Cendres et diamant

"Ashes and Diamonds" (Polish, 1958): And, this is the third of Wajda's trilogy about WWII in Poland, or perhaps better stated, inside the Polish people. This one is set on the last night of the war, and the following first day of official peace & freedom from German domination. As with both of the other films, nothing is as simple as it might first appear to us, or to the story's characters. Although it might not be "necessary" to view this trilogy three nights in a row (as I did), they SHOULD be seen in sequence. The writer and director chose exceptionally interesting and symbolic moments in time to place these stages. Note: NONE are upbeat, optimistic considerations of what war creates, except perhaps Wajda's inclination that the Poles do what they MUST for the greater good, even when it is for their individual worst.

This is one of those movies that convince me of the medium's universality. Wajda is using his skills in emulation of Hollywood examples (for example, the tenebrous lighting reminiscent of fashionable noir movies and the deep focus honed by Orson Welles and Gregg Toland), but his story is genuinely about post-war Poland and is intensely personal and honest. In Zbigniew Cybulski, he has an actor who catches the director's personal feelings about the War and what has happened to his homeland, his bravery struggling against the ambiguity and despair brought on by war weariness and soviet betrayal. We see the sociology of the moment, from the hotel clerk's nostalgia for Warsaw, now ruined, to the hardened barmaid, who wants desperately to believe in love. The whole spectrum is sampled, from the ineffectual old leaders to the vicious soviet man who assists the targeted Sczcuka, himself a decent but conflicted character. It's remarkable that Wajda got the film made despite his soviet minders.

This film shows an alternative lost youth to that of 1950's America. In the late 1940's and early 1950's some of Poland's teenagers were involved in a life and death struggle against the Soviet and Communist Polish authorities. these young people had been raised in the bloodshed of WWII and had learned to fight and die.

The film shows the lost youth of Poland struggling to find a way to leave this vicious upbringing and return to a normality which they often didn't ever have.

The film's hero wants to return to being a student and having romances and friends after years of fighting for the Polish underground (this is why he wears sunglasses, because his eyesight was damaged fighting in tunnels during the Warsaw Uprising), however he has a mission to kill a communist officer...

The film is amazing, the imagery reflects the detruction and sorrow of this lost generation. The direction and acting are superb. Like a previous poster, however, I was a little dis-satisfied with the ending, which differed from the book. That is a trivial point, though.

I've seen this movie only twice, stumbling across it the first time in a theater in Skopje, Yugoslavia, and I left the theater almost in shock. I'd never seen such a combination of direction, editing, cinematography, and acting. (That business about Cybulski being "the Polish James Dean" is disregardable nonsense; like saying that Chopin was the Polish John Phillip Souza.) Wajda's other films didn't seem so impressive, but "Ashes and Diamonds" was simply superb. The images linger in the mind, even now, when artiness has become commonplace. The shattered crucifix hanging upside down; the final chase through the drying laundry; and Cybulski on his side, kicking himself around in circles atop a heap of garbage! It wasn't simply thought provoking, it was shocking. I can only remember one other time I felt stunned into silence on leaving a theater, and that was in LA after the first Bergman film I saw, which happened to be "The Seventh Seal." Don't miss it.

"Ashes and Diamonds" is both an essential historical film and a visual masterpiece. Set in the first days of Soviet occupation following World War II, the film examines the moral dilemmas of the protagonist, Maciek--a young rebel hit-man-- in following through with the assassination of a leading communist party member--Sczcuka--who will soon be empowered as a means of forming a puppet communist government in Poland. The film is not limited to the perspective of the protagonist, and alternates between the moral dilemmas of each of the characters in fulfilling predetermined Soviet agendas in the formation of a communist Poland.

The visual composition of the film is as masterful as the complexity of the characters and plot. Despite the notoriously bad film technology in the Soviet states and the constraints of Socialist Realism, the film manages not only to capture the potential richness of black and white, but also manages to avoid the standard pitfalls of over-zealous editing that often destroy other contemporary Soviet films. The frames are longer shots in general, and forced schematization through editing is all but absent. The precise composition of each scene throughout the film provides the visual coherency that would otherwise be imposed by careful editing; as an example, see the scene in which Maciek is underneath the staircase in the lobby of the hotel towards the end of the film, or the final "Polish" dance scene.

I would highly recommend some research into the political transitions of Poland in the years directly following WWI before viewing this film for the first time; this film was made for a particular audience who clearly understood certain cultural and historical references that a modern Western audience will inevitably miss (ie. "Were you in Warsaw?"). The thematic and emotional complexity of the film is also enhanced by an understanding of Polish history. I would highly recommend this film for any class examining Eastern Europe or Soviet Russia (which is the context in which I was introduced to this film in particular), or to anyone who would like to better understand the complexity of Cold War politics from a perspective behind the Iron Curtain.