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This is certainly NOT a feel-good film, as it deals with the horrors of the Nazis and their crushing of the Warsaw uprising of 1944. After all, there is no way or reason to make this a nice or fun movie to view. It just isn't possible. BUT, we are treated to an intensely realistic and viscerally disturbing film showing the war in all its awfulness. The first portion of the film is set in crumbling buildings and the nobility of the cause is apparent. However, the vast majority of the film is set in the sewers (hence the title "Kanal") and the characters, over time, lose some of their nobility and just ache to survive. The film is intensely claustrophobic and the filth they move about in literally looks like raw sewage--so as the characters fight for life and, in most cases, give up hope, you find yourself being pulled into their world and their terror. A great, though intensely awful film to watch. So, it comes as no surprise that I would not recommend this film to children or people afflicted with claustrophobia.

PS--if the musician seems familiar, it's because Wladyslaw Sheybal (also known as "Vladek Sheybal") is one of the Bond Villains in the movie FROM Russia WITH LOVE.

I think everyone who saw this film knows that it's a masterpiece, but maybe not everyone knows how authentic the film is. The writer of the screenplay - Jerzy Stefan Stawinski - is in fact the Lieutenant Zadra responsible for his platoon. Stawinski wrote down his own war experiences here with impressing honesty.

Another thing that may be interesting in this film is the main female character - Daisy. She isn't supposed to be a superwoman as some suggested. In fact there were several thousands of women fighting in this uprising. All of them that survived it were given the status of soldiers by Germans. It was the first time in the world's history when women received such a status. During the uprising many of them were carrying mail via sewers, so Daisy is rather a typical character in this role. It would be more surprising if the guide was a man.

Did Andrzej Wajda predict the modern horror film? Or was he merely acting on--and manipulating--our fear of the big, scary monster? There are many shots in KANAL where the camera will simply stay on a passageway seconds after the survivors leave the shot. As a modern audience who has lived through horror films, we expect a Nazi or a monster to slip into the frame in the background, but it never does. KANAL truly is a horror film, but what's unbearable to us and the sturdy group of Resistance fighters isn't the Nazis above the sewers or the metaphorical monster, but it is the solitude and emptiness that drives them to insanity, death or a bitter end.

KANAL is Andrzej Wajda's dirty, bloody valentine to the heroes of the 1944 Warsaw Resistance as the film follows the last hours of a band of heroes in their ultimately futile attempt to escape the Nazis through the labyrinth of underground sewers. We are first introduced to them as strong, willful humans trying to survive in a world that's falling to ruins (One could also argue that Andrzej Wajda also created the first post-apocalypse film). They laugh, they love, they play music in the last happy moments of their lives. After they enter the sewers, we expect and want them to come out even more strong-willed than ever--how many people can face dead bodies floating in the water of a dirty sewer with the same calm defiance? But as time goes on and the group gets separated, it becomes more and more inevitable that these heroes are not meant for a Hollywood's movie's happy, redemptive ending.

Andrzej Wajda, like Roman Polanski, was a real survivor of the Nazi invasion of Poland during WWII, and both became filmmakers who brought their experiences to films, as Polanski did with Oscar-winning THE PIANIST. However, Polanski's film, though absolutely profound, doesn't have Wajda's eye for details--the scenes of ruined Warsaw, for example, seem almost CGI'ed and it's obvious that he's trying to go for more, while Wajda will focus solely on the dirty ground, the debris blowing in the wind, or the flames of a burning building in the background. With Wajda, less is much more effective. If there is a situation more dirty, awful, lonely, scary or haunting than these people making their way through the labyrinths, I have yet to see it.

In many respects this movie is sheer brilliance. For starters "Kanal" describes the entire Polish Revolt in a single instance at the eve of its termination. But this movie is much more than a parable of Revolution and struggle. "Kanal" has great characters, great settings, great scenes, and, above all, an important message to be told.

What would it be like to fight an impossible battle against a larger force and be in the real world? What would it be like to face death at every turn and still travel on knowing defeat awaited you at the next bend? "Kanal" is the answer to these questions.

A great film, at first viewing people may not understand some of the cultural references. The tall blonde brave sewer-runner is not a model of Aryan Uber Womanhood but that of a strong polish woman.According to the official line of Nazi Propaganda the metaphor for the Aryan woman was of a breeder , home maker not a woman that would take a pro-active role in dragging aman half way across the canals of Warsaw. I saw the movie as less of a metaphor for hell as that of an actual hell,the hell of siege such as stalingrad. Stalingrad was not a metaphor for hell it was hell on earth. As was Warsaw in the last days of organized rebellion.As much as Das Boot style brought across a sliver of the real life incident , Kanal's style brings across the desperation of the struggle in Warsaw. The optomistic saddness can be written off as slavic melancholy, or better described as the hope and sorrow of a nation that has many times been routed from the map of europe only to resurface strong and proud.Everything was taken from them and hope itself is in question as the final reel fades to black.

I saw this film in a film festival in Dhaka, in early sixties(Now Bangladesh, then East Pakistan). For me as a student, Sattayjit Ray's Apu trilogy was my only exposer to any kind of art film then. Visual realism was a new thing for us in Indian sub continent. Audience were so spellbound that they could smell sewage sitting in the cinema hall. I think like all great directors, Wajda had the cinematographic sense to create that environment where viewers reality could blend with creative fiction. In post war period of late forties and in early fifties like the School of Polish Posters, all creative mediums went through this fatalistic phase. It was grotesque but realistic.

Watching Andrzei Wajda's war movie 'Kanal' one is stuck just by how short the interval was between the making of this film and the horrors it depicts. And while there were plenty of British and American war films made in the 1950s, it was perhaps easier to turn "our" story into the black-and-white banality of heroic fable, besides which, "we" could also make movies without communist censors looking over our shoulders. Wajda here chooses to fashion a tale centred on the collapse of the Polish resistance to the Nazis: the last survivors take to the sewers, the Germans pump gas down, and you know as soon as the film starts that there will be no happy endings, even for the survivors. It's a tale whose laconic nihilism would be remarkable in any era: I was reminded of the (much later) BBC nuclear-themed drama 'Threads', another tale of underground life facing extinction, while the dialogue, stoical in the face of impossible fate, offers more direct echos, for it made me think of the films of another Polish master, Krystoff Kieslowski. The most remarkable things in this film are the poetically bleak sequence of scenes that end it; it's biggest failing is the score, that (as with many films of this era) feels the need to describe the plot, and not merely to complement it. Occasionally other aspects of the movie also give away its age, but what's much more notable is the modernity (and hopelessness) of its approach to its material. A fine achievement, dating from an era when the events it portrayed were the present, not the past.

This is an excellent movie. It tells the story of the last stages of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. A small unit of Polish Resistance fighters are ordered to fall back to a central position by going through the sewers.

Most of the actions happens in the eerie confines of the sewers, which creates a very gripping atmosphere. However, the most interesting aspect of the movie is the character development. All of the characters are so different and changeable. No stereotypical characters in this movie!

Andrzej Wajda is a truly great director. He is able to make unique movies based on the character development, rather than relying on gimmicks to gain the audience's attention. In this movie you never know what is ultimately going to happen to the resistance fighters until the final scenes.

A very heavy movie, extremely brutal, merciless picture of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Andrzej Wajda pictured war as a tedious, bloody, messy, dirty, dusty, hopeless, heroic and very terrible affair. The last detachments of active resistance try to fight the overwhelming Nazi forces in Warsaw. The very film is not even about the fight but about the heroic efforts simply to live, to survive, to break through and to win. The whole film is so grim, gory and dark that it is way too difficult to watch it all and not to make a pause just to breathe some air. War is Not fun, and it does show in this movie. The excellent casting of good actors do a decent job, but the film tends to drag and become too tedious and too grim. It presses so much and makes it almost unbearable to see to the unhappy end

I live in Poland, I saw most of Wajda's movies and still I don't get why everyone thinks that he is such great director when I find pretty much all his movies poorly narrated and not easy to fully understand "Kanal" is good example of my problem with Wajda's movies - he recreates images from his own past that he knows well and don't bother that the viewer may know less than he is, f.e.

1. all the young rebels were scouts or just children from Warsaw, but there were few officers and we don't know if they were soldiers or just seniors scouts

2. they were receiving orders to defend this part of the city but we don't know from who, we don't know if the HQ knew their situation, etc

3. there is no any sight of Germans except for a tank and mobile machines at the beginning, but there is no explanation why those machines were dangerous or what number of Germans were attacking this part of the town, how big was that part of town

4. they were trying to move to Srodmiescie (district of Warsaw), but we don't know how far was it, we don't know what situation was there

5. how many people went down the canals, how many did survived, how long where they going to Srodmiescie (2 hours, 5 hours, 10 days??)

And in other Wajda's movies is same routine - lack of narration that leads to confusion or misunderstanding the true historical situation... I know Polish history pretty well (since I learned it at school) and since I have such problem I can only imagine how foreigners must feel when they watch his movies.

That this movie was made is a near miracle, since it squeaked out barely 3 years after Stalin died; and the Polish film industry could even begin to suggest that Poles could struggle against the Germans without Soviet "fraternal" help. It looks likely that it was saved from oblivion by the Silver Palm (1957), at least in Poland. My suspicion that this got past the Party censors as a Dantean allegory about the worker and peasant struggles, with each character and episode exposing some lesson. However, like Ashes and Diamonds, much of the real message is just at the surface: regular Poles struggling for a better future.

The real hidden message of the film is a metaphorical struggle against Soviet oppression. Wajda seems to suggest this by quoting Szczepanski(1944): "... But know this: from our tombstones A victorious new Poland will be born And you will not walk this land You Red Ruler of bestial forces!" (1) Indeed the resolution suggests the Stalinist Inferno is far from over. Those who have tried to bring light to the world suffer a Promethean fate.

What seems remarkable to me is the positive spirit, humor, and love of life that most of the characters display in the face of their passage into the underworld. There is additional irony (humorous to me), for example, that the composer attempts to play a particularly patriotic Chopin, but is then ordered to play "something with feeling:" an inane dance tune. (By the way, the Beckstein piano that the composer tries to protect was made by a company that provided Hitler with crucial early support.)

It is also remarkable that such a dark, almost anti-heroic view of combatants was made only 12 years after the event. It is not so far from the spirit of Ernie Pyle, and just think how long it took to make Band of Brothers.

(1) Interview on www.wajda.pl

Kanal was the second feature by Andrzej Wajda, who is remembered as the master of Polish new wave, and the second film in his 'war trilogy'; in between of Generation and Ashes and Diamonds. Kanal tells the story of the desperate Polish uprising against the Germans in 1944 and the tragical failure of it. Not only film scholars but the people in 1957 saw Kanal as a political statement. They saw it as a description of the bitterness Polish people had for the Soviet troops who didn't help them early enough to beat the Germans. But Andrzej Wajda has said that he didn't want to get mixed up with political nor social backgrounds. He wasn't interested in making a film with a direct message or to point the finger at the ones responsible for the tragedy of the uprising. He only wanted to tell the story of a resistance group whose withdrawal grew out to be a modern parallel for Dante's hell.

The screenwriter of Kanal, Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, took part in the events of 1944 and, through that, brought a realistic touch to the film which probably meant a virility test of some kind for him. His approach to the subject was mature and brilliantly balanced. His sympathy was clearly for the soldiers but he offered a contrast - another side; there is clearly strong skepticism for the desire and price of the soldiers' heroism.

The film is divided into two separate acts and the division is precisely considered. In the very beginning this division is made clear to us; the realistic prologue of the battle on the ground is instantly followed by a long surreal sequence in the sewers. It is a metaphorical poem; a combination of realism and fantasy. The realism of the filthy sewers and the faces of the soldiers soon turn into surrealism of obscure sounds, suggestive music and figures walking in the mist.

"These are the tragic heroes: watch them closely in the remaining hours of their lives." A company is desperately fighting against the Germans but soon gets an order to retreat to the center through sewers. The moment when the soldiers move down, from the hell above to the hell beneath, is very important; the soldiers go through their final battle of life and death, love and heroism. In this particular scene people are shoving each other and rushing down to the sewers - the road for the damned, the river of death.

Agnieszka Holland's recent "In Darkness" told the story of a Lwow sewer worker who hid the city's Jewish population from the Nazis. Andrzej Wajda's "Kanał" tells a similar story. Set during the Warsaw Uprising, it looks at some people who have to hide in the sewers. The existence of the three groups of people in this putrid setting is like a descent into the darkest depths of the human soul.

This was the second installment of Wajda's War Trilogy, after "A Generation" and before "Ashes and Diamonds". All three serve to not only show the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Poland, but also show how the people push through even in the most desperate situations. In an interview, Wajda noted that the scene where Daisy and Korab find the bars represents the time that the Soviet army (presumably across the river) was approaching Warsaw but waited for the Nazis to actually depart the city so that it would be easier to take. The movie is as much an indictment of Stalinism as it is of Nazism.

Anyway, it's definitely a great one. I recommend it.

This film starts off pretty creaky and feeling like a movie your grandfather might have watched. Set on the 56th day of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, it's got what seem to be a stilted portrayal of the situation, and a tone which seems off when two very attractive women (Teresa Izewska and Teresa Berezowska), members of the resistance, are flirting and sleeping with a couple of the men. If that puts you off initially, bear with it.

As soon as the rebels take to the sewers to evade the Nazis, Wajda takes us to an extraordinary place physically and psychologically, and makes us feel as if we were actually there, at least as much as possible. It's incredibly claustrophobic, disorienting, dark, and disgusting, and the way he shoots this, with just how little he makes visible at times, feels very modern and like a horror movie. One of the characters quotes Dante, and it fits perfectly. I think in focusing all of this time in the sewer, Wajda wisely avoided having to tell us the bigger story of the Warsaw Uprising, which would have been tough given the Soviet censors (and shameful Soviet inaction during the events of 1944). He also gives us a profound metaphor for the human condition, warfare, and the humiliation of the Polish people all in one heartbreaking go.

The film memorializes the men, women, and children who so bravely rose up against the Nazis, and held parts of the city for a couple of months before it was brutally leveled in retaliation by Hitler, which is obviously poignant. The script was written by Jerzy Stefan Stawinski, a fighter in the Uprising who survived, and it's based on his real experiences, and yet Wajda managed to create something that also feels mythological, or apocalyptic. Brilliant ending too.

It's 1944 in the last days of the Warsaw uprising. Lieutenant Zadra commands a company of desperate freedom fighters. They have inferior weapons facing overwhelming German forces. They are soon surrounded by the Germans and ordered to retreat into the sewers. They find themselves cut off and stuck in the dark tunnels.

The above ground fighting has certain moments. I didn't know that the Germans were using armored remote control vehicles. There are some action and one tank. It has lots of devastated landscape. There are a few too many main characters. Once the movie goes underground, it goes in a small maze. It's confining but not that intense.

With much thanks owed to some excellent set decoration, this Polish film has a very authentic feel to it, and it is all captured well by the cinematographer, with great angels and good use of panning. The film has a number of striking moments as well as some solid bits of character study. The final fifteen or so minutes are dragged out beyond reason, but there is not much other than this and the noticeably non-professional acting that weigh against this incredible, very different cinematic experience. It is well done generally all round, even on an audio level, with some great sound work and music choices to accompany the action.

Brilliantly staged and photographed, this tough and intense war drama compels with its director's sure hand in delivering his message, which is quite dark, nearly nihilistic.

Probably my contribution to this film is an unfair one, since I'm writing from a feeling that comes back to my memory when I see the title "Kanal" all of a sudden and some flashes appeared in my mind of that sensational film.

I should see it again and study my reaction NOW, a totally different person from that young adult that I was when I saw this picture.

I can recall leaving the movie theater when the film ended with a devastating sense of doom not only because of the total blackness of the movie but specially by its ending, absolutely crashing, morally and physically.

Of course Hollywood would have never done such a dark movie and the feminine character would have walked thru the sewer system in some designer clothes, fully made up and coiffed to death, happily singing Che sara, sara --or Who's Sarah?-- (Doris Day as the protagonist? 1957 right?).

I honestly believe that I never saw a most depressing movie in my whole life. Maybe "Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini" (Sublime!!) but color photography helped to take it out of that terrible sense of doom we get from the black and white "Kanal".

A MASTERPIECE, no doubt, but you must be in the right mood to watch it without getting dangerously depressed.

Who am I to dare to be unsatisfied with a work by the great Andrzej Wajda? Well, technically I'm nobody. Anyway, this is my story.

I won't give you a resumée of the plot: you can find it in many places. A platoon of Polish resistance men and women is taking part in the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis, in 1944. The fate of these men and women is clearly stated by a voice-over after 5 minutes from the beginning of the film. So all it is left for us to do is to sit down quietly and wait until the foretold destiny fulfills ineluctably.

Which is not, in my opinion, a proper way to start if a film should carry some plot twists, some thrills, some interesting developments. Of course Wajda knew that better than I do: his intents were precisely, I assume, to have no twists and thrills whatsoever. But that induced in me a sort of lack of interest as the film dragged on, and - sorry to say that - some bore.

This is an example of how not to make a movie.

It is supposed to be a brutal, realistic story, and there lies the problem. It fails, miserably. It is very embarrassing for those involved in a work when they tout it for something it isn't. Had it been made as some of the usual fluff, which it is, they might have gotten by.

As it is, we're bored to tears with a senseless array of scenes, and no one cares. It's so predictable and contrived, one can imagine an audience groaning even in the fifties. It takes absolutely no risks, and just gives us the same formula we get every time. We immediately know what the fate is for every character, and strangely enough, the director even comes across as a neo nazi idealist with his contrived finish.

Stink, stank, stunk.