Pan Tadeusz

In that brief instant between the World Wars a theme that seems to recur in Polish silent film are stories about other periods where they actually existed as a homogeneous and independent state and Pan Tadeusz is no different. Telling the story of an aristocratic family and the romantic, political, and inter-necine machinations they encounter as Lithuania tries to unite with Poland under Napoleon to oust the Russian invaders (who knew?) it's pretty heavy stuff for those not well versed in that particular localized historical era and unfortunately missing film makes some gaps in the story a bit of a struggle to follow. A daring use of poetry for the intertitles doesn't help in clearing things up for non-natives but if you pay attention you can get this gist of things.

Director Ryszard Ordynski is clearly talented. There is some striking cinematography, clever mise en scene, and some stylistic editing that reminded me more of Abel Gance than either Hollywood or Moscow. For me though the story lacked sufficient structure (again, this may be the result of that missing footage) to fully engage as it wandered between the various characters and situations. Reasonably well acted but trying to keep track of the assorted extravagantly mustachioed characters was something of a chore.

All in all a quality bit of late silent era movie making from a cinematically underrepresented region.

I watch films alone without eating, drinking or doing anything else to be completely focused on the film. Some films, especially silent ones really require the viewer's undivided attention.

Still, i wasn't able to understand what's going on here. After finishing the film, i couldn't tell you what it was about. Many characters and names are thrown and introduced together. There's some parallel storytelling here but the film jumps between them erratically. The intertitles are written in a poetic fashion that only makes it harder to follow.

The sad part is that the cinematography is pretty decent and most of the scenery looks beautiful. And the film doesn't suffer from any major silent film traps (like drawing out conversations, over/under usage of title cards, overacting, title card first-film second storytelling and ...).

Its hard for me to believe, seeing how competent the film making and camera work is, that it would fail so hard when it comes to pace and structure of the film. So, i'm going to assume some of that is due to the missing footage.

Still, as it is right now, i wouldn't recommend it to anyone that expects a descent story and isn't satisfied by beautiful polish jungles.

Btw, the bear and napoleon looked stupid. Thanks for reading.