Andrzej Wajda

History, Politics & Nostalgia In Polish Cinema

Janina Falkowska

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780857458483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Películas y vídeos

The work of Andrzej Wajda, one of the world's most important filmmakers, shows remarkable cohesion in spite of the wide ranging scope of his films, as this study of his complete output of feature films shows. Not only do his films address crucial historical, social and political issues; the complexity of his work is reinforced by the incorporation of the elements of major film and art movements. It is the reworking of these different elements by Wajda, as the author shows, which give his films their unique visual and aural qualities.

1

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ANDRZEJ WAJDA

There are many ways in which an author can approach the biography of a filmmaker. One can use commonly accessible sources like books, articles, and press releases, or one can go directly to the source: the filmmaker’s diaries, personal notes and kalendaria. I chose to do the latter and tried to reconstruct Andrzej Wajda’s personal story from these sources. Additionally, I used material from conversations with Wajda and from his personal letters to me. All these sources were laconic and concise, however; only in conversations did Wajda sometimes reveal his private thoughts. What the reader has below is my attempt at the reconstruction of the fascinating collection of facts and thoughts which, both in content and style, reflect on the “down-to-earth” nature of the director himself.

Andrzej Wajda was born on 6 March 1926, in Suwałki, Poland. His mother, Aniela-Zofia Białowąs, was a teacher and a voracious reader. Her favorite book was a well-known saga about gentry and intelligentsia by Maria Dąbrowska, Noce i dnie,¹ which describes the life of a noble family in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Herself a daughter of the middle-class family, Aniela-Zofia provided an informed and intelligent environment for her two sons, Andrzej and Leszek. Jakób Wajda, Andrzej’s father, was an aide-de-camp in the Polish army, posted fulltime in Radom. Wajda’s younger brother Leszek, who studied interior design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, designed the set interiors for Ashes and Diamonds in 1958 and for Samson (Samson, 1961) in 1960. Leszek remained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Department of the Art of Arranging Exhibitions, where he was a professor. He still lives in Kraków.²

Andrzej Wajda describes Suwałki, where he spent his childhood, as a military town whose whole existence followed the rhythm of the army. In many interviews, he refers repeatedly to the influence this town had on the formation of his artistic interests. For instance, marches, elaborate scenes involving soldiers, or scenes referring to army life are present in ten of his thrity-seven films; many of these scenes are drawn directly from Wajda’s memories of Suwałki’s May 3rd Parade, the most important annual event in the life of the town, enjoyed by all the town’s inhabitants—and especially by the children. On this day each year, several thousand soldiers marched to commemorate the anniversary of the first constitution of an independent Poland; these exuberant marches were performed to the tunes of army songs praising patriotism and bravery. The ardent nationalism often depicted so overwhelmingly in Wajda’s films, presented in the context of army life, takes its humble origin in his memories of his childhood town.

The rich army life of the garrison town surrounded Wajda’s family. The parades, army uniforms, battles, and horses that fueled so many of the patriotic paintings hanging in every Polish museum were eagerly copied or lovingly imitated by Andrzej’s father, who was an amateur painter. Thanks to Jakób’s great interest in painting and in historical art, Andrzej became well acquainted with these works of art. Reproductions of paintings by Jan Matejko, Jacek Malczewski, Artur Grottger, and Michał Elwiro Andriolli, all well-known Polish artists,³ hung in the Wajda home. Aniela-Zofia was also open to such new inventions as film; among the very first films Andrzej saw as a twelve-year-old boy was King Kong (1933).

This peaceful and comfortable life was disrupted by the events of World War II. The impact of the war on the Wajdas’ lives were disastrous, as for so many families. When the war broke out on 1 September 1939, Wajda’s father was immediately sent to the front. The family lost contact with him for many years; they fled from the enemy, destitute and in constant fear of the Germans. They thought that Jakób had died either during the September campaign or in 1940 in Katyń, near Charków, where many Polish officers were executed. On 28 September 1939, at the order of Polish Army commander Juliusz Rommel, Jakób was awarded, in absentia, the highest distinction of the Polish Army, the Virtuti Militari Cross of the 5th Grade. In 1940, Wajda’s mother received two letters and some money from her husband, who was alive and living in Kozielsk. They learned from one of these letters that he had been imprisoned by the Soviets. Thereafter, again, there was no word from him; this time Jakób was later presumed dead.

Thirteen-year-old Andrzej suffered greatly, so early in his life, from these two tragic events: Hitler’s invasion of Poland and his father’s disappearance. As he writes in Kalendarium,⁴ Wajda looked with despair upon column after column of Polish army officers all marching to German prisons. This was Wajda’s first meeting with history, which for him and for countless other Poles meant defeat and disaster for their country as well as personal tragedy for their families. These war experiences are later replayed in half of Wajda’s films, and clearly constitute an important theme in his oeuvre.

Several weeks after the war erupted in 1939, Wajda experienced the Germans’ brutality for the first time during his family’s panicked flight first to Puławy and then to Kazimierz. This event left lasting memories in the young boy. Later, the fleeing family found refuge in Radom, where Wajda started his secondary education in a local high school (or rather a gymnasium). He continued this education throughout the war at the tajna szkoła średnia (secret high school): During the war and the German occupation, Polish teachers organized clandestine meetings for children and conducted regular lessons in private apartments and houses of teachers and co-workers. As a result, young Andrzej not only received a thorough primary and secondary education, but also developed his artistic interests in painting, both watercolors and oil, and in sculpture; this interest in art later shaped his entire artistic output in both film and theater productions. He studied under Prof. Wacław Dobrowolski⁵ and later worked as an apprentice for the three artists who painted the polychrome at the Bernardin Catholic Church in Radom: Adam Stalony-Dobrzański, Eugeniusz Pisarek, and Wiktor Langer. In 1942, Wajda started producing portraits, landscapes, and historical paintings.

Also in 1942, Wajda joined the Home Army,⁶ in which he performed the function of a liaison officer (courier), a duty customary for boys of his age. He was nearly arrested by the Germans for these activities, and as a result was forced to flee Radom for Kraków, where he lived for some time; there he continued his involvement in Home Army activities and was again nearly arrested by the Germans. He returned to Radom, where he finished high school. When the war ended in 1945, Wajda was nineteen years old. One of the most enduring memories he retains from that time is that of Warszawa, the capital of Poland, completely ruined by German bombardment. This highly visual memory later found its way into such films as Kanal and Pierścionek z orłem w koronie (The Crowned-Eagle Ring, a.k.a. The Horse-Hair Ring, 1993).

At the end of the war, Radom was, as Wajda calls it, a “cultural backwater,” yet it managed to maintain contacts with leading literary figures of the time. Writers and poets from nearby Warszawa visited to present their literary works. Among the best-known of the cultural figures visiting Radom were poets Julian Przyboś, Julian Tuwim, Antoni Słonimski, Leopold Staff, and Władysław Broniewski and writers Jerzy Andrzejewski and Jan Parandowski. This short-lived but rich intellectual life in Radom contributed greatly to young Andrzej’s development. His skills at argumentation were sharpened as a result of witnessing these debates and discussions, and his eyes were opened to means of expression other than the visual. Also born of these meetings was Wajda’s long friendship with Jerzy Andrzejewski, a friendship that later produced their brilliant collaboration on the screenplay for Ashes and Diamonds. The year 1945 was important for Wajda in another sense, as well: While visiting certain Kraków museums, he chanced upon a collection of Japanese woodcuts by the artist Feliks Jasieński. Wajda remembers this moment very clearly, for it represents his first exposure to Japanese culture; this experience evolved into a significant area of artistic expression in his life, culminating in the cooperative film effort with Japanese artists that produced the film Nastasja (Nastasja, 1994) and, more recently, in the construction of the Manggha Japanese Culture Center in Kraków.

Moving further in the direction of visual arts in 1946, Wajda began his studies at Akademia Sztuk Pięknych (the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts). At the academy, he joined the grupa samokształceniowa (selfeducation group), the ideologue and leader of which was Andrzej Wróblewski,⁷ one of the most talented artists of the post-war era. Later, Wajda audited the lectures of Prof. Zygmunt Rudnicki and also studied with Hanna Rudzka-Cybisowa, a post-Impressionist painter. Wajda soon came to believe, though, that his artistic inclinations, however profound, did not make him an accomplished painter. Despite the fact that he received awards for drawings and paintings at the academy, he felt that he was not particularly talented and humbly left the art school in 1949. The academy nonetheless played several important roles in Wajda’s life. First, he received his artistic education there; second, he got to know Wróblewski; and, third, he met Konrad Nałęcki, who assisted Wajda in his early films.

At the academy Wajda also received his first bitter lesson in postwar politics, which he later recounted in his films dealing with Stalinist times. Wajda studied art during what is generally considered one of the worst periods in modern Polish history, when the totalitarian Stalinist regime dictated affairs in Poland. This political system made its inroad in Poland in 1945–56, when Stalin introduced Bolesław Bierut as his representative to Poland. Bierut governed the one-party state following directions from Stalin himself. The system espoused by Stalin demanded the complete ideological, psychological, and social subjugation of Soviet citizens in all areas of life. Bierut attempted to introduce this totalitarian ideology in Poland, but his efforts were undermined there by the intellectual resistance of the artists.

At that time, Polish citizens suffered many economic and social hardships, the worst of which were the lack of food and of political liberties. Freedom of speech was nonexistent, so many artists were deprived of the possibility of leading an active artistic life. Instead, they had to conform to the dictates of Socialist Realism,⁸ the main purpose of which was to present an unrealistically positive picture of society. Those who did not obey official ideology were the targets of an unprecedented attack by the Ministry of Culture.⁹ One such artist was Prof. Eugeniusz Eisbich, the rector of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, who was expelled from his own academy in 1948 because of his unorthodox views. This unfortunate event was followed by an outright attack on other artists in a futile attempt to apply punitive measures to curb independent thinking and creativity. This early experience gave Wajda an insight into the officially sanctioned Socialist Realism, which he later recalled in Man of Marble and other films. As Wajda comments in Kalendarium, “with the expulsion of Professor Eisbich, the regimen of Socialist Realist painting was fully implemented.”

When Wajda learned about the opening of a school that would teach students how to make films, he decided to apply. In July of 1949, he was accepted to the Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa w Łodzi (State Higher Film School in Łódź, or Łódź Film School), where he studied until 1952. The school was founded on 2 November 1948; two months later, Jerzy Toeplitz, a well-known film historian, became its director. The school was located on Targowa Street in the palatial mansion of a prewar factory owner. In the first stages of its existence, the few filmmakers and cinematographers in Poland joined the faculty to become lecturers; these included directors Wanda Jakubowska, Alexander Ford, Edmund Cękalski, Adam Bohdziewicz and cinematographers Stanisław Wohl, Adolf Forbert, and Andrzej Ancuta. The school also invited film experts from other countries. Thus, students had an opportunity to attend lectures by Bela Balazs, Georges Sadoul, Joris Ivens, Giuseppe de Santis, Basil Wright, Umberto Barbarro, Mary Seaton, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigori Alexandrov, among others.¹⁰

The Łódź Film School had a rigorous curriculum with a predominantly theoretical component. The students had few practical classes and felt constrained by the intrusions of the instructors. For this very reason, Wajda was not very happy with his stay at the school—he considered the instruction to be too confining and dictatorial. As he comments in Kalendarium, “The stay at the school was disastrous for me; I was [extremely] disappointed.”¹¹ The students were expected to produce short film études, and Wajda’s are still accessible in the school’s archives: “Zły chłopiec” (“A Bad Boy,” 1951) and “Kiedy ty śpisz” (“When You Sleep,” 1953). The first one is a narrative exercise based on Anton Czechow’s short story by the same title, and the second a documentary impression based on the poem “Kiedy ty śpisz” by Tadeusz Kubiak. Wajda also started another film at the Łódź Film School: “Idę do słońca” (“I Go to the Sun,” 1955)¹² is a paradocumentary about celebrated Polish sculptor Xawery Dunikowski, who specialized in making huge sculptures similar to those of Henry Moore. In 1951, Wajda also made his first documentary film, “Ceramika ilżecka” (“Ilsa Ceramic,” 1951) and considered making films about the painters Jan Matejko, Aleksander Gierymski, and Harmensz van Rijn Rembrandt. The four films he produced as a student reveal Wajda’s talent and his meticulous organizational skills. As Wanda Wertenstein suggests in the introduction to her book Wajda Tells about Himself (1991), Wajda’s early credits should also include coauthorship of the screenplay for the narrative film Trzy opowieści (Three Stories, 1952) made by fellow students Konrad Nałęcki, Ewa Poleska (later Petelska), and Czesław Petelski.¹³ In 1953, Wajda received a certificate of completion from the Łódź Film School with, but not a graduation diploma—he left the school to become an assistant to director Alexander Ford. Wajda considers it a stroke of unprecedented luck that Ford asked him to join his film crew. Ford’s film with Wajda under his wing was Piątka z ulicy Barskiej (The Five from Barska Street, 1954), a film about five young boys convicted of robbery and assault; this film signaled new sociorealist themes and aesthetics in Polish cinema. Ford used realistic set designs and muted color to mark the brutality and cynicism of the postwar years. The film won an award at the Cannes International Film Festival for Ford’s directorial work. Even though as an apprentice on Ford’s film he had very little to do on the set, Wajda admits that this was a great opportunity for him to see the experienced and well-known Polish director at work. What he saw and experienced on the set of this film led him directly to a similar choice of themes in his first fiction film, A Generation.

A Generation, his first important film, received a state award for his effort and clearly introduces the two major preoccupations of Wajda’s early work: World War II and the predicament of young people in Poland. This film not only established Wajda as a prominent filmmaker, but also had an immediate impact upon other Polish filmmakers in the 1950s. A Generation and Andrzej Munk’s Człowiek na torze (Man on the Railway Track, 1956), with their unique combination of themes and aesthetics, are generally considered to have formed the basis of the Polish School.¹⁴ In October 1956, Wajda was given his first official directorial work assignment at the Zespoły Autorów Filmowych (The Film Authors’ Unit), obtaining permission to make the film Kanal. In the autumn of 1957, he began work o...