True giant of Polish cinema Andrzej Wajda is one of the most important European directors of the 20th century. It seems to many people, especially in our country where none of his films have been shown in regular film theatres for a long time, that he is a classic director who belongs to history. Those who know a bit more and who have seen his impressive film Katyn (2007) about the execution of fifteen thousand imprisoned Polish officers (including Wajda’s father) who were taken to the Katyn forest near Smolensk by the Soviet secret service NKVD upon Stalin’s direct order in 1941, regard this film to be Wajda’s testament as the two main characters were similar to Wajda’s parents. However, before that and after it he directed some interesting films, and the last one Afterimage (Powidoki, 2016), which he finished at the age of 90, had its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival only a month before his death.

In his rich opus that spans over six decades, he managed to create several valuable films even in the periods when it was thought that he was past his peak. However, his best period, during which he directed many master pieces in a very short time, was the time between the second half of the 1950’s and the 1970’s. The 1950’s were marked by his rise to the top of European cinema and the 1970’s were the period when he, as an indisputable national film and cultural giant, directed socially critical films and thus became the voice of his home country. The representatives of the government were quite aware of that fact and several ministers of culture approved his project because they knew that they would have to resign due to ideological “guilt”.

During WW II, Wajda dropped out of school and did odd jobs to survive. After the war he studied visual arts in Krakow, but soon moved to Lodz and enrolled to one of the most prestigious European film academies where he also directed several noticed student films and graduated in 1953. Equally important for his maturing as a director was the fact that he was an assistant to the Polish director Aleksander Ford (1908 – 1980) on one of the first Polish post-war films that rises beyond the limits of socialist regime – Five from Barska Street (Piątka z ulicy Barskiej, 1954). Immediately afterwards with an almost identical film crew, Wajda directed the film A Generation (Pokolenie, 1954) about the maturing process of a young man in the time of war. His unconventional approach to the theme of war, suggestive atmosphere and his honest author engagement brought him great success. These traits were characteristic in his next two films that were even more successful and refined. Those three films make up sort of a trilogy that made a great impact on Polish cinema and helped it achieve its place at the top of European cinema of that time.  Canal (Kanal, 1956) takes place during the uprising in Warsaw in 1944 and in it he skillfully combined a series of personal dramas with the agony of the whole city. Ashes And Diamonds (Popiól i diament, 1958), which represents the highlight of that period, takes place in Poland immediately after the war when a conflict arises between fighters from two ideologically different anti-fascist formations. Those who fought under the command of the refuge government in London oppose the Communists who established a social model based on the USSR’s, and due to an inevitable defeat, resort to an individual fight that borders on terrorism. The complexity of the film’s meaning, believable characters and authentic atmosphere are the reason why Wajda’s piece is not just an excellent example of film art but also why he managed to overcome the cornerstones of socialism and created a complex portrayal of fatal events in Poland. However, he avoided showing a black and white portrayal of relationships which, at the time, were characteristic for social realism and thus often created romantic heroes and losers out of protagonists that belonged to the side condemned by the official government, whose tragic destiny represented the drama of the entire Polish nation at the time during and after the WW II.

This protagonist who does not get along in the new social order and doubts his own opinions was masterfully played by Zbigniew Cybulski (1927-1967) who was often called the “European James Dean“, and became an idol for many young people during late 1950’s and early 1960’s. They often wore similar clothes and dark prescription glasses like Cybulski and it is interesting that such glasses and the jacket he wore in the film did not belong to the time in which the film’s story is set but were his private items in which he insisted to appear on film. In one interview Wajda told me that he made a compromise and agreed to do a test shooting with Cybulski wearing his own clothes and when he saw how charismatic the actor looked he decided to leave this anachronism in the film. In the end, he was of the opinion that the way his leading actor looked added to the film’s success. Such a decision and the way he collaborated with his actors enabled many of them to show their highest potential and to some to become European stars – primarily to Daniel Olbrychski (1945), who starred in Wajda’s film inspired by Cybulsky’s death Everything For Sale (Wszystko na sprzedaź, 1968) and Krystyna Jandi (1952) who had the leading role in Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1976), the most prominent film of the best decade in Wajda’s career – the 1970’s.

After the modernist film Everything For Sale, which was atypical for him, announced the exit from the crisis of the 1960’s that affected not only Wajda but the entire Polish cinema due to a more strict political pressure of the socialist government, Wajda first returned to the topics connected to WW II, such as in Landscape After Battle (Krajobraz po bitwie, 1970), with much success and then showed his brilliant directing skills in the film adaptations of great works of Polish literature – The Wedding (Wesele, 1973) based on the play by Stanisław Wyspiański and The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, 1975) based on the novel by the Polish Nobel prize winner Władysław Reymont. Afterwards he directed great politically and socially critical films Man of Marble, Rough Treatment (Bez znieczulenia, 1978), The Conductor (Dyrygent, l979) and Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, l98l). Among these great works the most complex is the film Man of Marble in which Wajda exquisitely uses “film within film”. The protagonist Krystyna Janda is a student of directing who chose for her thesis to direct a documentary about a hero from the early 1950’s Birkut, and the film follows her search for that man who soon after getting a medal became ill-suited and later died during a protest in Gdansk in 1970. During her research the girl manages to reconstruct Birkut’s story and character from the stories of those who knew him. Wajda uses flashbacks to convincingly recreate the atmosphere from the early 1950’s showing how the official glittery picture of the actually unfree and poor society was formed. The contrast between that time and the time when the film was made enabled Wajda to create a film with a complex story and to freely and very successfully show that time in the film as well as to take a critical position towards the Stalinist period and the social relations in Poland in mid 1970’s. In 1978 in Cannes, the film won the Golden Palm. In Poland its popularity was even more significant – in the 1980’s workers of a shipyard in Gdansk (founders of „Solidarity“) protested and demanded from Wajda to make a sequel. Most likely that was his biggest incentive to direct Man of Iron. (Tomislav Kurelec)