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Three War Films - Andrzej Wajda [DV76273] |
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This product was added to our catalog on Monday 05 October, 2009.
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| Item Description |
Three groundbreaking films that ushered in the "Polish School" movement and solidified the importance of their creator, arguably the most important figure in post-World War II Eastern European cinema. Includes A Generation (1955, 87 mins.), Wajda's debut film about a wayward Polish teen drawn into the underground anti-Nazi resistance movement. The film is a stirring coming-of-age story with broad implications. Kanal (1957, 96 mins.), a Special Jury Prize winner at Cannes, is a harrowing look at the final days of the Warsaw uprising as experienced by a band of Polish resistance fighters attempting to escape the Nazi onslaught through the Warsaw sewers. The third film in the trilogy, Ashes and Diamonds (1958, 105 mins.), follows a pair of men who, in the waning hours of World War II, are given orders to murder an incoming commissar. Ashes and Diamonds balances the personal with the national and is considered one of the most important Polish films of all time. All three films are in Polish with English subtitles. Ashes and Diamonds is presented in letterboxed format.Run Time: 286 minutesFormat: Box set, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Criterion Collection Edition. 3-DVD set includes audio commentary by film scholar Annette Insdorf on Ashes and Diamonds, interviews on each film with Andrzej Wajda, assistant director Janusz Morgenstern, and film critic Jerzy Plazewski, vintage newsreel on the making of Ashes and Diamonds, Ceramics from Ilza (Wajda's 1951 film school short), behind-the-scenes production photos, publicity stills, and posters for all three films, a gallery of Wajda's original drawings and paintings, new English subtitle translations, and new essays by film scholars and critics Ewa Mazierska, John Simon, and Paul Coates. |
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Product Reviews |
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Joel W. Barnett - 08/15/2008 
Rather than review each of the three films included here, let me say something about them as a whole, and they are packaged together for a reason.
The three movies, "A Generation", "Kanal, and "Ashes and Diamonds" focus on young people involved in the Polish resistance, in the first two movies to the Germans, in the last to the Soviets. In all of them our heroes and heroines fail. They are dealing with events far bigger than them, but they must do something.
The Poles did their best, but were overwhelmed, militarily. The resistance faced enormous odds. These movies are very powerful accounts of the resistance, including heroines as well as heroes, esp. in the first two. The first two movies deal with the uprsising in Warsaw, from diffent perspectives.
I like "Ashes and Diamonds" the best of the three. It's the last day of the war, 1945, a commisar of the USSR is coming to town to take over. Our young hero's job: Kill him. While our hero waits, he falls in love with a local girl. She wants him to abandon the job and go away with her and be happy. He agrees with the going away part, but feels the need to carry out his job first. As good movie goers, we know how that is likely to end.
"Ashes and Diamonds" is an interesting take on the traditional American rural gangster movie, e.g., "High Sierra", "You Only Live Once", "They Live by Night", etc. Wajda's approach is more overtly intellectual, and also more passionate, as he is filming a story of his countrie's history which he lived, a history which included his fathers murder by the Germans at Katyn.
Wajda is, in my opinion, the greatest living movie director, not perfect by any means, but at his best, he can't be beat. These three films are worthy of your attention. |
Ted Merriman - 08/15/2008 
This Box set by Criterion contains 3 films by Andrzej Wajda about Poland during World War II
Each covers a different aspect and situation of the war.
The first film, Pokolenie (A Generation) is about a young man living just outside Warsaw who decides to join the resistance. He later meets a beautiful woman who he falls in love with.
The second film, Kanal, is about a group during the Warsaw uprising who attempts to evacuate survivors out of the city through the sewers. I found this one particularly hard to watch as much of the film involves people crawling through untreated sewage. Skip this one if you have a weak stomach.
The third film, Popiól i diament (Ashes and Diamonds), takes just after the German surrender to the allies and the beginning of Soviet rule. The main character is a hired assassin who is assinged to kill one of the new Soviet leaders.
Each film is on its own disc and there are plenty of special features on each disc.
Disc 1 contains the film, A Generation, with behind the scens production photos, an interview with film critic, Jerzy Plazewski and director Andrzej Wajda, and Wajda's student film, Ceramika Ilzecka (Ceramics from Ilza).
Disc 2 contains the film Kanal along with behind the scenes photos, an interview with, Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, a participant in the Warsaw uprising, and an interview with the film's assistant director, Janusz Morgenstern.
Disc 3 contains the film Ashes and Diamonds with optional audio commentary by Annette Insdorf, behind the scenes photos, a 2 minute newsreel on the film's production, and interviews with Janusz Morgenstern and Jerzy Plazewski.
This is an excellent film series for those interested in the German occupation of Poland and I recommend it. |
Robert Bezimienny - 08/15/2008
These films come with high critical acclaim, yet rarely have they screened in local, Sydney, arthouse cinemas, and seldom are they mentioned in the ubiquitous "Top 100" lists: I wondered how to explain this, but having viewed them I think the answer lies in their being admired rather than loved. The admiration is justified in terms of the formal qualities of the films, such as the excellent cinematography, the complex yet coherent story structures, and the charismatic performances elicited from the actors; the lack of unbridled affection is perhaps a reflection of the earnestness underlying the whole process, and the fact that the characters, while in many ways nuanced, can't escape the burden of representing more than themselves, that is to say, being embodiments of 'types' or movements within Polish history.
*
Criterion has provided an excellent treatment. The transfers are terrific. Wajda himself, along with his co-writer Morganstern, and a prominent Polish film critic, Plazewski, provide interviews, filmed in 2003 - there is 90 minutes of this and, while highly illuminating in many details, it also hints at the spirit which leadens the actual films. The weight of history and circumstance is felt by the director, and his peers, and it is hard for them to evade a tone of self-importance - this is well-justified, but still confers a heavy tone to proceedings. Criterion also include an early short of Wajda's and period newsreels and historical matter, and a commentary by a film scholar on Ashes and Diamonds - if sold separately, these would all be premium releases, so they represent good value here.
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Ashes and Diamonds is billed as the best of the trilogy, and the lead performance by Zbigniew Cybulski is especially lauded. It is set on the night of the German surrender, May 8th, 1945, and the plot is roughly given in the Amazon editorial. In his interview Wajda explains that Cybulski insisted on wearing his own clothes during the film, and on dark glasses - his Maciek looks like a Godard protagonist or, as was the explicit influence, James Dean - initially Wajda resisted this, as he knew such a look was ludicrous historically, but he relented, and now analyses the appeal of the film in terms of Maciek being a figure the youth of the time (1958) could relate to - he was one of them. Interesting, for sure, but distancing too, and possibly a reason why Maciek's fate evokes less emotion from a viewer than it might.
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There are many instances of overt symbolism in all these films. This can make for indelible images, such as the inverted splintered crucifix in Ashes and Diamonds, or the extended symbolism of the canals in the eponymous film - it can also force one to view the films as political statements, prising one out of a purely aesthetic appreciation - the director does not leave you free to choose how you approach these works.
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As Wajda points out, neither he nor his Polish contemporaries were free to make the films they wanted. Controversy marked the release of each film, and the Communist censors had to be placated. In this light, the implicit strong criticism of the Communist regime, and particularly of the Russian role in allowing the decimation of Warsaw and attendant crushing of the uprising there, is an incredibly brave act. Kanal can easily be read as saying that the Russian 'liberation' forced Poles 'into the sewers', to live in filth and stench, both literal and metaphorical; Ashes and Diamonds suggests that Polish identity was at best left confused, at worst outrightly betrayed, by the importation of Communism from Russia.
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So all this is an incredibly dense history lesson, laced with multiple ironies, and coded in sometimes arcane, sometimes condescendingly simple, symbolism. The history itself is bleak, and the circumstances in which the films were made ideologically compromised. It is hardly surprising that watching these films is taxing, and that admiration for the enterprise is ready, while love for the experience is less forthcoming. |
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