, the critic and film historian writes. The film shows a scene of cavalry charging at tanks with lances in hand - in historical reality it never happened, but it exists in the popular consciousness as a myth – this scene and its director came in for fierce criticism.

Both for Wajda and for his cinematographer, Jerzy Lipman, Speed was the first colour film (unfortunately shot on a poor quality ORWO tape from East Germany), that is why the director wanted to experiment in it. Many scenes which seemed to be very promising faded on screen. In the comments on the genesis of Speed, Wajda said he intended to create “a sad, something like watercolour film 3

Alicja Helman, I ujrzysz białego konia („Lotna” jako film o śmierci), in: Kino polskie wobec umierania i śmierci, ed. P. Zwierzchowski and

D. Mazur, Wydawnictwo Akademii Bydgoskiej im. Kazimierza Wielkiego, Bydgoszcz 2005, p. 121.

Jerzy Peltz, “Romantic reportage”, “Film”, weekly, 1958, No 45

“O my God, such a horse!”, Janka, “Lotna”, “Ekran”, weekly, 1958, No 48, back cove

about the lancers of Kutno. About the beautiful, pointless tradition”4 . Unfortunately, since the beginning of the production everything seemed to have conspired against Speed. The collaboration with Wojciech Żukrowski was not so harmonious as with Jerzy Andrzejewski on the screenplay of Ashes and Diamonds. Inspiration must have left Wajda also during his selection of the cast – it was their horse riding skills he considered crucial.

Today he says, Speed is the only film which I’d like to improve, re-make. I don’t have such thoughts about any 4 Popiół i diament, interview with Andrzej Wajda (by lp), „Film” 1958, no 34.

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other films. Everything is due to the fact that I could not imagine how difficult it would be to make a film with horses. And it’s not that you can’t find good riders.

I really had no idea how many mishaps I would be in for and indeed all the possible ones occurred, probably as a punishment. The greatest problem was that the title role horse died and it had to be substituted in the second half.

Besides it turned out that Wojciech Żukrowski’s short story is very difficult to adapt for screen, although it was written in very beautiful, expressive, poetic language”5.

5

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director, conducted on October 23rd, 2012.

“Bożena Kurowska as a bride in new Wajda’s film “Speed”, “Film”, 1959, No 41, cover.

POPIÓŁ I DIAMENT

ASHES AND DIAMONDS Poland 1958 Feature film Screenplay: ANDRZEJ WAJDA, Jerzy Andrzejewski, based

Production company: Studio Filmowe Kadr, Warsaw;

on his novel Popiół i diament, ed. 1947 as Zaraz po wojnie);

Production manager: Stanislaw Adler;

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA; Cinematographer: Jerzy Wójcik;

Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Kadr, Warsaw; Dan-Ina

Music: Filip Nowak, Jan Krenz (uncredited); performed by

Film (1960), Denmark; Janus Films, New York City (1961),

Kwintet Rytmiczny Polskiego Radia, Wrocław; conductor:

USA; Contemporary Films, London (2006), UK (all media);

Filip Nowak;

DVD: The Criterion Collection, New York City (2005), USA;

Editing: Halina Nawrocka;

Umbrella Entertainment (2008), Australia;

Sound Department: Bohdan Bieńkowski;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Production design: Roman Mann;

en.wikipedia.org;

Costume design: Katarzyna Chodorowicz; Filming locations: Trzebnica; Wrocław (hotel Monopol); Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski (Maciek Chełmicki), Ewa Krzyżewska (Krystyna), Wacław Zastrzeżyński

Color: black and white;

(Szczuka), Adam Pawlikowski (Andrzej), Bogumił Kobiela

Running time: 97 min, 2917 m;

(Drewnowski), Jan Ciecierski (portier), Stanisław Milski

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP;

(Pieniążek), Artur Młodnicki (Kotowicz), Halina Kwiatkowska

Aspect ratio: 1.66 : 1;

(Staniewiczowa), Ignacy Machowski (major Florian, credited

Sound format: mono;

as Waga), Zbigniew Skowroński (Słomka, hotel’s manager), Barbara Krafftówna (Stefka), Aleksander Sewruk (Święcki),

First screenings: Polish premiere: 3.10.1958; festival

Zofia Czerwińska (barmaid Lili), Jerzy Jogałła (Marek Szczuka,

premiere: 23.18.1959, Venice Film Festival; Japan: 14.07.1959;

uncredited);

Sweden: 2.11.1959; France: 6.11.1959; Italy: 3.12.1959; Finland: 5.02.1960; Denmark: 18.02.1960; in the USA: 26.05.1961;

First assistant director: Janusz Morgenstern; Assistant directors: Anita Janeczkowa, Jan Włodarczyk,

Awards and distinctions: FIPRESCI Prize for Andrzej

Andrzej Wróbel;

Wajda, Venice Film Festival, 1959; Gold Duck for the best

Camera operator: Krzysztof Winiewicz;

Polish film 1958; nominated for BAFTA Film Award in 2

Assistant camera: Zygmunt Krusznicki, Bogdan Myśliński,

categories: Best Film from any Source (Andrzej Wajda), Best

Jerzy Szurowski, Wiesław Zdort;

Foreign Actor (Zbigniew Cybulski), BAFTA Awards 1960;

Assistant editor: Irena Choryńska;

Award of Canadian Film Associations, International Film

Assistant production designers: Marian Kowaliński,

Festival in Vancouver, 1960; Award West German Film Critics

Jarosław Świtoniak, Leszek Wajda;

1961; diploma at International Film Festival in Ibadan;

Sound editor: Małgorzata Lewandowska,

Silver D. O. Selznick Award 1962; Cristal Star, French Film

Andrzej Bohdanowicz;

Academy Award 1962 for Ewa Krzyżewska; Award of

Make-up department: Halina Sieńska (makeup artist),

Czechoslovak Film Critic Association 1965; distinction at

Halina Turant, Halina Zając;

International Film Festival in Addis Abeba 1967.

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“

“

“

Aleksander Jackiewicz “A film has appeared which is probably the most complete artistic work based on recent history since The Wedding (by Stanisław Wyspiański - KS). It is rare indeed, and not only in film, for an for a young artist like Andrzej Wajda, at the start of his creative life, almost at its inception, to undertake a work which may well be the most outstanding work in his life”1.

Andrzej Wajda “Let’s take, for instance, the last scene of Ashes and Diamonds, Maciek Chełmicki’s death at the rubbish heap.

How did a censor from 1958 understand it? “This is the just death for anybody who raises their arm against authorities”. But there was also another view. A nice boy in dark glasses - impaired vision is the result of too long a stay in the canals during the Warsaw Rising, which Maciek mentions by the way, like the unrequited love for his homeland - dies, shot by a Polish bullet. He dies because there is no place for him in this inhuman system, which pushes him onto the rubbish heap. This is how ambiguously the film was understood and a battle with censorship relied on this ambiguity”2.

POEM BY CYPRIAN KAMIL NORWID in “ASHES AND DIAMONDS” “Krystyna: So often, are you as a blazing torch with flames/ of burning rags falling about you flaming, /you know not if flames bring freedom or death. /Consuming all that you must cherish /if ashes only will be left, and want Chaos and tempest...

Maciek Chełmicki: ...Or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike diamond... /The Morning Star of everlasting triumph”.

1

222

2

Aleksander Jackiewicz, „Trybuna Ludu”, 25.10.1958.

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i reszta świata, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2000, p. 275.

“ “

“

ANDRZEJ WAJDA “Yes, you can cut out from Ashes and Diamonds these words or others, or even whole scenes but you can’t censor Zbyszek Cybulski’s acting; and it is his manner of behaving that had this ‘something’, which in those days was political obscenity: the freedom of the boy in dark glasses against he reality which did not predict it”3.

Andrzej Wajda “The surprised Adam Pawlikowski said that in his opinion Polish actors had never before spoken so fast and acted with such energy. For me it was the greatest praise. We hated the slow pace of soviet films, we rebelled against the long-drawn-out bits and what we wanted to model was not only the vivid and energetic way of narration typical of Western films but also the rhythm of our hearts. Our efforts have been noticed”4 .

“The New York Times”

Bosley Crowther “The mood of despair in this picture is as heavy as that in Kanal, but the film itself is much more searching and infinitely better performed. Zbigniew Cybulski as the hero is sensitive, attractive and alert - a lad with humor and compassion. One is strongly drawn to him. Ewa Krzyżewska as the barmaid with whom he has one last lyrical love looks like Gina Lollobrigida and acts decently to boot”5.

3

Ibidem, p. 276.

5

Bosley Crowther, Chaos in Poland: Andrzej Wajda’s ‘Ashes and Diamonds’

4

Ibidem, p. 107.

Opens, “The New York Times”, 30.05.1961.

“I could be myself one of those boys like Maciek” “Ashes and Diamonds”, interview with Andrzej Wajda, “Film”, weekly, 1958, No 34

Projects of stage decoration’s, drawings by Roman Mann, “Film”, 1958, No 18.

“

ANDRZEJ WAJDA “Ashes and Diamonds shows the moment when the new is dawning and the previous epoch passes down in history.

I showed the moment through the fate of a young man who has experienced the war but who does not look or behave like a person from those days. In this way, he has made the film more palatable and closer for the young. In the screen there were also the soldiers of Home Army, who looked as they should but it didn’t matter. This young

“

man was played by a brilliant actor, Zbyszek Cybulski. We have never had any actor like him, and still don’t. What intrigued everybody was that Zbyszek played a progressive character, who will be. It was Kuba Morgenstern who talked me into hiring Cybulski. Didn’t I recognize his talent? No, my problem didn’t consist in the fact that I didn’t appreciate him as an actor, I only doubted that he looked and behaved too distant from the events which at that moment became historical”6.

“EMPIRE MAGAZINE”, 2000 Ashes and Diamonds is the film No 38 on the list of The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema. The greatest films not in the English language, (other Polish films on the list: No 14 ‘Three Colours Trilogy’ and No 36 ‘Dekalog’ by Krzysztof Kieślowski, No 61: ‘Knife in the Water’ by Roman Polański)

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Ashes and Diamonds7 is Andrzej Wajda’s most important film, his greatest masterpiece. I do not hesitate to write it although I know that Wajda considers Man of Marble his greatest achievement. Or that the contemporary assessment of Jerzy Andrzejewski’s novel, as well as the political message conveyed by the film, points out the opportunism of both works in the presentation of the social and political situation of those days, or even yielding to the official propaganda.

Of course, neither the novel nor the film can be separated from the political reality of the 40s and 50s, after all they are addressing the most topical problems of those times.

If, however, we treated Ashes and Diamonds only as a film, devoid of a direct political context, and if we forgot that it was made in the Polish People’s Republic ruled solely by the political regime and censorship, if we looked at the film as a work of for example French or Japanese director, we could then find its greatest strength as a work of art.

I think that such an approach is not an utter nonsense.

Because the viewers all over the world who enthused about the Polish film school, did not know anything about the meanders of our history or the nuances of political fights between different fractions of the communist party, allowing the production of some films and banning others.

„Why so great?

While Ashes and Diamonds takes place amid the Wrocław rubble just after the end of World War Two, and while it concerns two former resistance fighters’ quandary over a mission to assassinate a local communist leader, Andrzej Wajda’s has the distinct feel of a ‘50s American youth revolt movie. This is largely down to a superb performance from Zbigniew Cybulski as shade-wearing would-be assassin Maciek, who throbs with charismatic cynicism”.

What mattered was the new language, the universality which manifested itself in a modern narration about the complex interpersonal relations against the backdrop of political and historical relations. An average viewer in Great Britain, France or Finland was less (if at all) interested in the behind-the-scenes reasons for the outburst of the Warsaw Uprising or the Polish-Polish war in the second half of the 40s, than in the very film story: a remarkably attractive, dramatic, full of noble feelings, acts of heroism and sacrifice. Told in a comprehensible, universal but also very original film language.

6

7

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director conducted on October 23rd, 2012.

The title comes from a poem by Cyprian Kamil Norwid, Polish romantic writer and painter from XIX cent. (1821-83).

In Poland, we thought that Polish film school teaches the world about our history, in reality the historical facts were only a staffage, background for the new artistic values, new forms of expression which Wajda’s or Munk’s works contained.

Let’s not cheat ourselves that the whole world wants and has to understand our difficult history, suffering and heroism because we are the chosen nation and one particularly sorely tried by fate. The world neither wants or has to do so.

All nations have their unique history which they would like the whole world to take interest in. And each tries to do it. We are one of the many. Without greater chances for uniqueness and privileged treatment.

Unless there appears such an original and versatile artist as Andrzej Wajda. Then, his works may attract the whole world’s attention to the stories told by his films. Stories rather than history. Even a film so pervaded with history as Katyń would not defend itself as a tale and a spectacle if the film was not a continuity of stories of several officers and their families. And if these stories were not convincing and attractive, the presentation of history by itself would not matter at all - if there were only dry facts, even the most terrifying and outrageous ones.

And it refers to all Andrzej Wajda’s films dealing with historical themes, not only Katyń.

Volumes have been written about Ashes and Diamonds because it is a film from the canon of the most important European and world cinema after WWII. So I will not summarize its plot.

Today, it is still a film about a fight, duty towards one’s homeland but also about love, which in the past was considered its subplot. With the passage of time, it is becoming more and more important. Maciek Chełmicki

was a soldier of Home Army, or in 1945 after the dissolution of the Home Army, he could have been a member of its underground continuation (these are problems for a historian). Until recently he was fighting against a very concrete enemy - Germans, now he is to keep fighting but usually against Poles. It is obvious that his fight and the fight of thousands of anticommunist partisans has sense because the German occupation is followed by the soviet, maybe not occupation but, domination. However, he has doubts. He managed to survive the occupation and the Warsaw Rising where most of his friends died, to whom he raises burning toasts. But today the end of war has been announced and he would like to live. In addition, he fell in love with a girl and would like to start a new life with her. First, he has to perform his last task and kill. His last victim unites with him in a symbolic embrace. They are both hostages of history. Maciek will outlive Szczuka only for several hours. In the morning, he meets a patrol of Polish army who want to check his identity. He runs away, gets killed. “Man, oh man, why were you running away?”8, laments the young soldier who was chasing him. Maciek had no other way out, he dies on the rubbish heap of history.

What makes the power of Maciek Chełmicki is not whether he made the right choice in a situation that was unclear for himself, which a viewer in, e.g. Finland, cannot understand, but whether he is credible as a character, hero, man. He is. Even without any knowledge of the whole situation in AD 1945, his death is simply true and pointless. And, in fact, it does not matter whether the rubbish heap is situated in Poland, on the outskirts of Wrocław, which a short time before used to be German Breslau.

It is crucial that we feel that this death is pointless in a universal sense.

This is why, among others, the Polish school films, with Ashes and Diamonds at the top, were so important for viewers worldwide.

8

Ashes and Diamonds, dialogue script. These are also the last words of Jerzy Andrzejewski’s novel.

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“

Jerzy Wójcik “A grand premiere was organized in Wrocław’s People’s Hall, able to accommodate tens of thousands of people.

Andrzej Wajda, the actors, me included, were put on the central rostrum. The screening over, floodlights were switched on; we were in the limelight. Some floodlights also lit up the audience arena and I saw tens of thousands of eyes turned towards us, an unforgettable experience, a great shock and also happiness that I witnessed an event I

“

am unable to comprehend. When I stop to think that the film was seen by several million people, as many of my films were shown in various continents, I cannot comprehend it, but when I saw these thousands of eyes looking at us, I experienced an unbearable flow of energy and felt as though I was lifted up and catapulted into Space”9.

Marek Hendrykowski

Recently, Krzysztof Kornacki11 published an extensive, 462-page-long monograph of this single film, and two other complementary volumes have been announced. They will certainly be gripping because we are dealing here with an outstanding work of art, requiring a sound and comprehensive analysis. It is equally important that the film has undergone a thorough digital reconstruction by National Archive’s Digital Repository from Warsaw, as part of the project KinoRP. Thanks to such conservation activities, using the term related to fine arts, as well as to critical and historical studies, the top class film (not the only one because the Repository has already reconstructed seven other Wajda’s classical films) like Ashes and Diamonds, gains everlasting values. We can only hope that Polish and world viewers will keep appreciating this valuable and important film.

“Shortly after it was premiered, Ashes and Diamonds became one of the most widely discussed hot press topics and, at the same time, one of the most widely noticed Polish films. There were endless discussions, arguments and articles about it. A passionate debatę about Ashes and Diamonds went on not only during the first few days after the premiere, or weeks and months, but, indeed, for many years afterwards. The first wave of reviews, immediately after the premiere, was published in central and regional dailies in the first half of October, as a rule. The second wave brought commentaries in the weeklies and falls in the last ten days of October and the beginning of November 1958. Press cuttings on Ashes and Diamonds from this period would make an impressively fat file. Never before has any Polish film evoked such ardent discussion.”10.

230

9

Jerzy Wójcik, Labirynt światła (Labirynth of Light), Warszawa 2006,

10

Marek Hendrykowski, Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds, Wydawnictwo

p. 28-29.

Naukowe UAM, Poznań 2009, p. 108.

11

Krzysztof Kornacki, Popiół i diament Andrzeja Wajdy, słowo/obraz/terytoria, Gdańsk 2011.

“When in 1958 on the screens appeared to “Ashes and Diamonds” audience immediately sensed that this is piece of great importance” Bolesław Michałek, “Ashes and Diamonds”, “Film”, weekly, 1964, No 28/29

KANAł

KANAl AKA: De 63 daje (Denmark); I dannati la vie (Italy);

Make-up department: Halina Sieńska (makeup artist), Halina Turant;

Ils aimaient la vie (France); Kanal – kirottujen tie (Finland); La partulla de la muerte (Argentina); Oi iroes tis Varsovias

Production company: Film Studio Kadr, Warsaw:

(Greece), They Loved Life;

Production manager: Stanislaw Adler; Production assistants: Tadeusz Bierczyński, Zbigniew

Poland 1957

Brejtkopf, Arkadiusz Orłowski;

Feature film Distributors: theatrical: Film Studio Kadr, Warsaw; Screenplay: Jerzy Stefan Stawiński, based on his short story

Kingsley-International Pictures (1961), USA;

Kanał, ed. 1956;

Contemporary Films, London (2006), UK (all media); DVD:

Direction: ANDRZEJ WAJDA;

The Criterion Collection, New York City (2005), USA;

Cinematographer: Jerzy Lipman;

Umbrella Entertainment (2008), Australia;

Music: Jan Krenz;

www.filmpolski.pl; www.wajda.pl; pro.imdb.com;

Editing: Halina Nawrocka;

en.wikipedia.org;

Sound Department: Józef Bartczak; Production design: Roman Mann;

Filming locations: Warsaw: Długa, Miodowa, Śniegockiej

Costume design: Jerzy Szeski;

Street; Wytwórnia Filmów Fabularnych, Łódź;

Cast: Teresa Iżewska (Stokrotka), Tadeusz Janczar

Color: black and white;

(Ens. Jacek ‘Korab’), Wieńczysław Gliński (Lt. ‘Zadra’),

Running time: 91 min, 2612 m;

Tadeusz Gwiazdowski (Sgt. ‘Kula’), Stanisław Mikulski

Printed film format: 35 mm; DCP:

(Smukły), Emil Karewicz (Lt. ‘Mądry’), Władysław Sheybal

Aspect ratio: 1.37 : 1;

(Michał ‘Ogromny’, the composer), Teresa Berezowska

Sound format: mono;

(Halinka), Jan Englert (Zefir), Kazimierz Dejunowicz (Capt. ‘Zabawa’), Zdzisław Leśniak (Mały), Maciej Macie-

First screenings: Polish premiere: 20.04.1957; festival

jewski (Lt. ‘Gustaw’), Adam Pawlikowski (SS-man), Ryszard

premiere: May, 1957, Cannes Film Festival; August 1957,

Filipski (Polish soldier, uncredited), Władysław Kowalski

Venice Film Festival; Denmark: 1.03.1958; France: 12.03.1958;

(Polish soldier, uncredited), Kazimierz Kutz (insurgent at

Finland: 14.03.1958; Sweden: 24.03.1958; West Germany:

canal, uncredited);

25.07.1958; in the USA: 9.05.1961;

First assistant director: Kazimierz Kutz (credited as Kuc);

Awards and distinctions: nominated to Palme d’Or,

Assistant directors: Anita Janeczkowa, Janusz

Jury Special Prize (ex aequo with The Seventh Seal by Ingmar

Morgenstern, Maria Starzeńska;

Bergman), Cannes Film Festival 1957; Golden Medal for young

Assistant camera: Czesław Grabowski, Andrzej Gronau,

director, World Festival of Youth and Students, Moscow

Jerzy Wójcik;

1957; Gold Duck for the best Polish film 1957; nominated to

Assistant editor: Irena Choryńska;

BAFTA Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Film

Assistant production designers: Halina Krzyżanowska,

(Teresa Iżewska), BAFTA Awards 1959; diploma at

Roman Wołyniec;

International Film Festival in Ibadan 1961; distinction of

Sound assistants: Roman Brański, Józef Dąbrowski,

Brazilian Union of Film Critics, International Film Festival in

Adam Okapiec;

Rio de Janeiro, 1961.

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Andrzej Wajda: “Heroes are the salt of the earth because they take on themselves the most difficult duties. Both as individual people and as representatives of society.

But, for example Antigone takes responsibility on herself individually, as a sister of the murdered brother. While the Warsaw insurgents are an army which acts on the order of the command. And it acts under the pressure of the political situation. It is the last moment for military actions. Unfortunately, political reality doesn’t give them a chance for victory.

Andrzej Wajda at a meeting with Warsaw students at the “Po Prostu” club, 1957.

“

“(Kanal was supposed) to show the protagonists in an ultimate situation. I didn’t mean to show the uprising but the process in which people sentenced to death are dying”1.

Andrzej Wajda 1957

“Sewers are the bottom, the finale, the fall of the uprising and of dreams”2.

“

“

Polskie, arcypolskie... [Polish, arch-Polish...]

Andrzej Werner “Kanal is the finale, the descent onto the bottom of Dante’s inferno in the mud and excrements (...). All hope abandon – this inscription accompanies the protagonists before they find themselves in the hellish labyrinth of underground corridors. In the first takes of the film, during the presentation of lieutenant Zadra’s group, we can hear off-screen commentary: ‘These are the main heroes of the tragedy.

Watch them carefully: these are the last hours of their lives. Later on, they all die’”3.

Andrzej Wajda 2012

“One of the themes of the film Kanal, one of your most significant films, is the ‘pointlessness of heroism’. How do you define the word ‘hero’? Are there really any heroes, or is it a matter still unsettled? Do we need heroes?”

- asked a film critic.

“

Andrzej Wajda „Kanal was the first film in which I fully realized my own style”5.

Jerzy Stefan Stawiński “We have gathered in the cafe under the arcades at Marszałkowska St. to start a movie company: Kawalerowicz, Munk, Wajda and me. I told them that I was writing Kanal. Wajda gave me the idea about a grating installed on the outlet to Vistula. I knew Wajda’s A Generation, at the time considered as a very good debut. I didn’t like that much because it was about AL (the underground People’s communistic Army). Yet I appreciated Wajda. It is not an ordinary man, one of those people who say “Give it, I’ll shoot it.” It was the kind of a man with charisma. At the same time very polity, as if distanced, self-absorbed.

A true artist”.

1

Cited after: Jerzy Janicki, Polscy twórcy filmowi o sobie, Warsaw 1962, p. 85.

4

Yannis Zoumboulakis, interview with Andrzej Wajda, „Vimagazino”,

3

Andrzej Werner, Polskie, arcypolskie…, Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza

5

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, interview with the director conducted on

2

236

“

It is Stalin and the USSR who call for an uprising against the Nazi Germany and when the insurgents start their battle, the Soviet army waits on the other side of the river for a complete failure of the Home Army because it is backed by London, and Stalin wants to have Poland absolutely defenseless”4 .

Andrzej Wajda, Z notatnika reżysera, „Teatr i Film”, 1957, no 1. nowa, Warsaw 1987, p. 54.

(“Vima”), Athens, 9.12.2012, p. 2.

October 23rd 2012.

Because Kanal was not an incident, exceptional one-off artistic event or a fluke. It was the effect of work at the foundations performed by a large group of people connected with the cinema before the WWII in a left-wing group “Start”. During the war, some of them found themselves in the USSR and worked for the Polish (communistic) Army as part of Polish Army Film Crew “Czołówka”, which became the beginning of the post-war cinematography.

First of all, I mean here Aleksander Ford9, ‘the strong man’ of Polish cinema, director and professor of the national film school, whose pet student was first Wajda and then Roman Polański.

To a large extent, it is to Aleksander Ford that Polish film industry owes its birth. “The breakthrough for the Łódź cinematography happened in 1945. Since the city had not suffered significant destruction during the war, it was here that the Polish Army Film Crew (“Czołówka”, run

by Ford) was moved from Lublin. A major problem they faced was a severe shortage of filmmaking equipment. In order to acquire it for a laboratory and the film company, Polish filmmakers went to Berlin. The equipment from 6

In 1957, ex aequo with Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.

7

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i reszta świata, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2000,

8

Sometimes, it is Wajda’s debut, A Generation, that is considered the first

9

p. 95.

film of his school.

Aleksander Ford, 1908-1980, born Mosze Lifszyc, director of documentary and feature films, inter alia Krzyżacy (1960), which was the greatest box-office success ever. It was watched by over 32 millions people, so

almost every Pole (more than the population of Poland then). Ford was made to emigrated from Poland during the anti-Jewish cleansing in 1968, he committed suicide in 1980 in the USA.

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Drawings by Anatol Radzinowicz.

Kanal was Wajda’s first masterpiece, and the director considers his success in Cannes where he won the Silver Palm6 “the greatest success in his life”7. It was also a groundbreaking film for our cinema because it started the phenomenon known as ‘the Polish film school’8, which soon gained popularity worldwide and at home. What is crucial - it attracted the attention of critics and audiences to the new cinematography in a permanent way.

the key Berlin film companies was commandeered by the Red Army, but Poles managed to get the equipment worth 2 million dollars from private service companies (they managed to find them thanks to telephone directories). Most of this equipment turned out to be dated, which did not facilitate the Poles’ production of their first post-war films“10. Thanks to this old equipment the first Film Production Company was set up in Łódź and the first film was made Zakazane piosenki [Forbidden Songs].

The other element of this work at the grass roots was the establishment of the Film School in Łódź in 1948. The two people who played a key role in its establishment are 10

In: Historia kina w Łodzi, www.filmowalodz.pl.

“Warsaw Sewers at Łódź atelier”, film “Fifth from Barska Street” (dir. Aleksander Ford), drawings by Anatol Radzinowicz, “Film”, weekly, 1953, No 22

Ford and Jerzy Toeplitz11, its real founding father and author of its innovative curriculum, also working in the prewar “Start”. Even in its first years of activity the school attracted a large group of very gifted students, like Andrzej Munk, Janusz Morgenstern, Wajda and Kazimierz Kutz, and since 1954 Roman Polański.

11

Of course, in accordance with the famous Lenin’s slogan that “film is the most important of the arts”, the communist authorities acted according to the ideological guidelines, building the Polish cinematography from scratch. They (at least the party bosses) can’t have predicted that the Film School and the Polish cinema will become an incubator of attitudes and works standing in opposition to the People’s Poland.

Jerzy Toeplitz, 1909-95, critic and historian of cinema, author of the

monumental History of Film Art, one of the most famous publications of this type all over the world. He was the rector of Film School until

1968, and due to the same reasons as Ford was dismissed from the post.

In 1970 he left for Australia and from scratch created there Australian film school.

241

Kanal was one of those works. Obviously, in 1957, at the moment of departure from the ‘thaw’ of October 1956, started by the ‘thaw’ in the USSR after the criticism of Stalinism conducted by Khrushchev, it could not have been openly opposing but - and it was quite an achievement - it was not a mouthpiece for the propaganda unanimously condemning the Warsaw Rising.

“When I started making Kanal, was I aware that I wouldn’t be able to tell (the whole) truth from the screen? I was.

More than that, I knew that a condition for making the film is hiding the truth possibly deep under the human drama of the insurgents... Was I a conscious liar? What did I count on?”12, he confessed years later. And went on, “The Jury Award or the so-called Silver Palm, has slightly softened the verdict of Polish viewers and some critics.

It’s hard to be surprised at the Polish audience - to a large extent it consisted of fighters in the Uprising or families who lost their loved ones in Warsaw. This film could not have satisfied them. They have licked their wounds, mourned the loved ones and now wanted to see their moral or spiritual victory, and not their death in canals”13.

The film tells the story of one troop, heroically fighting till the end of the Warsaw Rising 1944 against Germans, watched by the Red Army, on Stalin’s order waiting on the other bank of the Vistula. The rising lasted 63 days and 20,000 young insurgents as well as 200,000 civil inhabitants of the city were killed. This huge, national tragedy for the first time found its fuller reflection in Wajda’s film. The screenplay was written by Jerzy Stefan Stawiński14 , a participant of the Uprising, the Home Army Baszta regiment company commander, a signaler.

Five days before the final capitulation of the rising, he evacuated his group through canals from Mokotów to Śródmieście district.

12

13 14

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i…, op. cit. p. 97.

Ibidem, p. 99.

When they went down to the sewer, his squad was 70 soldiers, toughened in combat, young people who did not run away but went on to fight Germans, despite the fact that this fight was doomed to be lost and they knew it. The entry was right at the pre-war and war-time Szustra Street, nowadays, the street is named after Jarosław Dąbrowski, whereas, the exit was at Aleje Ujazdowskie. Today, it takes 3 tram or bus stops, i.e. about 10 minute drive and 10 minute walk. At that time, it was no different, but on the surface, if you took the streets. Led by lieutenant Stawiński, the insurgents passed the entry manhole at 10 p.m., only to leave it at noon the next day; that is after fourteen hours.

And there were only six of them left.

After the war, Jerzy Stefan Stawiński has described his experience in a story that he published at the beginning of 1956 in “Twórczość” – one of the most important literary monthly magazine (also in the next decades). The text stirred quite an interest, also among moviemakers: first and foremost, of Tadeusz Konwicki, the head of the literature team of the Film Studio Kadr Crew…

At first, Kanal was supposed to be directed by Andrzej Munk, who was slightly older than Wajda (5 years) and soon to become the maker of Eroica, Zezowate szczęście and The Passanger, and the other core pillar of the “Polish Film School,” a stream that was just about to be born.

Nevertheless, Munk decided that he would not be able to shoot the movie in the sewer, into which he went in order to check the location himself. So he gave up. For Wajda, who picked up the subject, filming scenes inside sewer wasn’t a problem at all. Because just recently, 3 years earlier, he worked as an assistant of Aleksander Ford (accompanying Hubert Drapella), who directed his socialist realistic movie Fifth of Barska Street (Piątka z ulicy Barskiej) (1953) that included scenes in Warsaw’s sewers, where one of the key scenes was taking place. He knew that he had to build, just like Ford did, a set in Łódź’s production company and shoot the movie there.

Jerzy Stefan Stawiński, 1921-2010, writer, screenplay writer, director,

co-creator of the ‘Polish film school’, called ‘the Polish Zavattini’, from

the name of the main scriptwriter of Italian neo-realism, NB stylistically very close to the Polish film school.

243

Expertise from Fifth set came quite handy when Wajda was shooting Kanal just as the professional relations that he started at the time. Ford’s set designer, Anatol Radzinowicz, MSc Eng, the author of inventive ideas that concerned sewer’s set designs, but also location of cameras and lights, including their earthing15, worked now with Wajda shooting Kanal. Also Jerzy Lipman, cinematographer, (in Fifth of Barska Street he was only a camera man, but in A Generation he was responsible for cinematography, and in addition, he took part in the Warsaw Rising). And Tadeusz Janczar, an actor, (btw former soldier of Home Army, but also an actor on the line in the communist Kościuszko Division who also played in A Generation).

During preparations and shooting, young director encountered the same problems that in fact accompanied him throughout all his professional years. For a long time, political decision-makers in Polish cinema could not decide whether Kanal should and could be made. Because it raised a difficult subject of in fact an anty-socialist content and if that wasn’t enough, it made some anty-Soviet insinuations – well, showed in the movie through the bars, the right bank of Vistula river was the place where the Red Army (and Kościuszko Division of Polish People’s Army) stationed, waiting patiently, in line with Stalin’s wish, for the rising to bleed out. On the other hand, 1956 was the year of the “thaw” in the USSR and in Poland.

Authorities started to talk openly about “distortions” and release persecuted Home Army members from prisons.

Finally, the head of Polish Cinematography invited Wajda and heads of Kanal to the ministry and gave his consent for the movie. It was a groundbreaking moment in the whole history of Polish cinema. Young filmmakers worked very hard, persistently and… fast, because nobody knew how long the “thaw” would last. Luckily, it took long enough for Kanal to be made. In an impressively short time. The distribution could have started in January 1957, unfortunately the score composer, author of a truly great 15

244

See Warsaw’s Sewers in Łódź’s Atelier, “Film,” 1953, no. 22, pp.8-9, 12.

score, Jan Krenz, was slightly late16 and at the end, the full movie was first screened on 20 April 1957 in Poland and a month later it was shown to the jury and audience of Cannes Festival (of course upon merciful consent given by Polish authorities). And this is how the great, international career of Andrzej Wajda and Polish Film School started.

Regardless of the judgment whether he told the whole or only partial truth about the rising, it is important that Wajda and Stawiński spoke about this topic at all and it was noticed by millions people all over the world. It was treated as a film tale in which historical facts are not crucial, but more important is the psychological truth of the people, their motivations and reasons for actions. The longer the time perspective is, the more you look at Kanal as a work of film art, appreciating its construction, drama, remarkable, purely formal solutions, e.g. lighting. After all, it is not only a historical film but also a tale about love, sacrifice, duty, solidarity, fear and the folly of war.

This psychological layer as well as the unique visual form of the film made it a universal work of art.

“What was most astonishing for me was the reaction of American filmmakers who visited us in a hotel after the presentation of the film; they couldn’t stop praising the script writer for his unbridled inventiveness and imagination. They were sure that Stawiński invented the whole thing for the film. They didn’t believe that what they saw on the screen really happened. Without Kanal they’d never have learned about it and it was for me the most vital fact”17.

16

Director Wajda Tells about Kanał’ and His Plans, “Film,” 1956, no. 52

17

Andrzej Wajda, Kino i…, op. cit. p. 101.

(30.12.1956), p. 2.

“

Audiowizualni.pl 2013

Anna Kilian “A Polish film winning – ex aequo with Bergman’s Seventh Seal – the Silver Palm in Cannes, awarded by a jury chaired

by Jean Cocteau… Sounds like phantasy, but it really happened. In the fifties, the most beautiful and fruitful time for the Polish filmmaking, when the so-called Polish school was born and thrived - a phenomenon which many national historians consider as our only original contribution to the international history of the moving picture. It is the 1957 premiere of Kanal that is perceived as the beginning of this trend, it is this film that promoted it in the West. And it was there it gained the deserved recognition. It was enthusiastically described by the journalists of “The Times,” “The Observer,” “Die Zeit,” “Die Welt,” “Le Figaro,” “Libération,” “Il Tempo,” “Il Giorno,” “L`Humanité,” “El Pais,” “Literaturnaya Gazeta,” “The New York Times” and many others. It was also praised

by renowned filmmakers and film theoreticians – André Bazin, Eric Rohmer, Lindsay Anderson, Georges Sadoul, François Truffaut, writer Alberto Moravia. Cocteau made a remark on Wajda’s fascination with The Disasters of War

by Goya. The French discerned in it existentialist references. We know that the director was also fascinated by the painting of Andrzej Wróblewski – the two were friends during their studies at Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. All in all, Kanal proved to be modern in style, and close to the sensitivity - and Albert Camus - inspired aesthetics - preferred by western audiences of the time.

As filmmaker, Wajda was influenced by the film chronicles from the time of the Warsaw Uprising and three outstanding films: Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out and The Third Man and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear.

245

246

I. Bielińska, “This happened 12 years ago...”, “Film”, weekly, 1956, No 30

4 million and 200 thousand viewers. But it was at home that Kanal was most likely to be attacked for its pessimistic message and portrait of psychologically devastated people whose heroism proved futile. What was expected of the nation was a tribute to the Rising’s zeal, a monument to heroism rather than an autonomous artistic creation or author’s vision.18 18 Anna Kilian, book review: Don Fredericksen, Marek Hendrykowski, Kanał. Ze wstępem i posłowiem Andrzeja Wajdy,

Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza,

Poznań 2007, Audiowizualni.pl, 2013.

Korab and Stokrotka (Daisy) before battle, photo with defective color correction, typical of the mass press in the 50s, “Film”, weekly, 1956, No 30.

Wajda’s film was purchased for cinemas by twenty-four countries, including the Republic of China, India, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Iceland, and Japan – where the older generation still remember Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds. In Great Britain, in 1958, the film about Warsaw’s insurgents was shown in over a hundred cinemas at the same time.

In Poland, in the first year of distribution, it was seen by

Krzysztof Stanisławski, b. 1956, graduate of the Warsaw University, art and film critic, independent curator. He has been interested in cinema since 1978, when he published his first texts, among others about German films. So far he has published the following film books: Notoro. Film Analyses, Kraków 1986, New German Cinema, Sopot 1998, Volker Schlöndorff, Warsaw 2009, Werner Herzog, Warsaw 2012, Syberberg & Wagner, Warsaw 2015, Art of Polish Animation, Warsaw 2016 and 2 books on Andrzej Wajda (Warsaw-Athens 2012, Warsaw-Kaunas 2014).

Joanna Stanisławska-Zdyb, b. 1984, graduate of the Warsaw University (diploma: The Legend of Solidarity’s Leader in Movie “Wałęsa. Man of Hope” by Andrzej Wajda), journalist working in the internet portals Wirtualna Polska and Fakt24, author of the interviews, inter alia, with Lech Wałęsa and Andrzej Wajda.

Coauthor of monography book Andrzej Wajda, Warsaw-Athens 2012.