Les adieux

Review of an important Polish film classic Pozegnania Viewed at the 2019 Yerevan film festival. Pawel and Lidka are from different worlds but they somehow meet each other in a night club. He's a young lad from a wealthy family, she's an attractive dancer. They fall in love and go out of town but their happiness doesn't last long. By Alex Deleon

In 1958 director Wojciech Has was only 32. years of age and Pozgnania (Farewells) was only his second feature after Pentla The Noose) . Yet the film displays amazing maturity in the handling of the actors and everything else. If Has can be seen as the Orson Welles of Polish cinema then Wajda is more like a Cecil B. Mille if a comparison is to be made between masters.

The flirtation scenes between Janczar and Wachowiak in the early part of the film are exquisite -- the best I have ever seen in any language. Loaded with humor, tension, and social satire all at the same time and perfect,y orchestrated. The handling of all actors throughout is masterful as are the performances themselves.

The dialogues are so clever that I would now like to read the original novel by Dygat on which the film is based just to be able to linger on the lusciousness of the words.

Wachowiak, born 1938, was not yet twenty at the time of filming, yet displays a maturity and acting savvy far beyond her years. The B/w cinematography by Meczyslaw Jahoda is also exemplary. Typical of the pictorial brilliance of early postwar Polish cinema.

While this is a relatively small film that could have been expanded into an epic by including war scenes, the choice to omit them is artistically crucial. It is enough to know that between the first and second movements of this cinematic concerto Janczar suffered in Auschwitz without showing all that literally ~~ as if the War were a bad dream best forgotten. Pozegania remains a minor masterpiece and major landmark of Polish cinema that is as timely today as it ever was. And, needless to say, Maria Wachowiak is unforgettable. Then and now!

One of Has' earliest films, and a fine companion piece to Rozstanie (even similarly named), 'Farewells' is another tale about the passage of time, with the WWII in focus. A wealthy youth, Pavel falls for Lydia, a dancer and elopes to a quaint B&B (bed and breakfast). The difference in their social strata causes them to part. War breaks out after that; Pavel goes to Auschwitz, and Lydia marries his cousin while he's away. Fate brings them together again, but the main question remains – has their love survived? Has' direction is remarkable once more, making his agenda clear, cutting so fast from pre-war to post-war that you will be wondering what happened before you realize that is exactly what he wanted to do. He films the same people, the same locations and simply creates an amazing study of how war touched everything. The people are captured with sparkling honesty - Pavel's innocence changes to cynicism, Lydia's dreamy guts changes to a bourgeois tartness, and yet the past attracts them irreversibly. The atmosphere is again correct on all measures, as the effects of war are never stressed but becomes easily apparent. The side characters are well established too - the owner of the Quo Vadis B&B and the butler laundering small money are quite memorable. Lydia's caged and guilty inner self is superbly sketched by the unconventionally ravishing Maria Wachowiak, and this is a great romantic drama, capturing a few lives on both side of the WWII. Though the topic is not new, Has' tremendous execution makes it an engaging watch, and the fine performances render it quite smooth. A director whose fine hold on understated drama and a strong grasp of the human psyche has made me an admirer, and I'm sure he'll have that effect on most cinephiles.