In common with Donskoi's 'The Rainbow' and Rossellini's 'Rome, open City', the effectiveness of Wanda Jakubowska's film lies in its sheer immediacy. Its power to shock has been somewhat diluted by later and more graphic depictions of the Holocaust but it nonetheless remains the blueprint.
Some critics have unfairly referred to it as a 'Hollywoodised' version of life in Auschwitz but the director has understandably chosen to sanitise events so as to make her film more palatable to post-war audiences.
Although Jakubowska and her fellow writer Gerda Schneider, a former 'blocksenior', have based the material on the personal stories of prisoners, many of whom appear in the film, the main female protagonists are all professional actresses. Extremely popular and photogenic Barbara Drapinska as the interpreter, Tatyana Guretskaya as the doctor and the nurse of Antonia Górecka are symbols of resistance whilst the banality of evil is portrayed by Aleksandra Slaska as the overseer, which made her inspired casting in Munk's 'Passenger' fifteen years later.
Filmed in the remains of Auschwitz, individual scenes haunt and no more heartrending use has been made in film of La Marseillaise. It is both a grim reminder of the depths of cruelty to which humans can sink and a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. On a purely technical level, the camerawork, editing and score are exemplary.
In contrast to the film's neo-realistic treatment, the overtly propogandist climax has naturally dated the film immeasurably but must be viewed in its historical context.
The film has rightly been called 'a courageous act of remembrance' but as an unreformed Communist, Jakubowska's subsequently blinkered adherence to a brutally oppressive and discredited ideology does her little credit.
