I’ve just discovered that Andrzej Wajda’s great war trilogy – A Generation (Pokolenie, 1955), Kanal (Kanał, 1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, 1958) – is being shown on Film4 in the small hours of the next few days (there are two complete screenings scheduled on consecutive nights, starting on the mornings of Tuesday 24th and Sunday 29th July). They should be viewable free of charge by anyone with a digital television setup.
To my shame, I’ve yet to see A Generation, though its reputation as the film that almost single-handedly brought Polish cinema to the attention of the West very much precedes it – and it also has a young Roman Polanski in a supporting role. But I have seen Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds, and can’t recommend them highly enough.
Kanal translates as “sewer”, and the film is a vivid evocation of how the Polish Resistance used the Warsaw network of tunnels as their only viable means of getting anywhere near Nazi-fortified areas of the city. Unsurprisingly, it’s a dark and claustrophobic film, whose vivid evocation of its location is such that you can almost smell the dank, clammy atmosphere. Equally unsurprisingly, it remains true to the historical record by being a deeply pessimistic piece of work, which got Wajda into trouble at home because the domestic audience – for whom the events of 1944 were still well within living memory – expected something more upbeat and heroic. But had he done that, the film would have been totally and probably deservedly forgotten. (A trivia note that’s probably of no interest to anyone but me: Wladyslaw Sheybal, who plays the musician with the memorably piercing gaze, emigrated to Britain shortly afterwards, changed his professional name to Vladek Sheybal, and become one of Ken Russell’s favourite actors, playing his alter ego in The Debussy Film and The Boy Friend and Goebbels in Dance of the Seven Veils, amongst other roles).
Ashes and Diamonds inaugurated what would become a familiar Wajda device, of setting the events of a film shortly after a well-known historical epoch. Just as his 1970 film Landscape After Battle (Krajobraz po bitwie) looked at the experience of former Polish concentration camp inmates after their supposed liberation, and his latest film, Katyń, reportedly devotes at least half its running time to the aftermath of the title massacre, Ashes and Diamonds is set on the last day of World War II, and explores the dilemmas faced by Resistance fighters who have seen their world shift from the black-and-white certainties of fighting the Nazis to a far more fluid and uncertain situation. Zbigniew Cybulski garnered himself the highly misleading “Polish James Dean” tag through his portrayal of the title role, the idealistic fighter Matiej, whose botched assassination attempt at the start of the film triggers a bout of introspection that causes him to question everything that he’s hitherto stood for.
Screenings
- A Generation is at 1.35am on Tuesday 24th July (or very late on Monday night, if that’s how you calculate these things) and 0:45 on Sunday 29th July
- Kanal is at 1.30am on Wednesday 25th July and at 1.10 on Monday 30th July.
- Ashes and Diamonds is at 1.10am on Thursday 26th July. The listings aren’t up yet, but I’d guess it’s also due a repeat on the morning of Tuesday 31 July.
Links
- Andrzej Wajda’s official website has English-language pages on A Generation, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds – each including a statement by Wajda and excerpts from the contemporary critical reaction.
- IMDB entries for A Generation, Kanal, and Ashes and Diamonds.
- Ewa Mazierska’s essay on A Generation, commissioned for Criterion’s DVD box set.
- John Simon’s essay on Kanal, ditto.
- Paul Coates’ essay on Ashes and Diamonds, ditto.
- Essay on the entire trilogy by Saul Austerlitz in The New Republic
- The Guardian’s Derek Malcolm and The Observer’s Philip French both wrote short pieces on Ashes and Diamonds when they surveyed their 100 best films.