As part of my ongoing research into the extensive back catalogue of Andrzej Wajda, the grand old man of Polish cinema, I watched the Facets/Polart DVD of his 1960 film Innocent Sorcerers (Niewinni czarodzieje) last night.
It made for a fascinating contrast with his usual work. It was his fifth feature, but his first set in the (then) present, and the lack of period trappings makes for a much looser, more relaxed style – in fact, if I’d missed the director credit and had to guess, I’d have said it had far more in common with the work of Jerzy Skolimowski (who co-wrote the screenplay with Ashes and Diamonds author Jerzy Andrzejewski and plays a minor role, as the boxer whose career is threatened by an unwelcome medical diagnosis seconds before a key fight commences) or even Roman Polanski (who also appears).
Coincidentally, I’d rewatched Eric Rohmer’s My Night With Maud (Ma Nuit chez Maud) and Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love relatively recently, and all three films would make a great triple bill, as they all revolve around sensually-charged but nonetheless ultimately platonic relationships, prevented from further development by the various ideological hang-ups of one or other party.
In this case, the protagonist is Bazyli (or Basil in the subtitles), played by Tadeusz Łomnicki, a young doctor-cum-amateur jazz musician with a distinctly jaded attitude towards the fairer sex – or at least with the fact that he’s never found seduction particularly difficult. But when he meets Pelagia (Krystyna Stypułkowska), and is lured back to her flat for a series of oddly ritualised conversations and games (including a variant on strip poker performed with the aid of a matchbox, the film’s most famous set-piece), he becomes tantalised by the prospect of a relationship moving to a higher level – only to find that she disappears the next day, leaving him bewildered and, for possibly the first time in his life, emotionally self-aware.
Here’s a link to the relevant page in Wadja’s own website (in English), and a detailed review of the DVD by DVD Savant. Note that I had exactly the same technical problems with the disc that he describes – mainly, some of the worst juddering I’ve ever encountered on a PAL-to-NTSC conversion – even though I was watching the final commercial release. Unusually for a Facets release, though, the subtitles were fine – a few typos here and there and the odd bit of misformatting, but they were at least in sync, white and optional. As ever with this label, it’s swings and roundabouts.