Kinokrytyka

Master Nikifor

2009-02-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

Short, documentary profile of the Polish naïve artist known as Nikifor Krynicki—real name: unknown. Original title: Mistrz Nikifor.

Made several years before Nikifor's work was first promoted by fellow artist Marian Włosiński, this gentle, unassuming portrait splits its brief time between shots of the artist and of his many, many (over 40, 0000!) works. The former is in b/w, the latter in colour; neither, nor the narration, provides much insight into the mind of this good-natured man, who couldn't speak clearly, couldn't count, couldn't read, and spent his days in the great outdoors, in his beloved Krynica, painting scenes that didn't exist.

Jan Łomnicki, 1956

Interrogation

2009-02-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

A cabaret singer is jailed, beaten, humiliated, degraded by security services in Stalinist Poland—intent: to cajole her into denouncing an old friend, an enemy of the new regime. Original title: Przesłuchanie.

Interrogation was finished in 1982, when Poland was under martial law (literally: stan wojenny or "state of war" [against the people, itself]), and the film was banned. Although the fictional story unfolds in the early 1950s, contemporary parallels must have been deemed dangerous. No matter, it was smuggled (on VHS!) to Canada, and seen.

As heroine Antonina, Krystyna Janda—in perhaps her most-celebrated performance—channels Maria Falconetti, but it's Joan with a twist: whereas the Saint had an ideology with which to steel herself, Antonina has only a strong notion of the self. What's more, its her enemies—her captors, tormentors—who possess an all-illuminating idea; and it confounds them when that fails to give them an edge. One, the enigmatic Lt. Morawski, finds himself captivated, then aroused by such idea-less strength of will. He impregnates Antonina, commits suicide. Is Antonina correct in her reading of him: a friend-less loner, a loser, a tortured survivor of the Nazi camps who did horrible things to stay alive and who now wants revenge? The truth seems milder. We feel sympathy for him; he is damaged; he is not a monster so much as playing one.

Indeed, all is theatre: Antonina must sit when the interrogator gives his performance; an execution is staged to scare Antonina into signing a confession. Deeper, the sexual undertones are unmistakable. Antonina is flirtatious, promiscuous. An early scene emphasizes her swaying hips as she performs for an audience of cheering men. This angers the authorities: morally, personally? The devout communist woman in Antonina's cell, who is happy to sacrifice herself for the Party and a better tomorrow, is fat, ugly, masculine. Is she, are the others, jealous? When Antonina is questioned for the first time, the pudgy-faced officer asks her to relate her entire sexual history—starting with kisses in the fourth grade. Several times, she's stripped. It's a process of humiliation, true; but he also gets off on it. Later in the film, when Antonina refuses to break, his pen stops working, he spills ink all over his table. A shot: while torturing Antonina by hosing her down with water, he holds the hose just below the waist, trying to light a cigarette with the other hand.

Finally, it's in sexual, moral [not political] re-education that the regime succeeds. As Antonina exits the jail and rejoins society-at-large, her weathered, pale face says she'll never be the same: no more parties, no more men, no more singing or being loud, spontaneous, obnoxious. As she visits the orphanage where her daughter (by Morawski) is now living—in a particularly horrific scene, jailers had ripped babies out of their wailing, screaming mothers' arms—we predict a grey, quiet life. And when we share her heartbreak at not being able to identify her own child, we feel that she probably can't identify herself, either.

In the film's final scenes, Antonina ascends the stairs to her husband's apartment—the same husband who had visited her in prison, had seemingly-believed her confessions, and expressed an open, clear hatred of her. The glass half-full may wish to interpret that as a ruse, a loving husband's means of convincing his wife she has nothing left to defend, so that she submits to the state, signs whatever they like, and ends her suffering. It's a beautiful wish. In reality, which the film mercifully refuses to show by ending on a closed door, her husband is just more of the same: a petty, sex-obsessed tyrant. Nominally, she is free; in fact, she has just switched one jail for another. Utter devastation.

Ryszard Bugajski, 1982

We Are Building Warsaw

2009-02-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

The destruction and the beginning of the reconstruction of Warsaw are captured in this immediately post-war docu-short. Original title: Budujemy Warszawę.

Made in 1945, We Are Building Warsaw is a morale-booster for a city and people devastated by war. However, since reconstruction had only just begun, most of the film documents Warsaw's devastation. The opening—influenced by Sergei Eisenstein?—is made in editing: archival footage of German guns being loaded, fired, planes taking off, bombing are inter-cut with defiant shots of Warsaw's Siren. She will not be destroyed; the spirit of the city will not be broken. Following is wartime carnage (Germans with flamethrowers, aerial shots of a bombed-out cityscape, massive buildings being reduced to rubble) and its effects: images like those found in post-war German and Italian films. One tracking shots reminds of the opening of Rossellini's Germany, Year Zero. Then, people enter. Hungry, numbed, without homes; but alive and ready to rebuild. Plans are drawn, workers from all over Poland converge on the capital to make it great again, brick-by-brick. Question: Is this where Socialist Poland's fascination with bricklaying began? Religious buildings are highlighted: cathedrals missing walls but with their steeples in-tact; the face of Christ; his body, untouched by bombs, cross across back, pointing the way. Poland as the Christ of nations. A similar image would re-appear thirteen years later, in Andrzej Wajda's celebrated Ashes and Diamonds. The film, as befits the topic, has no conclusion; or, perhaps more accurately, it's conclusion is actually a beginning.

Eventual problems with reconstruction are probed in later films, such as Jan Dmowski and Bohdan Kośinski's City on the Islands and Kazimierz Karabasz and Władysław Ślesicki's Where the Devil Says Goodnight.

Stanisław Urbanowicz, 1945

In Berlin Hands Were Joined

2009-02-16T08:28:00.000-08:00

Pictures and Propaganda from the 1951 World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace in Berlin. Original title: W Berlinie złączyły się dłonie.

Young people of the world unite(!) for big rallies, anti-imperialist fraternity, saluting, and military-type mass exercise—all under the watchful eye of Stalin and other communist leaders, in giant portrait. Narration is extra-thickly propagandistic, unintentionally ironic: "the Brandenburg Gate divides the free world from the world of oppression and injustice" (how true!). Immediately after, shots of lively East Berlin are juxtaposed with empty, dead West Berlin, in which, in wait, stalk "Adenauer's police dogs". Next: shots of the humane, friendly "people's" police of the East mingling with a group of kids. But that's all build-up to the joyous festival itself. Trains arrive: Polish, North Korean, Chinese, Soviet, British, American, French, Vietnamese, Spanish, Indian, Egyptian. Inter-national youth mingle, dance. During the festivities, a Polish boy makes friends with a Chinese girl and, the narrator proudly tells us, decides to become her pen pal. Since, on-screen, they "speak" in hand gestures, one wonders what language they'll use to write. But, no matter: the celebrations are massive, co-ordinated, filled with screaming German children raising their arms in unison to greet their leader. There's song, sports, people using their bodies to create East German socialist symbols on football fields. Indeed, what's most surprising about the festival—and the film—is how clueless it is. If form counts (and it does), then what we're seeing is continuity rather than a break. West Berlin may be where the "neo-fascists" live, but Hitler's National Socialist rallies have found a better home in the good 'ole East. Long live political spectacle! Long live the "fight for peace"!

For its part, the film is neither well- nor badly- made. Everything is functional and nothing breaks down.

Jan Zelnik, 1951

Under King Krakus

2009-02-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

Stop-motion retelling of the legend of the Wawel dragon, which terrorized Kraków and was finally slain by a sneaky cobbler. Original title: Za króla Krakusa.

Crudely animated, though to be taken in-context of a rebuilding post-war cinema. Best shots are under the titles: a mysterious forest, a pillar with a human face. Afterwards, the illusion of magic is lost: the film's Kraków is unconvincing, the king's throne-room shoddy. Character animations range, though some a are well-done. The puppets have a style to them. The dragon, however, poses a problem, and is adequate at-best. His demise isn't well-handled and he comes off without much "personality". Meanwhile, politics surface in the character of an arrogant [Nazi] German knight who's come to slay the monster, but ends up getting spooked, fleeing up a tree, and then eaten; on his chest: a swastika. By the time the good cobbler kills the beast and marries the princess, we're glad it's over—and not because we hated the dragon. Under King Krakus is a historical curiosity, mostly.

Zenon Wasilewski, 1947

The Boor

2009-02-15T15:37:00.000-08:00

A Warsaw prostitute gets a second chance at love-and-life in the countryside, but throws it tragically away, taking a young peasant boy with her. Original title: Cham.

Uneven Franco-Polish melodrama. It begins well, with violence: our prostitute, Franka, gets harassed, beaten by her pimp; another woman comes to her rescue; together, they fight him off, flee into a building; pimp follows, the trio scamper up a long staircase; then, tragedy—a push sends the Samaritan-woman falling to her death. In the hospital, a doctor offers Franka a way out: a house-servant job in the country, which she accepts. Removed from the ugliness and debauchery of the city, Franka meets and romances a handsome fisherman, Paul. They marry. Scenes of their budding romance are the film's best. What follows is more-familiar: Franka gets bored with her new rural existence, and relapses into past habits. First, she runs away, back to Warsaw, where she works a nightclub and is strong-armed into "keeping" [male] company she doesn't want to keep. When she returns, she wants to poison herself; but Paul stops her. She starts to flirt. Finally, she is found out by the whole village while having a roll in the hay with another man. Paul whips her, but saves her from an angry mob. He takes her home and locks her up, tells her to make dinner. She makes soup—which she poisons! Paul has a few spoonfuls, falls ill. A bruhaha ensues, during which someone finds the poison and discovers the truth. Alone together, Paul tells Franka he forgives her ("like I would a bitch"). Franka, however, cannot forgive herself. The next morning, she drowns herself. Paul survives, and as he and the rest of the villagers stand on the banks of the river, he spots Franka's white slip floating, sinking. Earlier, to get his attention, she'd thrown it purposefully into the water for him to save. Now, as those scenes play superimposed over shots of waves rolling over water, he mournfully remembers; he cannot save her again. It's quite moving.

Jan Nowina-Przybylski, 1931

Miracle on the Vistula

2009-02-14T11:26:00.000-08:00

Two men vie for the affections of one woman as the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1921) comes to a climax in 1920, with the famous Battle of Warsaw—known also as the "Miracle on the Vistula". Original title: Cud nad Wisłą.

Originally in eight acts, only [parts of?] three remain: 1, 3, and 8. Nevertheless, the dual plots (military / romantic) make sense if obvious gaps are accounted for, and there's enough to satisfy a general narrative. Famous inter-war actress Jadwiga Smosarska headlines the cast, which also features a few other familiar names. Directing and editing are unexceptional, functional. Several times superimposition (a boy thinks about his family, a wounded soldier remembers the face of a treacherous Bolshevik agent) is used for creative effect. Other shots are iconic or otherwise aesthetically-pleasing: woods reflected in a lake, soldiers marching through. The film ends with a double-marriage and Polish military victory—Bolsheviks fleeing [oddly] toward screen-left, the West. The war itself, which you can read about in Norman Davies' White Eagle, Red Star, is less sure of its own conclusion, though the argument for a Bolshevik victory is the most difficult to make. When they appear, the film's Bolsheviks are leering, stereotypical villains. Only one, the "Bolshevik agitator", looks sly, suave. A few minutes of documentary footage follows the end of the fictional story—Piłsudski makes an appearance, as does a monument to fallen soliders—reminding that, in 1921, events of 1920 were still fresh as hot buns. Hindsight, however, has the final say; history renders scenes of cheering, happy Poles both tragic and ironic. This war is won, but another yet to come. Independence will soon be put on hold again.

Ryszard Bolesławski, 1921

Look Out, Hooligans!

2009-01-11T10:35:00.000-08:00

Youth corrupts and kills youth and innocent citizens as you stand idly by in 1950s Warsaw. Polish. Original title: Uwaga, chuligani!

Quick-moving Hoffman short looks at "social problem" of hooliganism and stresses lack of "civic responsibility" in bringing these monsters to justice. Hooligans come in several types: kids who skip school, sell illicit goods and scalped movie tickets to buy booze (if you buy a ticket, you're buying the booze—the films says); older, slick players who romance your daughters, befriend your hard-working sons to usurp their cash; lazy and rebellious rascals who cause inadvertent death with their reckless antics; and so on. If it wasn't for touches of levity (introduced by Skórzewski, no doubt), the whole thing would be dumb, glum, and [inadvertantly] laughable: a mother's sad face superimposed on a police lineup of the hooligans who caused her son's death; a bookish man hiding behind a newspaper rather than intervening when he sees a thug toss an attendant off a train. Someone should have tossed Hoffman off a train; but not before commending him for a good, aggressive use of jazz music.

The boy who cried, "Look Out, Hooligans!"

Jerzy Hoffman & Edward Skórzewski, 1955

Mazowsze

2008-12-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

Documentary about Polish folk music-and-dance group Mazowsze (1948-). Film provides propaganda, background, and parts of a performance. Original title: Mazowsze.

Often considered the first Polish colour documentary (although you can see pre-war colour footage of Warsaw here and here), this is vibrant filmmaking: singing, dancing, music! It's from the early 50s and features a shot of [liberating] tractors [approaching from the East], but once you accept that—and accept that Mazowsze was, contrary to the voice-over, a de facto music academy for the country's most-talented young singers / dancers (notice the way the lead female vocalists form their lips; or the way the male dancers look like they'd last roughly 5 minutes doing actual farm work)—it's more-than-possible to enjoy the performances and appreciate the well-made film.

In terms of structure, it divides into two main parts: poetic, idyllic, pastoral bookends (no cities in sight, no war in memory) and the central majestic, lively routines. In both, colour is vital: a Mazowsze in b/w robs the group of its wonderful costumes; a Mazowsze in b/w loses its magic and much of its artistry—and, for an early colour film, its use of colour is tremendously confident and accomplished. The colour also adds to politics, allowing the film's content to look backwards (or, more accurately and in-context, resurrect a popular past that trails behind it the shadow of [capitalist] injustice and serfdom) while, at the same time, moving ahead technologically, and celebrating communism's penchant for progress.

That the film was ultimately highly-illusory (indeed, if there ever was a time for b/w documentaries, it was after the war!) merely adds to its magic now. The natural musical paradise open to people of all walks of life and all classes, the sunny days and smiling pupils and practices held in grassy clearings, the rebirth of long-lost folk music (music that, ironically, was the product of tough conditions, lack of education, and long hours of hard physical labour—when the classically-trained singers do their best to mispronounce words the way a real, uneducated serf would mispronounce them veers into surreality) is a beautiful fantasy. Viewed today, even the primitive propaganda feels safe, quaint.

"Back then, even propaganda was innocent."

Nostalgia.

Tadeusz Makarczyński, 1952

From Powiśle

2008-12-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

Short documentary trip through Warsaw's Powiśle district in 1958. Original title: Z Powiśla.

Uncleared rubble and other war-time devastations compose the bulk of this short, which isn't a bad film; but isn't an especially recommendable one, either. The compositions, editing are assured. The voice-over—as sometimes happens with Karabasz—strives for poetry, arrives at pretension (shots of pigeons against the sky). The argument that there's wasteland and backwardness within sight of central Warsaw is well-taken, but more-forcefully made in another docu-short form the same year: Jan Dmowski and Bohdan Kosiński's City on the Islands. In the film's best scene, the lives of hospital patients lounging, damaged, in the urban sun are suddenly lifted by the sight of a beautiful girl riding past in a speeding train. Smiles; and then she's gone.

He came From Powiśle, settled elsewhere.

Kazimierz Karabasz, 1958

Rat

2008-12-06T11:17:00.000-08:00

Sleaze-ball businessman gets into legal / mafia troubles, hoofs it, and ends up in an surreal underground homeless colony run by a man named "Rat"—who happens to possess a trove of old communist documents that, if published, would expose a slew of high-profile politicians as former collaborators. Original title: Szczur.

Foreshadows of Kusturica's Underground and Caranfil's Filantropica play on the walls of Jan Łomnicki's political satire, but it's a poor film: topical (even prescient, given the more-recent Polish interest in post-communist lustration—not to mention last year's book about Lech Wałesa's activities as "Agent Bolek") and not uninteresting, but so poorly-written / produced that it's hardly worth the time. The most one can say about it is that it gets better [because the beginning is especially awful]. Only a handful shots are worth their film stock, acting stinks even from actors who are dependable. Predictable laughs keep it tolerable, however; and buried beneath the plot and dialogue, there are ideas. One: the film ultimately resolves its moral / political / historical conundrum by advocating the destruction of the old police files (an act that provides the film with its only haunting moment) on the argument that those who want the files—though they're "clean" themselves because they didn't collaborate—are as morally-spoiled as those they'd be denouncing and replacing. Thus, the only result from such a power switcheroo would be inevitable damage to innocents. It's a solution that might make Milan Kundera happy, but I guess I'm too truth-loving (vengeful?) to accept it. Indeed, films that argue in favour of suppressing truth "for the public good" (recently: The Dark Knight) always make me a bit suspicious. But that's politics; rather more-distressing is that Szczur is simply bad art.

The rats have already left the Rat.

Jan Łomnicki, 1995

Cineforms

2008-12-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

Animated short that helped revive Polish experimental cinema after the war. Original title: Kineformy.

The technique used to create the film is described here: "[Pawłowski's] 1957 experimental film Kineformy (Cineforms) consisted of projecting moving abstract models onto a screen using a special image-distorting lens. Pawlowski devised a light machine with two crank-like handles to move the models and the lenses. The light, passing through the lenses, distorted the forms, resulting in a series of very complex images—wispy smoke, diaphanous curtains, passing ghosts and then suddenly solid organic forms. This light performance was then filmed."

It's neat how the film stays true to its title: these are "forms" that only exist in light—only as cinema (or do they?). They're quite varied, too, with moving-objects distorted to appear like explosions, landscapes, smoke, hard edges, soft edges, artificial compounds and organic substances. But it's hard to put myself back into 1957 to get [what I assume is] the full effect of the film. Today, it no-doubt loses much of the freshness and audacity it probably had. I also wonder if Pawłowski—who painted, sculpted, and took photographs in addition to being a filmmaker—wouldn't have done better to capture his cineforms as still images. They would no longer be cine- things, of course, but are they cine- things in the first place? They're meant to be seen in motion, and watching them morph over time on film is pleasing, but there's too little time to take them in; I prefer looking at the screen caps. Am I still seeing cineforms? Motion also breaks the wholeness that the forms appear to have when frozen. In one frame, they seem solid; over several, the nature of the illusion begins to peek through. The magic never wholly disappears, however. Watching the film is like watching the impossible. Something to do: browse over to a computer-wallpaper site with an "abstract" section and compare what you see to what Pawłowski made in the 1950s. Is Photoshop the distorting-lens setup of the new millennium?

Andrzej Pawłowski, 1957

Rocky Soil

2008-12-03T07:03:00.000-08:00

A young doctor struggles to bring medicine and modernity to a highland Polish village. Original title: Skalna Ziema.

Beautiful cinematography and the authenticity of filming on-location (in Southern Poland, at the foot of the Carpathian mountains) give life to this otherwise hokey short "documentary": the landscapes are real enough (!), but an actor plays the doctor—who also narrates, giving the film an additional feeling of subjectivity—and many of the incidents are staged. The climax, for example, ends with the death of a young highlander, who continues to breathe even after kicking the bucket. A bit earlier, to show the scary backwardness of these people, the camera zooms in on an old woman's face to a grotesque degree as she does some hoodoo-voodoo to cure the kid. Juxtapose the doctor looking always calm, cool, collected. More subtlety: an old man visits the doctor but is scared off by mention of a possible infection resulting from ill-treatment of a carbuncle; he flees the hospital and is last seen hoofing it through a cemetery! The film ends with its saintly doctor bemoaning backwoods ignorance and suffering just enough of a crisis-of-faith to produce a Hollywood (albeit with goat cheese) ending. But even as we understand that the highlanders are the "rocky soil" in which the doctor's enlightened practice(s) struggles to grow, we suppress our sighs for the sake of technique. It's a well-made film, burdened by a bad script.

Rocky Soil is bad for writers, good for cameramen.

Włodzimierz Borowik, 1956

City on the Islands

2008-12-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Docu-short critical of the post-war reconstruction of Warsaw, which, the film argues, shattered the city into an island chain. Original title: Miasto na wyspach.

A funny thing happened on the way to the pałac kultury: the narrator stopped talking. The trip began with shots of crowds and trams with a voice-over joining everything together and coming to conclusions (sometimes incorrectly: an increase in the number of tram rides per person doesn't necessarily mean that a city is expanding; its tram lines could also be getting shorter), but then the voice-over changed, became less subjective, and, finally, resorted only to stating the locations ("We are several metres west of the centre.") of each shot. Pictures took over from words: "The camera does not enter into polemics [...] The camera records images on film." What images? First, pictures of the outskirts of Warsaw being rebuilt—of housing blocks going up on farm land and cows grazing near building sites. That's sensible; when there's no more room in the city, the city expands. But then we see pictures of the city centre. And there is room. Uncleared rubble looks like frothy waves upon an empty sea. What, then, the film asks, is Warsaw [and why is it becoming a donut]? Interlude: A particularly playful and noteworthy shot compresses the distance between foreground and background so that the size of the girl playing by the camera makes the car that passes behind (and below) her look like a toy. But these are all just images arranged in a certain order. Surely they can't really be critical or supportive of anything. Surely! The last shot—as the narrator places us: "Thirteenth year of the reconstruction of the capital city. The city centre. The year 1958."—looks like a burial mound. Warsaw is dead, Warsaw is buried. Long live Warsaw.

Build a bridge to the City on the Islands, or go by boat. Bring a compass.

Jan Dmowski & Bohdan Kosiński, 1958

People of the Empty Spaces

2008-12-02T09:16:00.000-08:00

Exploration of a "social problem": Warsaw's disaffected, alienated, bored youth. Original title: Ludzie z pustego obszaru.

Marred by a bromidic voice-over but rescued by excellent cinematography / editing, Karabasz' early effort is at once startlingly good and genuinely groan-worthy. Certainly, the way the camera follows its youthful stragglers is energetic (a late scene in which we attend a jivin' house-party is a gem) and the way the film is cut always-effective and sometimes-ambitious (the build-up to a grim shot of a girl's dead body found in the Vistula heeding neither geography nor chronology, but mood); at the same time, however, the narrator keeps repeating such banalities! This tension between words and images may be intentional, of course, but I doubt it. Most likely, it's context—historical and personal—that makes my interpretation clash with the narrator's slogans. Where he sees boredom and lack of initiative (caused by a failure of ideology, is the suggestion), I see a good time: loitering around football stadiums, playing cards, shooting the breeze over cigarettes and pumpkin seeds—seems like the good life to me. Or maybe I just have a high tolerance for being bored and doing nothing, a deep wish to be left alone. But what is it that these "people of the empty spaces" want? I say: nothing: no help, no interference. Then again, perhaps that's exactly what makes them so dangerous. Every ideology wants believers and needs enemies (like revolution craves counterrevolution); what it can't stomach is the person who shrugs his shoulders and says, "who cares?"

People of the Empty Spaces seep through sentences.

Kazimierz Karabasz & Władysław Ślesicki, 1957

STS 58

2008-12-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

Brief, early inside-look at Warsaw's Studencki Teatr Satyroków (Satirist's Student Theatre), which existed 1954-70. Original title: STS 58.

More filmed-curiosity than accomplished documentary short, but not without its cinematic moments—including gentle touches of cinéma vérité. It's the rehearsals that are the most entertaining, however: young faces that would age into successful acting-or-other careers performing satirical songs and sketches. There's also a brief sequence about censorship (the show didn't go on), but it seems more after-thought than incision. Overall, much like a time capsule, it's value depends on being opened in the future.

STS 58 ain't curtains.

Agnieszka Osiecka, 1958

Jazz Conversations

2008-12-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

A brief history of Polish jazz, in two performances: traditional and modern. Polish. Original title: Rozmowy jazzowe.

The performances are fun, but the film meanders as the director and cinematographer try to upstage (complement?) the music. Still, it's a neat "extra" for fans of Polish jazz, with many famous musicians playing in the two sequences. In the first—traditional jazz—sequence, for example, we have: Jerzy Matuszkiewicz on soprano sax, Leszek Lic on clarinet, Włodzimierz Wasio on trombone, Andrzej Kurylewicz on the piano, Roman Dyląg on bass, and Witold Sobociński on drums. This sequence is roughly half the film, and the boys play two songs. Then begins the modern jazz performance, which features a name that should be more-familiar to film fans: Krzysztof Komeda. The performers are Krzysztof Trzćinski on piano, Jan Wróblewski on clarinet, Zdzisław Brzeszczyński on trombone, Jerzy Milian on Vibraphone, Józef Stolarz on bass, and Jan Zylber on drums. They play one song, which is marred by annoying camera-work and editing. Ironically, it's this "modern" sequence that feels most-dated. Anyway, if you're into the music, it's worth the watch; otherwise, it's neither interesting nor especially good.

Jazz Conversations can be held, but focus on the jazz.

Andrzej Brzozowski, 1957

Paragraph Zero

2008-11-30T18:10:00.000-08:00

Short documentary about ["nonexistent"] prostitution in 1950s Poland. Original title: Paragraf zero.

Forceful, gut-wrenching, terrifyingly well-realized—one of the best documentary shorts I've seen (though I haven't really seen that many). Undeniably, one of the film's greatest achievements is its blending of softly lit, beautifully composed images (the opening, somewhat staged; the conclusion, which includes the breathtakingly-poetic "walk into the dark of fog" seen above) with the raw, truly-documentary meat of its body paragraphs. So that, between the noir-ish intro and mystical coda, we see actual footage of: a raid on an underground prostitution den, women scurrying into corners and covering their faces, newspapers and soiled bedsheets on concrete floors, all illuminated by the glaring cone of a flashlight; a group of prostitutes under arrest, fighting, arguing, some snatching things off the floor and stuffing them into coat pockets; close-up interviews with several of the arrested women—black rectangles following faces, covering eyes—including a heart-breaking sequence with a girl who confesses to being sixteen, out of school, living on the street. Not all of the prostitutes are young or unhappy, however. One, in her twenties, is pretty, content with her life. Another, with unwashed hair and the face of a German Expressionist painting, started whoring in 1939, seventeen years ago, and remains defiant. Her childhood friend, she adds, became a nun. Perhaps predictably, all of the unhappy women blame others for their situation: "My friend told me to run away from home", "It's Susie's fault because she started me drinking". On a rare hopeful note, the narrator remarks that some of these women can still turn their lives around; but others can only be treated, no longer saved (although I'm not sure what that means, exactly). Nevertheless, the triple-point is to show that prostitution exists and expose both how it functions and how the ruling apparatus tiptoes around the problem. The film ably succeeds—but not before its construction also tickles your brain and the documentary footage first makes you hurt, and then leaves you numb. For an entire host of political and non-political reasons, I still can't believe this was made in 1957.

Paragraph Zero says more than some novels.

Włodzimierz Borowik, 1957

Little Town

2008-11-30T10:06:00.000-08:00

Documentary about the fate of small towns in post-war Poland: unemployment, low wages, bureaucracy, loss of the young and able to the cities, and general physical erosion. Original title: Miasteczko.

This shot of an empty bench in the rain is my favourite from Jerzy Ziarnik's "black series" docu-short about small-town emigration. Its evocation of humanity through an inanimate (though earthy, worn) object reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh's chairs and shoes. And the fate of the bench is the fate of the town—itself, the narrator tells us, the fate of thousands of towns: anyone with courage or hope leaves; no one ever comes back. Before the war, the miasteczko of the title was home to famous and impassioned shoemakers. By 1956, one-thousand of its five-thousand inhabitants are unemployed. Moreover, wages for state-working shoemakers are too low, and the taxes for private shoemakers (who also miss out on benefits) too high. Supporting a family is difficult. On market days, an illicit leather trade attempts to bypass some of these regulations, but the film shows the consequences of being caught leather-handed. As a result, most people with any ambition or talent leave—perhaps waiting on the rain-soaked bench for the bus—while the ones who stay behind seem content for time to pass them by completely. The film doesn't particularly point fingers, but its tone is bleak and its insistence that there is a problem unwavering. It would be interesting to visit this town again, today, and see how life went on.

I passed through the Little Town, but didn't stay. The bus merely slowed down, then went on its way.

Jerzy Ziarnik, 1956

Where the Devil Says Goodnight

2008-11-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

Documentary (with parts docudrama) short about the Warsaw district of Targówek, which in 1956 was impoverished, still-buried under uncleared rubble from the war, and the cruel victim of forgotten government promises. Original title: Gdzie diabeł mówi dobranoc.

What strikes one most about Where the Devil Says Goodnight is the tone: grim, mournful, critical. Gone are the slogan-happy workers building a better socialist tomorrow of yester-film; and, in their place: no tomorrow at all. A bombed-out cemetery reminds of the destruction of World War II. Afterwards, in a sequence: years fly by, plans are drawn, and reports are pounded out by a secretary's typewriter—all announcing the fantastic utopia to come. The reality, however, doesn't conform: nothing has been completed; everyone drinks, everyone smokes, kids steal and gamble; bars exist, but no work; a scene of lovemaking breaks out into a fight. A train whizzes by, leaving Targówek behind. An image repeated: "House of Culture" painted haphazardly on a rickety fence. According to plans, there should already be a "house of culture" here; in reality, there's only that old sign and a small gymnasium where young men play table tennis, trade pigeons, conglomerate. It's hope, as the narrator tells us, but on a small scale. Is this Warsaw or the third world? Are these the underclassmen of a classless society? Somewhere next door, the ~~Joseph Stalin~~ Palace of Culture and Science (1956, remember!) is already standing, apartments are going up, the city and country are rebuilding. In Targówek, however, wartime perseveres. Equality is permanently on hold. The post-war cinema bloomed in Germany and Italy with "rubble films"; in 1956, it was still possible to make a "rubble film" in this part of Warsaw—its destruction uncleared, its future uncertain.

Although many of Karabasz's images are striking, it's as a document that Where the Devil Says Goodnight becomes twice-valuable: its content a reminder of a regime that failed, its existence evidence of one entering a phase of opening and change.

Kazimierz Karabasz & Władysław Ślesicki, 1956

A Day Without Sun

2008-11-29T08:44:00.000-08:00

A hapless, lonely man wanders through the city, looking for love and friendship and finding little of either. Original title: Dzień bez słońca.

Made of no-longer-original parts in 1959, this Polish short nevertheless weaves an endearingly pathetic whole from equal bits Charlie Chaplin and Neorealism: a kind-of gritty silent slapstick. The main character—small, bookish—tramps around on-location shot urban locales, hoping for luck but always getting the short end of the stick: befriending a stray dog only for the pup to go off with a fellow canine; helping a woman work a telephone booth only for her to leave without so much as a thank you; pushing his way into a movie theatre ticket line only to discover he doesn't have enough money to buy a ticket. At the end—after engaging in a desperate competition with another lonely man about who can feed the most pigeons—he slumps down on a park bench. But the former rival takes a seat nearby, and then lights our loner's cigarette (is a cigarette just a cigarette?). The film is most memorable for its gentle humor and urban[e] sadness, and most important for its grey realism.

A Day Without Sun isn't always a waste.

Kazimierz Karabasz & Władysław Ślesicki, 1959

Children Accuse

2008-11-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

Short about alcohol abuse. Part of the "black series" (1955-9) of films about serious subjects. Original title: Dzieci oskarżają.

Terse, primitive, well-assembled "documentary" (if by documentary you mean actors acting out real or unreal events) dealing with the effects of adult alcoholism on children. It begins: a little girl, her mother, a scream, the mother run-down dead by a drunk driver, a close-up of the little girl crying—and flash the title! Then again, Jerzy Hoffman has never been subtle. So we proceed to see parents giving their 7-year old kids their first sips of vodka, teenagers getting smashed on someone's birthday (and I mean smashed; the kind of smashed you only see in movies), a father forgetting to pick up his son from school and spending the day, evening, and night drinking instead. Eventually, a boy—sporting a big welt over one eye—talks about how his parents drink and beat him. In the next scene, the drunk father gives the kid some money and sends him off to the store, where the hungry lad eyes the mounds of breads, meats, and sweets (shocking: they must have been assembled just for the film, and quickly redistributed afterwards!) before buying the inevitable hootch for papa. He should have bought the hamfist, instead. At the end, there are authentic shots of children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome—no less manipulative than what comes before, but harder to be cynical about and more documental—as well as a bit of blunt but effective montage: a booze bottle swings in and out of focus; the leering, laughing faces of grotesque drunks.

Children accuse, the judge reluctantly accepts the case; but not before having a little drink, first.

Jerzy Hoffman, 1956

Polska Kronika Filmowa, n. 52 A-B

2008-11-25T08:35:00.000-08:00

Special edition of Poland's weekly film-magazine Polska Kronika Filmowa, which showed in theatres before features and existed 1944-1995.

Made between the darkly-comic Eroica and Zezowate szczęście, Munk's newsreel is a delightful[ly absurd] counterpoint to his earlier, humourless docu-shorts. It begins on close-ups of socialist functionaries answering telephones—one telling a woman that the 30% increase in the standard of living is merely an average—proceeds through a photographer's portraits of cats, and includes a scene of an actor dressed in white pajamas pretending to be an arctic monkey. Punctuating it all are inserts of the latest "triumphs" of Polish steel milling: big industrial ships being christened—the last of which proves too-easy a cookie to crack, leaving an in-tact champagne bottle and broken hull. There's also a brief gag about a "happy police", which gives out tickets to people who look glum; and a sketch about the latest in education experiments: an elementary schoolroom without teachers in which the students do as they please. Inevitably, the whippersnappers break out the guns and start bashing each other over the heads. As a little boy gets lynched by his classmates, the narrator beams out: "Some day, they'll be going places!"

Andrzej Munk, 1959

Illumination

2008-09-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

A quiet, intelligent, ambitious science student pursues the meaning of life while leading his own in 1970s Warsaw. Original title: Iluminacja.

Krzysztof Zanussi's Illumination is profound but never pretentious, important/heady but neither self-important nor arrogant. It's also another kind of rarity: a[n] [sm]art film that moves briskly, frantically—pursuing meaning along with its main character, sharing his excitement and life-tempo, and treating his mission as energetically as he does. An intellectual action film? Then there's style: from musically-tinged jump cuts (echoes of the French New Wave), to graph inserts (academics peak at 36!), to the use of lecture/discussion footage (ex: philosophical meaning of "illumination"). All is inventive, vital. Beautiful moments arise, but aren't milked: a moment between father, son, and the frame of an unfinished skyscraper passes with the same velocity (24fps, 5 degrees West of Brilliance) as exhilaration, tragedy (scientists and Romantics both love their mountains), horror. What is horrific: the disappointment of the curious mind, the physical limitations of the human body, the prodding and cutting-open of brains—made visual, but not only literal—and so on. Though the film does end on an illumination, there is dread throughout. Yet, in a film that makes you squirm in your own mortal, decaying, prone to electro-shock body, there is also hope, also a soul. Zanussi, in his physicist-philosopher genius, rips you open and lays you bare. Or is it autobiographical? Don't answer: Illumination occurs.

Krzysztof Zanussi, 1973

There Was Once...

2008-09-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

Nine-minute animated short created from cut-outs and being the adventures, adaptations, and metamorphoses of an imperfect oval, four sticks, and the world.

Raw creativity. Animation is at its most basic—shapes, rough drawings, figures from magazines—but interaction between these elements demonstrates the versatility of simple things and suggests the evolution of humankind: from cells, through religion (a glimpse, inspirational), into politics (vanquished!), around love and nature, and finally morphing into Art and realizing itself a small part of a greater, chaotic universe—before feeling restless and bored and setting out, once again, for new adventures. Or: shape becomes man, becomes plant, becomes bird, becomes painting, becomes shape. A bit crazy, a bit brilliant, very recommended.

Jan Lenica & Walerian Borowczyk, 1957

Agrotechnika

2008-09-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Five-minute animated short about futuristic industrialized agriculture: strange machines, stranger plant-life.

Grotesque imagery of metal monsters tending garden doubles as grotesque metaphor for mechanized, automatic sexuality. Though theme is hard to pin down, the few minutes are oddly memorable. Crops don't sprout until a robot-bureaucrat stands in the fields and reads a proclamation: a Moist Agricultural Revolution or The Compost Manifesto?

Leszek Marek Gałysz, 1982