Despite being considered a hot favourite in some circles, Andrzej Wajda’s Katyń failed to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar, being beaten at the final hurdle by the German film The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher). However, Polish Radio’s English-language news service puts on a positive spin by pointing out that the largely Polish-made stop-motion animated film Peter and the Wolf won Best Animated Short Film.
The same source highlights a recent poll conducted by the daily newspaper Polska that nominated Katyń as the best Polish film ever, followed by Knights of the Teutonic Order (Krzyżacy, d. Alexander Ford, 1962) and The Deluge (Potop, d. Jerzy Hoffman, 1974). The fact that all three are historical costume dramas, and that this genre regularly tops the Polish box office when it comes to domestic productions (Wajda’s 1999 film Pan Tadeusz was a colossal domestic hit that barely played abroad), neatly illustrates the gap between Poles’ own perception of their great films and the international consensus.
The last sentence of you blog is idiotic. As a Pole, I can tell you the general consensus is nowhere near Hoffman or Ford. I do not understand why western press always quote one paper, sometimes even a marginal one, as some general consensus. You should take a tally of the many books written about Munk, Has, or Kieslowski to illustrate what you think is the reality as quoted by a paper that is owned by the British Guardian.
Concerning Wajda, the irony is that he lost to a film with a title that he has been accused of having publicly in the Polish Film Industry.
As a group, the Poles unfortunately have these odd nationalist, Romantic hang-ups (although perhaps I’m not one to talk, being American and all). Have you ever read Witold Gombrowicz?
As a Pole, I can tell you the general consensus is nowhere near Hoffman or Ford.
On the other hand, it’s undoubtedly true that Hoffman and Ford’s romantic costume dramas are vastly more successful in Poland than they are elsewhere (where they’re barely known at all) – which is what I was primarily referring to: I didn’t for one second mean that I thought the Polska poll was in any way definitive!
Similarly, Wajda’s costume epic Pan Tadeusz was a huge hit in Poland that barely opened internationally – it never played in Britain at all, and I think its US release was limited in the extreme.