Andrzej Wajda (1926-2016) - Polish cinema has lost a father

My discovery of Polish cinema began in 1978 with Man of Marble (Czlowiek z marmuru). A film by director Andrzej Wajda, who died last Sunday at the age of 90. Man of Marble was a film that perfectly matched the prevailing feeling at the time that everything was changing. An inspired, critical film from still communist Poland that bravuraly punctured the myth of the working-class hero - a champion mason in this case. Wajda had sensed the zeitgeist perfectly, as shortly afterwards the strikes broke out in Gdansk that, via the trade union Solidarnosc, would eventually lead to the break with the Soviet bloc.

Along with Wajda, a small wave of other Polish filmmakers, including Krzysztof Kieslowski, rolled into movie houses at the time. It does not take much imagination to see Wajda as a kind of patriarch and inspirer of a new generation for whom film, freedom, artistic innovation and social commitment were inseparable. He himself shot a sequel to Man of Marble, the Gdansk-based protests Man of Iron (Czlowiek zelaza). He received the Golden Palm at Cannes for that. Another few years later, communism was history. With that, the urgency also slowly but surely seeped out of Polish cinema. Many younger readers will see in this piece mainly an exercise in nostalgia, I'm afraid.

History book

So let me sum it up like this: Italy had Fellini, Sweden had Bergman and Poland had Wajda (with apologies to Kieslowski). When Wajda came up with Man of Marble international breakthrough, he was already a big name in his own country. In the 1950s, he had made an immediate impact with his trilogy about the resistance in World War II: Generation, The sewer and Ashes and diamonds. Even then, he had an un-romantic take on heroism. Even then, these were films with both feet firmly in the mud of history. It is an angle he stayed true to.

When Polish authorities arrested him after Man of Iron didn't see eye to eye for a while he diverted to France, diving in with Danton (1983) in the turbulent French revolution. With Pan Tadeusz (1999), he went back to the time of Napoleon, his Russian invasion and his alliance with Poland. Most of Wajda's 50-plus title filmography can be viewed as a dramatised history book. In 2000, he was awarded an honorary Oscar for his work.

Out of fashion

Although he remained productive well into old age, only sporadic work of his made it to our country after 1985. Partly because they may not all have been interesting masterpieces, but also, I suspect, because Polish cinema itself had gone out of fashion again. It therefore gave me great pleasure a few years ago that his biopic about Solidarnosc frontman Lech Waleza got into movie theatres here anyway. Walesa, Man of Hope appeared to be a belated completion of the with Man of Marble started trilogy. But also a true Wajda that proved that the Polish film legend had not yet lost his fire.

One of Wajda's most eye-catching and internationally acclaimed later films is the war drama Katyn (2007), about the Russian massacre of 22,000 Polish officers. Never released in the Netherlands. A big miss.