Les chevaliers teutoniques

Greatest Polish big budget film for me. Far, far better than today's huge budget craps that are released on DVD market, craps most of them from Eastern Europe, where CGI is galore. This sixties movie amazed me, even dubbed in French. A pure masterpiece, which has nothing to envy to Hollywood material. Excellent camera work, jawdropping cast and acting. Such movies are so rare to find, especially from Eastern Europe. If you crave for Medieval films, with plenty of extras, battles, gruesome and awesome battles, pulled by outstanding production design, this film is definitely for you. I don't know the other movies from this director, political oriented, but if I have the opportunity to watch them, I won't miss.

I have seen this movie many years ago. This movie to my knowledge is one of the best Knights movies that ever been made. The plot is fantastic and the ending is a very sad one. This movie shows to what extreme some people would go to avenge even if they are in the wrong. A great movie and not enough acclaimed to my satisfaction.

KNIGHTS OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER, based on the novel by Nobel winner Henryk Sienkiewicz, is full of intensely melodramatic conflicts and nonstop action; Sienkiewicz's fiction was more in the mold of THE THREE MUSKETEERS and IVANHOE than WAR AND PEACE, and the source material makes for a highly entertaining movie. The epic scope is quite impressive (fully comparable to Hollywood epics of the same era, like QUO VADIS or SPARTACUS). The setting will be unfamiliar to many audiences (Poland and Prussia in the middle ages), but the plight of the Polish knight Jurand as he and his family are tormented by the dastardly Teutonic Knights is emotionally involving. I saw this in 2005 on a not-so-good video from Polart (washed-out color, poor subtitles), but I've recently seen a DVD on offer, which I hope will have higher quality; it's a handsomely made film that deserves restoration and a wider audience.

It is a good film and - as some reviews pointed out - of quite a big importance (and sentimental value!) to Poles. As every nation, Poles delight in productions illuminating the splendor years or turning points in their history, so the film has a guaranteed place in the pantheon of Polish films. It is begging for a remake though. If it is to be equally enjoyable for younger generations technical anachronisms and especially lengthy scenes need to be taken care of. The plot is great, so it definitely deserves a lifting. Apart from the extraordinary number of horses and extras, and Guiness record long battle scenes the film is famous for 2 amazing goofs: 1. In one of the battles, far beyond the herd of knights, you can see a crew car happily passing on the horizon 2. During the main battle of Grunwald scene (1410!) an electric watch can be seen on the actor's wrist as the Polish king zestfully waves his sword fighting his opponents.

The Teutonic Knights were an order of monks founded in 1190 in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. Like the Hospitallers their stated aim was to aid Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land and establish hostels and hospitals. But, also like the Hospitallers they degenerated into warriors ("warrior monk" is the mother of all oxymorons). After Christian forces were defeated and expelled from Palestine the Order fled back to Europe and was invited/disinvited by various local princes. After a while the Order settled in allegedly Germanic lands and since 1230 devoted its efforts to Christianize by fire and sword the eastern realms, in particular the Baltic Old Prussians and Lithuanians. It also campaigned against peoples as Christian as they were, such as the Republic of Novgorod in the 1240s.

The Knights were not deterred by the conversion of Lithuania to the Cristian faith, which voided any pretext for a Crusade. Foolishly, some Polish nobles invited the Order to their territories, which was answered with expropriations, plunder, enslavement of serfs and further encroachments on Polish lands. Poles and Lithuanians were finally fed up and organized a joint army commanded by King Wladislaw II Jagiello and Grand Duke Vytautas. They confronted and decisively defeated the Knights in the battle of Grunwald on July 15 1410, one of the largest battles in the Middle Ages, fought in a field southeast of Hamburg in the Order's home turf. The Knights military might was destroyed and their molestation of Eastern lands severely curtailed.

The last half hour (and centerpiece) of this movie is a reconstruction of the battle of Grunwald; the rest is on the abuses of the the Knights leading to the battle. The script is based on a 1900 novel by Henryk Sienkewicz, of Quo Vadis fame. His books based on history (translated to numerous languages and never out of print) are fast paced and exciting, which makes the movie equally exciting. I watched it in 1960, the year of its release and again recently, and it has stood the test of time; it is now as stirring as sixty years ago. There are some iconic shots: a screenwide line of defiant drummers shown later broken and decimated, the King wielding the two swords across the screen, the commanders of each army asking God's help in slaughtering the enemy with the same words.

The Knights left a sinister resonance in modern history, The Prussian military caste venerated them and many Prussian officers (including some of Hitler's generals) claimed descent from a Knight or other. There were riders dressed as Knights in Nazi parades. And, Hitler credited the Order with the concept of Drang Nach Osten = Drive to the East that. In his view, justified his invasion and attempted subjugation of Slavic lands. Obviously, the Order is vilified in Slavic countries; the Russian name for them is the Dog Knights, apparently coined by Karl Marx.