Eastern Blocbusters - Part II of The Cinematic Melting Pot
In 1953, shortly after Stalin's demise, the Cold War atmosphere progressively waned. At the same time, circumstances of film making in Eastern Europe changed dramatically, almost over night. Directors from Hungary, like Felix Mariassey and Zoltan Fabri, symbolized their belief in a newer and a freer language that would be spoken. A prime example came with Budapest's Tavasz (Spring in Budapest, 1955) and Egy Pikolo Vilagos (A Glass of Beer, 1955) Fabris Korsinthe. Where we are privy to a socially aware tale of young love at a fairground.
Haniball Tandar Ur ( Professor Hannibal, 1956) which was about a teacher who defies criticism on his book of Hannibal; the classical hero who eschewed Rome's military power. A loaded subject, especially just before the Soviet invasion that was imminent.
Karoly Makk and Imre Feher would use as their template, Soviet avant-garde of the Twenties and you can clearly see the influenced they drew from Italian neo-realist films, depsite there being a time when these neo-realist works were banned in the Eastern Bloc. Another influence would be from the concepts of scriptwriter Cesare Zavattini. Professor Hannibal, was testament to the shape of the things they wished to come, an a welcome deviation from the harsh atmosphere that is ever prevalent of Eastern Europe. This new wave would be shortlived sadly, when later in the year 1956, the Hungarian Revolution would force suppression thus closing the chapter of this new and promising 'Hungarian School' before it had a chance to fully establish it's own independent aesthetic line. It would be nearly a decade for this Hungarian Cinema to regenerate and pick up where left off from its period of 1954-56.
In the then Soviet Union, a massive increase in output was projected, which would radically change the moribund condition into which film production had sunk under Stalin's grasp. The new party line called for it's desired goal to produce as much as 150 films annually. In the year 1954, forty-nine films were actually completed. To achieve this, the studios were opened to new generations of film-makers and to the older artists that had been denied any continuity in their careers by the sheer paucity of films that were realesed in the last years of Stalin. The rapid influx of production segued incidentally to the taming of censorship and supervision in certain republics.
In 1958, came the first landmark, in it's foreboding, yet lyrical wartime romance, Letyat Zhurvati ( The Cranes are Flying, 1958) The director, Mikhail Kalatazov and cinematographer Sergei Urusevski were both respectively avant garde artists of the Twenties age. Kalatazov directed the classic Sol Svanetii (Salt for Svanetia, 1930). And it would be for many years that they were putting their own names on films that adhered puritanically to the Stalinist political and aesthetic creed. Now they revived what was best in their past experience, creating a film that was a recapitulation of avant-garde theories and an anthology of it's directorial styles. The film's main impact was in it's emotive power of the black-and-white image and the power of montage ( as seen per the films of the genii, Eisenstein and Pudovkin) , when used to underline certain tragic occurrences of Soviet life that had been banished from the big screen for ages. One Soviet critic described it ' It was as if the wall between art and living life had fallen Hundreds of international awards could not equal the tears with which people purged their emotions after this film ...Our tears ; unlocked the door",'
The essential newcomers consisted of Grigori Chukrai, Bailada o Soldate (Ballad of a Soldier, 1960); the co-directors Lev Kulidzhanov and Yakov Segel, Dom v Kotorom yu Zhivu ( The House I live in, 1957) Marlem Khutsiev, Vesna na Zarechnoi Ultise ( Spring in Zarechnaya Street, 1956); the Georgian Tengiz Abuladze; Lurdzha Magdany, Magdana's Little Donkey; and Sergei Bondarchuk, Sudba Cheloveka (Destiny of a Man, 1959) Bondarchuk was subsequently more known for his heavy-handed sagas, Voina i Mir (1965-7, War and Peace) and 1970's Waterloo.
Not all of these auteurs were young, some had spent decades in expectation of a first opportunity. Likewise, some of t he old masters had long been waiting to work in the way they wanted with some freedom of subject matter and artistry among them was Grigori Kozinstev, who moved quickly to the forefront with his Don Kikhot (Don Quixote, 1957) though he would be best remembered in the West for his Shakespeare adaptation, Hamlet (1964) and Kovol Lir (King Lear, 1970) often considered to surpass even the English versions by Laurence Olivier and Peter Brook.
There would be other classical interpretations, Josif Heifitz's take on Chekovs' Dama s Sobachkoi ( Lady with a Little Dog, 1959) and Ivan Pyriev's Idiot ( The Idiot, 1958) after Dostoevsky; and Sergei Yutkevich's Othello (1955) and Banya (1962, The Bath House), from Mayakovsky's infamous satirical comedy.
Yulia Solntseva, the widow of the great director Dovenzhenko, brought to the screen several of his unfilmed scenarios including Poema o Morye (1958, Poem of the Sea) and Povest Plammenkyh Let (The Flaming Years), Unfortunatley their quality did not make up much for the destruction years before of Dovenzhenko's career by Stalin's personal hostility. Mikhail Romm, who had been the first to present and adulatory image of Stalin on the screen in Lenin v Oktyabre (Lenin in October, 1937) this became one of the fiercest post- Stalin reformers of the Soviet cinema. to which he contributed such important films as Devyat Dnei Odnogo Goda ( Nine Days of One Year, 1961) concerning the work and love problems of nuclear physicists.
There would be many a hope unfulfilled for Soviet film-makers during the late Fifties, The liberalization courtesy of Kruschev didn't extend enough to permit for authentic personal expressionism, independent styles, or subjective approaches. It would become all too clear, that a good number of mainstream productions would have to continue appeasing the state propoganda, as well as indoctrination of the masses. The only distinction, would be that it was slightly more sophisticated and subtle than before.
The most important outcry against the Stalinist and Cold War years, and against socialist realism, would occur in Poland, as they were struggling against Russian domination for hundreds of years. The very first breakthrough would come by the veteran Alexsander Ford with Piatka z Ulicy Barskiej (Five Boys from Barksa Street, 1953)
the story focused on a group of young delinquents , it was stylized and fashioned after the French Cinema aesthetic of this period. Ford's latent and wider received release Krzyacy( Knights of the Teutonic Order, 1960) would be a commemoration of the fourteenth-century battle of Grunwald, and it was indeed a lavish epic, patriotic, and produced as a means to appeal to the nationalist spirit of the Polish audiences, in coalition with an agenda to reach the popular worldwide market.
There would be a trio of young directors, Andrzej Munk, who passed away prematurely, Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and these three were revolutionary, in that they founded the 'Polish School.' They were most precious about critical analysis and romanticizing Polish histories, and their focal point was often the recent war years.
One of the key ingredients to understanding the canon of Andrzej Wajda (b.1926) is to have an awareness of the tradition of Polish romanticism, of the extent that Wajda finds himself in wild cinema abandon to it's bleakest aspects, also to the extent in which he vehemently works at at transcending it. There was an overall denial of full nationalhood in Poland between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, and this spurred a tradition in it's art of imminent foreboding, of heroic martydom in the nationalist battle and at times a dizzying cultivation of both elegance and style.
Andrzej Wajda, as the son of a serving cavalry officer, of the three, would be most privy to this tradition. Consequently, he came to maturity during the second world war, in which he served himself temporarily in one of the Resistance operations. Wajda received his higher education in a post-revolutionary Poland, in which the ideology was staunchly in opposition to all the things that the Polish Romantic tradition stood for.
These two disparate ideologies would cause a tension which can be witnessed in Wajda's first feature, his diploma film at the State Film School in Lodz Pokolemie (A Generation, 1955). Its theme focused on the evolution of personal and political maturity of a young working class ne'er do-well, and this was a recurrent theme in socialist realist art since the 1930s. The film is impressive in every connotation, which makes it understandable how this film appealed to such politically aggressive critics in the West; its apparent socio-political undertones, the confidence in which it handles the resources of cinema, the powerful performances of each actor in it's ensemble and an unabashed feeling of simplicity. What perhaps is most inspiring of this film, is it's complex contradictions, and the central of which it veers and vacillates between socialist realism, rationality, progressive ideologies and its lingering optimism and the signature of Polish romanticism in that it is both regressive and pessimistic.
Wadja's second release would prove far more ambitious and makes a significant progress in his handling of the medium. Kanal (They Loved Life, 1957) featured an extensive number of characters and relationships, replete with an edgier mise-en-scene - the labyrinthine opening tracking shot within which military unit members are introduced. At the same time, albeit, the commentary heard over this scene - Look at these men and women. We are going to watch them die' - this underlines the extent in which the film surrenders to the atavistic Romanticism which sees it's balancing act in A Generation.
Despite the Romantic excesses ( recurring images of doomed, young martyrs dying heroically for Poland in the sewers of of Warsaw) Kanal is a film of irrefutable power. Popiot i diament (Ashes and Diamonds, 1958) is long considered to be wajda's most influential work. In it, he passionately brings into collision the two schools which shaped his artistic growth. Set on the last day of World War II, and the first day of peace, its central charactgers are two young nationalist underground fighters who are on a pilgrimage to kill a visiting Red leader. By error, they kill two workers and then hang around the visiting leader's hotel until the younger of the pair, gets a chance to kill the elderly man. He is himself ultimately killed.
A bare outline gives very little indication of the intricacies of Ashes and Diamonds, of how it bridges together it's complex narrative, and in such bringing the extensive cast of characters into relationships with each other, so that a thorough cross-section of Polish society is examined.
Thus Szcuka, the visiting Communist, is an in-law relation to the aristocratic lady who harbors the leader of the right-wing assassination squad; Szcuka's own son is a member of the same movement as his youthful assassin. Ashes and Diamonds illustrates a nation conceived as a family torn apart. The ending of the film intimates this theme, drawing on a popular Polish stage play Wyspianski's The Wedding ( Wadja was to adapt this to the big screen in 1973). Wadja shows his cross-section of Polish society dancing a sad polonaise while outside of the hotel the old Communist having been shot by the young terrorist, lunges forth into his murderer's arms in what betrays us as to be a filial embrace. The national dimension is ever present in the terrorist's own demise. Attempting to find cover among the billowing pale sheets on a washing line, he is then shot; the blood stains that permeate one of the sheets which drape over him. Even though the film is shot in black and white, the symbolism of red and white is of particular note - being red and white are the colours of the Polish flag, which made this an unmistakable device to the Polish audience. Lotna (1959) would mark Wadja's last dance with this tradition although it would regenerate ( however from a more skeptical and detached viewpoint) in his later efforts, Exzystko na Sprzedaz ( Everything for Sale, 1968) and 1970's Po Bitwie Krajobraz , Landscape after Battle. His works ( including what he accomplished for television) was an extremely eclectic array of productions, Poloiwanie na Muchy (Hunting Flies, 1969) was a study of contemporaneous mores and manners; Brzezina (The Birch Wood, 1970) and Panxiy z Wilka ( The Young Ladies of Wilko,1979) are elegiac looks at the juncture betwen the two world wars and Ziemia Obiecana (Land of Promise, 1974) is a high octane adaptation of a novel about the insurgence of capitalism in a nineteenth century Poland.
Andrzej Munk (1921-61) left his legacy behind with his mesmerizing Cztiek na Torze (Man on the Track, 1956) which told the tale of a simple engine-driver, who is incessantly reproached for being old and having an aversion to change. The engine-driver ultimately is seen as a hero, but little too late - as it happens because he perishes on the tracks while saving two trains from colliding.
At the time of it's release, Poland was in a state of political upheaval - and the public were demonstrating for a change of government. This film was an anthem and sang its tune about the tragic years that presaged its production. It would commence the subjective perception of a floundering world of reality. A feat that would have been seemingly implausible in the Stalinist cinema, since it emboldened the viewpoint of the individual.
In 1961, Munk succumbed to an accidental death, and right before his sad demise, he continued to deconstruct Poland's past. Eroica (1957) was a double-episode feature film consisting of a comedy set in Warsaw's wartime and an ironic tragedy in a prisoner-of-war camp. Zezowate Szczescie (Bad Luck, 1960) was itself a sardonic portrait of a passionate, albeit unsuccessful follower of polical fashion who is always out of sync with the march of time.
His last film, Pasazerka (Passenger, 1961) would be unfunished and compeleted posthumously by the year 1963 for release. The story centered on two polar opposite women; a guard and a prisoner in concentration camp. with his profound and decidedly macabre sense of irony and contradiction, Munk believed that through demystifying the past, that he would liberate both society and it's individuals.
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