Krzysztof Kieślowski unmasks the prototype of the informer and opportunist (in a totalitarian society) exclusively from the latter’s own perspective. Even the commentary is by the ambivalent protagonist. Kieślowski later kept the film under lock and key in order not to harm his protagonist.
Tag: POLAND
On December 30, 1931 a 17-year-old daughter of engineer Henryk Zaremba is murdered. Rita Gorgonowa, a housekeeper, nanny of Zaremba\’s children, and his lover is accused of the murder. It was the most sensational murder of those times, followed with interest by the general public in Poland. The film is a reconstruction of the events, in particular of the trial itself. Majewski\’s picture raises the issues related to the functioning of the judiciary system, stressing the fundamental principle of law that in order to sentence an accused person indisputable evidence of guilt is required.
A story of life and death, featuring Marcel Lozinski’s six-year-old son Tomaszek and elderly people spending time on the benches of a Warsaw park. Riding his scooter, Tomaszek asks the elderly very adult, though basic, questions, which they are happy to answer. The boy’s ideas of future and life are confronted with those of people at the end of their lives.
Told in flashback as Prince Mieszko I lies feverish in his bed just before the Battle of Cedynia, Gniazdo recounts how the revered leader extended Poland’s borders, formed an alliance with Emperor Otto I, and ultimately strengthened his country’s autonomy by achieving victory during that crucial battle in the year 972.
A story of a middle-aged Jew methodically preparing himself to be shipped off to a concentration camp. The main character, Jacob Rosenberg, is a former industrial counselor, who is forced to work as a street cleaner. He knows what the fate is holding for him in the future, nevertheless he takes it with and implacable calmness.
Kazmierz Dziewanowicz’s hobby is very strange. He collects people who was born on the 29 of February. One day he sees that in his colection there are two men with the same name, the same birth place, the same date of birth and the same parents. In the middle of the night somebody kills him. The Intelligence Agency begin an investigation.
An allegorical story about a prisoner and a guard, and about the difficulty to grasp the border between freedom and captivity. The film shows the relativity of the relationship between the executioner and the victim. They both need some contact, they need something to do, they need thoughts. The film won the Crystal Award, the Grand Prix of the 7th International Animated Film Festival in Annecy, the Honorary Diploma at the 20th International Film Festival in Locarno, and the Third Prize at the 7th Cracow Film Festival (1967).
The first feature by Andrzej Żuławski immediately established his emotionally charged, fast-and-furious style. Drawing from the biography of his father, particularly his experiences in Nazi German-occupied Poland, the film follows a fugitive whose reality implodes when he witnesses the murders of his family, propelling him into a nightmarish world filled with doppelgängers, fluid identities, pervasive dread, and an enigmatic Nazi vaccine laboratory. In all its fantastic and macabre glory, The Third Part of the Night is a delirious portrayal of the chaos wrought upon the psyche by the horrors of war, and one of the most remarkable directorial debuts of all time.