The Noose.The first scene in Wojciech Has’s filmography belongs to an accordion. The instrument is shown in a contracted state, dangling from the ceiling of an antique shop. Outside the shop, a little boy ogles it through the window; he dreams of playing it. Later in Has’s debut fiction short, Harmonia (1947), he dramatizes that dream. Has’s understanding of cinema as an oneiric canvas is apparent from the very beginning, and his sense that its narratives were meant to trip over themselves through elisions, reversals, and collapses reinforced itself throughout his career. His films are frequently in a state of mutation and his characters always on introspective journeys; objects are the only constant, as their material weight exhibits more solidity than his stories’ whims or his characters’ souls. All the while, Has’s camera acts like an accordion, playing in its own time, starting wide and pushing...
- 3/21/2024
- MUBI
Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, whose sixty-year career in cinema has included the highest honors of the Berlin, Venice and Cannes film festivals, received an invitation to attend China’s Shanghai International Film Festival earlier this year while he was in Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, where his latest movie, Eo, was nominated for an Oscar. Skolimowski says he accepted the surprise invite — which included serving as Shanghai’s jury president for the festival’s 30th-anniversary edition — for reasons both “very private and a little sentimental.”
Skolimowski, 85, revealed those reasons on stage Friday at the Shanghai Grand Theater, during the festival’s opening ceremony.
“My father was born in North East China over 100 years ago, where my grandfather, the famous Polish architect, Kazimierz Skolimowski, devoted himself to designing the urban plan for one of the great cities 1,000 kilometers from here,” Skolimowski said during his brief remarks before the mostly Chinese crowd.
Skolimowski, 85, revealed those reasons on stage Friday at the Shanghai Grand Theater, during the festival’s opening ceremony.
“My father was born in North East China over 100 years ago, where my grandfather, the famous Polish architect, Kazimierz Skolimowski, devoted himself to designing the urban plan for one of the great cities 1,000 kilometers from here,” Skolimowski said during his brief remarks before the mostly Chinese crowd.
- 6/13/2023
- by Patrick Brzeski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Andrzej Wajda’s most celebrated film in the West is a serious thriller about doubt and corruption in a Poland ‘liberated’ by the Soviet Union. It has a cerebral script and a hero with a hipster attitude befitting a window of relative freedom briefly given to Polish filmmakers. Touted as the James Dean of the Eastern Bloc, the dashing Zbigniew Cybulski cuts an image as clean as J.F.K.. But his character, an assassin working for the reactionaries, undergoes a crisis of conscience. The miracle is that the Party censors allowed any doubt as to what our hero’s path should be. Given a stylized, almost expressionist B&w look, Wajda’s masterpiece is an intelligent thinkpiece that lays off the direct propagandizing.
Ashes and Diamonds
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 285
1958 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Popiól I Diament / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 24, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska,...
Ashes and Diamonds
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 285
1958 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Popiól I Diament / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 24, 2021 / 39.95
Starring: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska,...
- 8/14/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
If you’re looking to take a break from binge-watching garbage television and exercise your brain during quarantine, film historian Annette Insdorf and 92Y might have a perfect solution for you. Beginning Sunday, March 29, you can take the online film course “Reel Pieces Remote: Classic Films with Annette Insdorf,” for five weeks every Sunday at 8 p.m.
The five films she has selected — all of them indisputable masterpieces — can be streamed on The Criterion Channel. You can view the film any time before the Sunday night class, along with a prerecorded introduction from Insdorf, followed by the weekly lecture that will also engage live group discussion. Signing up for the 92Y class includes a free Criterion Channel trial membership good for 45 days. The cost for the five courses altogether is $150 — not free by any means, if you’re in the position to enroll.
More from IndieWireThe Show Must Go On:...
The five films she has selected — all of them indisputable masterpieces — can be streamed on The Criterion Channel. You can view the film any time before the Sunday night class, along with a prerecorded introduction from Insdorf, followed by the weekly lecture that will also engage live group discussion. Signing up for the 92Y class includes a free Criterion Channel trial membership good for 45 days. The cost for the five courses altogether is $150 — not free by any means, if you’re in the position to enroll.
More from IndieWireThe Show Must Go On:...
- 3/22/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Act Like a Man is a column examining male screen performers past and present, across nationality and genre. If movie stars reflect the needs and desires of their audience in any particular era, examining their personas, popularity, fandom, and specific appeals has plenty to tell us about the way cinema has constructed—and occasionally deconstructed—manhood on our screens.In the postwar Polish cinema, it’s difficult to overstate the revolutionary difference presented by the screen appearance of Zbigniew Cybulski. In a nation so thoroughly devastated by the Nazi occupation and the horrors of Stalinism, Cybulski and his generation helped represent the future, though not unchecked by the nightmares of the past. In his short 39 years, he starred in dozens of films—the most prominent of which were collaborations with close friend Andrzej Wajda. In 1956, what would later be called “the thaw” would help spring Polish filmmakers from creative prison.
- 1/30/2020
- MUBI
Early in Afterimage avant garde artist Władysław Strzemiński sits huddled in a cramped apartment painting. When his only light source is blocked by the red of a multi-floor Stalin banner unspooled atop his apartment complex, he gets up, slashes a hole in the banner, and gets back to work. The final film by maverick Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda — who passed away at the age of 90, shortly after the film premiered last fall at Tiff — is a triumphant, defiant portrait of an artist whose hands are tied and nearly cut off after refusing Sovietism and embracing the utility of art as propaganda. Wajda, unlike many of his contemporaries, rarely strayed from his native Poland, choosing to produce a wide range of features, including sprawling historical epics with national narratives like Pan Tadeuz and Katyn and a handful of more personal works like Everything For Sale, a meditation on the death of...
- 4/30/2017
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
★★★☆☆ Surreality dons a cool sixties swagger in Polish novelist Tadeusz Konwicki's intriguing and vaguely baffling Jump (1965). Abandoning the social realism with which many of his cinematic compatriots approached the medium in the aftermath of the war - and with which he initially made his name in print - he creates an elliptical and illusory narrative. It's constructed around its star Zbigniew Cybulski, who is decked in a leather jacket and dark glasses, channeling James Dean as well as his own earlier role in Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds (1958). An amalgamation of fraudster and messiah, his absurdist sojourn in a small hamlet prods at the veneer of identities rebuilt from the rubble.
- 5/12/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
It’s the sunglasses that are the clue. If you want to understand the influence of Polish cinema on American director Martin Scorsese, look at Zbigniew Cybulski, “the Polish James Dean”. In Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Cybulski plays Maciek, a young patriot fighting against the communists in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War who is seldom seen without his pair of shades.
- 4/17/2015
- The Independent - Film
Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese describes the impact that the restless, dynamic films made by great Polish directors from Roman Polanski to Andrzej Wajda have had on his work
As for many other people, my introduction to Polish cinema came with Andrzej Wajda’s trilogy: Ashes and Diamonds, Kanal and A Generation – actually, they were released out of order here in the Us, and we saw Kanal first, followed quickly by Ashes, both in 1961, and then we got to see A Generation later. Among the three, it was Ashes and Diamonds that had the greatest impact on me. It announced the arrival of a master film-maker. It was one of the last pictures that gave us a real testament of the impact of the war, on Wajda and on his nation. It introduced us to a whole school of film-making, related to what was coming out of the Soviet Union but quite distinct.
As for many other people, my introduction to Polish cinema came with Andrzej Wajda’s trilogy: Ashes and Diamonds, Kanal and A Generation – actually, they were released out of order here in the Us, and we saw Kanal first, followed quickly by Ashes, both in 1961, and then we got to see A Generation later. Among the three, it was Ashes and Diamonds that had the greatest impact on me. It announced the arrival of a master film-maker. It was one of the last pictures that gave us a real testament of the impact of the war, on Wajda and on his nation. It introduced us to a whole school of film-making, related to what was coming out of the Soviet Union but quite distinct.
- 4/16/2015
- by Martin Scorsese
- The Guardian - Film News
Taxi Driver, North by Northwest, The Manchurian Candidate, JFK – there's a rich history of assassinations in American film. But what's the difference between the accidental killer and the glamorously rebellious hitman?
It was Monday 31 March 1981, coming up to 2.30pm, and John Hinckley was fidgeting by the Florida Avenue entrance of the Washington Hilton, catching the attention of a police lieutenant who stopped to stare over at him. Hinckley jostled with reporters too, complaining that the press were always getting in the way, before finding a place to stand among the TV cameras. It drizzled, off and on, and the sidewalk was damp. His speech inside finished, President Reagan came out of the hotel, flanked by security men, acknowledging the few onlookers across the street and the small crowd of pressmen on the sidewalk beside him. For a moment, Hinckley asked himself the question: "Should I do this or not?" A journalist shouted to the president,...
It was Monday 31 March 1981, coming up to 2.30pm, and John Hinckley was fidgeting by the Florida Avenue entrance of the Washington Hilton, catching the attention of a police lieutenant who stopped to stare over at him. Hinckley jostled with reporters too, complaining that the press were always getting in the way, before finding a place to stand among the TV cameras. It drizzled, off and on, and the sidewalk was damp. His speech inside finished, President Reagan came out of the hotel, flanked by security men, acknowledging the few onlookers across the street and the small crowd of pressmen on the sidewalk beside him. For a moment, Hinckley asked himself the question: "Should I do this or not?" A journalist shouted to the president,...
- 10/4/2012
- by Michael Newton
- The Guardian - Film News
I was a sceptic; I thought it could not be done. I did not believe that London could host such an important global event, let alone pull it off with such grandiose confidence. But now the Olympics are over and to be honest, I don’t want it to end. Particularly considering my last images may be that of Jessie J ruining Queen, or Liam Gallagher proving he needs Noel. But with Britain standing 3rd in the medal rankings, we can be proud of our athletes’ efforts. Whether it was handball, hockey or dressage, my eyes were opened to the magic of the Olympics and I’m sad to see them go. So why not cling on for a little bit longer and join me as I attempt to blur the realms of Film and the Summer Olympics.
If you haven’t read my previous parts, then please find them...
If you haven’t read my previous parts, then please find them...
- 9/3/2012
- by Dan Lewis
- Obsessed with Film
(1957-60, 12, Second Run)
After the horrors of the Nazi occupation and repressive postwar Soviet domination, Polish cinema suddenly took off in the mid-50s to become a major international force. Initially, it was Andrzej Wajda's trilogy (1954-58) on wartime resistance that attracted attention. That was followed by a wave of films approaching contemporary society with skilful circumspection before there was a further clampdown in the late 1960s. The four films in this well-documented box set are all first-rate. Only Andrzej Munk's Eroica (1957), a black comedy in two parts (one about spiv caught up with the resistance, the other set in a concentration camp) takes place during the war. Both Wajda's acutely observed Innocent Sorcerers (1960), about a newly qualified, jazz-loving doctor and his problems with emotional commitment, and Janusz Morgenstern's little-known, loosely knit Goodbye, See You Tomorrow (1960), about a young stage director falling for a visiting French beauty,...
After the horrors of the Nazi occupation and repressive postwar Soviet domination, Polish cinema suddenly took off in the mid-50s to become a major international force. Initially, it was Andrzej Wajda's trilogy (1954-58) on wartime resistance that attracted attention. That was followed by a wave of films approaching contemporary society with skilful circumspection before there was a further clampdown in the late 1960s. The four films in this well-documented box set are all first-rate. Only Andrzej Munk's Eroica (1957), a black comedy in two parts (one about spiv caught up with the resistance, the other set in a concentration camp) takes place during the war. Both Wajda's acutely observed Innocent Sorcerers (1960), about a newly qualified, jazz-loving doctor and his problems with emotional commitment, and Janusz Morgenstern's little-known, loosely knit Goodbye, See You Tomorrow (1960), about a young stage director falling for a visiting French beauty,...
- 3/18/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Thanks to artists such as Zbigniew Cybulski and Andrzej Wajda, the world of vintage Polish film is stranger than anything else you will ever encounter
The early 1960s were a good time to be the child of British communists. For every achievement of capitalism, we were able to point to a similar triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Half the globe lived under some kind of Marxist regime; the Ussr was way ahead in the space race and the Daily Worker reported successes all over the east in the sciences and the arts. But for somebody in their early teens obsessed with the idea of cool, this was one area where communism couldn't compete with the decadent west.
Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, may have had his charms, but he really couldn't be considered hip. No matter how hard I searched I couldn't find anybody in Bulgaria,...
The early 1960s were a good time to be the child of British communists. For every achievement of capitalism, we were able to point to a similar triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Half the globe lived under some kind of Marxist regime; the Ussr was way ahead in the space race and the Daily Worker reported successes all over the east in the sciences and the arts. But for somebody in their early teens obsessed with the idea of cool, this was one area where communism couldn't compete with the decadent west.
Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, may have had his charms, but he really couldn't be considered hip. No matter how hard I searched I couldn't find anybody in Bulgaria,...
- 3/2/2012
- by Alexei Sayle
- The Guardian - Film News
Despite the fact it’s based on a book from the ’40s, and set on the last day of the Second World War, the hero of Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds is, like the movie, a product of the 1950s. He’s an anti-hero, in actuality: cynical, jaded and nihilistic. He smiles quite a lot, but it’s a smile that says ‘Isn’t it funny how meaningless it all is?’ He is played by Zbigniew Cybulski, one of Poland’s most famous actors and about the closest thing the country had to James Dean. The similarity is not accidental: Wajda and Cybulski were influenced by Dean and Brando and the sneering youth of ‘50s American cinema.
Cybulski plays Maciek, an assassin for the Polish Resistance. He seldom takes off his sunglasses. He killed Nazis before the war ended and seamlessly makes the transition to killing Communists. One tyranny is replaced by another,...
Cybulski plays Maciek, an assassin for the Polish Resistance. He seldom takes off his sunglasses. He killed Nazis before the war ended and seamlessly makes the transition to killing Communists. One tyranny is replaced by another,...
- 10/25/2011
- by Adam Whyte
- Obsessed with Film
The Film Society of Lincoln Center is teaming with the Polish Cultural Institute of New York for a week of contemporary Polish cinema. The series features Jacek Borcuch's "All That I Love," which played at this year's Sundance Film Festival and a two film tribute of digitally restored prints featuring Zbigniew Cybulski, known to many as the "Polish James Dean." The series runs from September 9-15. For more information, check ...
- 8/17/2011
- Indiewire
Polish film star forced into exile by the communist authorities
By the mid-1960s Elzbieta Czyzewska, who has died aged 72, was considered one of the brightest stars of film, theatre and television in Poland. However, she became persona non grata in her own country, only a few months after she was celebrated as the "pride of her generation" on the cover of a Polish magazine.
In 1965 she was appearing in a Warsaw production of Arthur Miller's autobiographical play After the Fall, in the role apparently based on Marilyn Monroe. In the audience was the American journalist David Halberstam, a correspondent for the New York Times, who had interviewed Czyzewska the day before. The pair married that year but Halberstam was expelled from Poland by the authorities for writing articles that criticised the communist regime. The government also condemned Czyzewska for marrying a "Zionist intellectual", and she left to join...
By the mid-1960s Elzbieta Czyzewska, who has died aged 72, was considered one of the brightest stars of film, theatre and television in Poland. However, she became persona non grata in her own country, only a few months after she was celebrated as the "pride of her generation" on the cover of a Polish magazine.
In 1965 she was appearing in a Warsaw production of Arthur Miller's autobiographical play After the Fall, in the role apparently based on Marilyn Monroe. In the audience was the American journalist David Halberstam, a correspondent for the New York Times, who had interviewed Czyzewska the day before. The pair married that year but Halberstam was expelled from Poland by the authorities for writing articles that criticised the communist regime. The government also condemned Czyzewska for marrying a "Zionist intellectual", and she left to join...
- 7/7/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Idiosyncratic French film director and Cannes prizewinner
At the Cannes film festival in 1958, the jury prize was awarded to Goha, the first Tunisian film (albeit a co-production with France) to be nominated for the Palme d'Or. There were other important firsts connected with the film. Goha was the first feature directed by Jacques Baratier, who has died aged 91. It featured the 20-year-old Tunisian-born beauty Claudia Cardinale in her screen debut and starred a handsome 25-year-old Egyptian actor billed as Omar Chérif (later Sharif), in the role that launched his international career and eventually caught the attention of the producers of Lawrence of Arabia. The film's screenplay was the only one written by the celebrated Egyptian-born playwright and poet Georges Schehadé, and it featured the first screen score by the Moroccan-born composer Maurice Ohana.
Goha, based on an Arab folktale, told of a clever young man (Sharif) who, under the guise of stupidity,...
At the Cannes film festival in 1958, the jury prize was awarded to Goha, the first Tunisian film (albeit a co-production with France) to be nominated for the Palme d'Or. There were other important firsts connected with the film. Goha was the first feature directed by Jacques Baratier, who has died aged 91. It featured the 20-year-old Tunisian-born beauty Claudia Cardinale in her screen debut and starred a handsome 25-year-old Egyptian actor billed as Omar Chérif (later Sharif), in the role that launched his international career and eventually caught the attention of the producers of Lawrence of Arabia. The film's screenplay was the only one written by the celebrated Egyptian-born playwright and poet Georges Schehadé, and it featured the first screen score by the Moroccan-born composer Maurice Ohana.
Goha, based on an Arab folktale, told of a clever young man (Sharif) who, under the guise of stupidity,...
- 2/4/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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