One of the first countries overrun by the Nazis in World War 2, Poland suffered mightily under the jackboots. Jewish citizens were rounded up and imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. The resistance movement was brave but its civilians-turned-soldiers were outnumbered and outgunned.
This turbulent period which scarred the nation for years is brilliantly evoked in Andrej Wajda’s war trilogy, starting with A Generation (1955), continuing with Kanal (1957) and climaxing with Ashes and Diamonds (1958).
A graduate of the renowned national film school at Lodz, Wajda made several documentaries before he was offered the chance to direct his first feature, A Generation, based on Bohdan Czeszko’s novel. The central committee of the ruling Communist party envisioned the film as a piece of propaganda to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Polish People’s Republic. Officials were horrified when they saw the first cut in 1954 and demanded reshoots which delayed the release for months.
Set in 1942, the film was shot almost entirely on location in Warsaw, where parts of the city were still in ruins, and Lodz, with mostly unknown actors. The central character is Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki), a brash, tough teenager who works as an apprentice in a factory. Stach isn’t overtly political although, like his mates, he despises the Nazis. We see the forces which turn him into a radical as an older colleague lectures him about the Marxist class struggle; he’s humiliated and beaten up by soldiers after being accused of stealing timber; and he becomes infatuated with Dorota (Urszula Modrzynska), the firebrand leader of an underground Communist resistance group.
There are many memorable scenes, including Stach and his cohorts gathering at a fun park which the Germans built incongruously next to the Ghetto; a murder in a bar; the hijacking of a truck; and soldiers pursuing one of the fighters. Another point of interest: the film marked the debut of a young Polish actor named Roman Polanski as a supporting character named Mundek. Technically the film is rather rough: some of the night/interior scenes are so murky it’s hard to figure out who the characters are and what they’re doing, and numerous scratches are visible.
Kanal is a wrenching drama which chronicles the final hours of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, when a platoon of Home Army soldiers made a last stand against Nazi forces, wrongly believing the Soviet Red Army was about to liberate the city. They soon realise it’s a hopeless mission, as their pistols and grenades are no match for the enemy’s tanks and bombs.
The battle scenes have a remarkable intensity for a film of that era. Wajda and screenwriter Jerzy Stefan Stawinski focus on a wide array of characters, some well-defined, others almost indistinguishable from one another.
The second half of the film follows a motley group of resistance fighters and citizens, including two women, as they retreat to the sewers in a desperate effort to reach the centre of town and what they hope will be safety. This is an almost unbearable study of human misery as various characters get lost, separated and overcome with panic, fatigue and despair and, in one case, madness. The conclusion is simply shattering.
There are stand-out performances from Teresza Izewska as Daisy, a sultry blonde with Veronica Lake hair who shows great grit as well as tenderness with her lover; Wieczyslaw Glinski as the group’s stoic leader; and Tadeusz Janczar as the sensitive Korab. The black and white photography is much sharper than in A Generation, although the score sounds oddly inappropriate at times, more suited to a Disney cartoon.
Ashes and Diamonds is a poignant tale of the political and social chaos in Poland at the end of the war, on the day German surrendered. Co-written by the director and novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski, the plot follows Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski), a young, idealistic Home Army soldier who’s assigned to assassinate the new Communist Party Secretary Szczuka (Waclaw Zastrzezynski). Due to faulty intelligence, Maciek kills the wrong guy in a brilliantly inventive scene in which the victim catches fire as bullets riddle his body. Maciek vows to complete the job but starts to question his priorities after becoming infatuated with beautiful barmaid Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska). An intriguing sub-plot revolves around Sczuka’s efforts to find his 17-year-old son, who was cared for by his sister-in-law after his wife died.
Much lighter in tone than the earlier two films, this movie features a riotously drunken journalist who causes mayhem at a banquet, along with other exquisitely photographed scenes including the lovers discovering an inverted crucifix in a bombed church, and the killers setting glasses of vodka alight to remember their victims.
Cybulski is superb as the conflicted Maciek: with his movie star looks, tinted glasses and raffish charm, the actor was hailed as the Polish James Dean, a sobriquet which proved prophetic when Cybulksi was killed by a train in 1967, aged 39. Krzyzewska is similarly impressive as Krystyna, who’s learned to live each day as it comes and don’t worry about tomorrow. Generous extras include an extensive interview with the director.
