Ashes and Diamonds (no 44)

 

by Allan Fish

(Poland 1958 104m) DVD1/2

Aka. Poprol y Diament

These violets smell marvellous

d/w  Andrzej Wajda  novel  Jerzy Andrzejewski  ph  Jerry Wojcik  ed  Helena Nowrocka  m  Jan Krenz  art  Roman Mann 

Zbigniew Cybulski (Maciek), Ewa Krzyzanowska (Krystyna), Adam Pawlikowski (Andrzej), Waclaw Zastrzeynski (Szczuka), Jan Clecierski (porter), Artur Mlodnicki (Kotowicz), Bogumil Kobiela (Drewnowski),

Among politically minded film-makers and critics, Andrzej Wajda stands high among the Gods.  He made his name in the fifties and sixties with a series of gritty realistic films which distinguished him as a unique talent.  Indeed, among the many Polish directors who made names for themselves in the decades prior to the arrival of Kieslowski, he is justly called the greatest, and considering the likes of Andrzej Munk, Krzysztof Zanussi, Aleksandr Ford, Wojciech Has and Jerzy Kawalerowicz, that’s no mean achievement.  Despite this, though, his reputation has somewhat lessened of late, so much so that when Jane Fonda presented him with a lifetime achievement Oscar in the nineties, too many young luminaries in the audience had the look of someone thinking “who is this guy?“

            The reasons for this are numerous, of course, not least the fact that political film-making is very much seen as a ‘no go area’ in modern cinema, particularly mainstream Hollywood.  Maybe the even more staunchly political later films Man or Marble and Man of Iron gave the sceptics an excuse to overlook his earlier work.  But in a decade where trilogies reigned (Inagaki’s Samurai, Ray’s ‘Apu’ and the beginning of Kobayashi’s The Human Condition), Wajda’s wartime resistance saga stands up quite well.  Even so, for all the impact of A Generation and the incredible claustrophobia of the sewer sequences in Kanal, Diamonds is undoubtedly the crowning glory of the trilogy.  (Actually, calling it a trilogy is a bit of a misnomer, in that the stories are not really connected and can easily stand up alone.)  What’s more the film isn’t even a World War II film, as it begins on the very day when the Nazis are surrendering to the Allied Forces.  The war here is between the partisans and the communists in the Poland left behind by the defeated Nazis. 

            One of the main criticisms levelled at Wajda’s film by the unconverted is that the central character is more in tune with the late fifties period of rebellion than the mid-forties when it is set.  But they are overlooking the fact that Wajda is also trying to make the tale relevant to those in the audience too young to have really felt the importance and magnitude of the events of over a decade previously.  Cybulski’s character, and thus his politics, had a mouthpiece that moviegoers could identify with.  His mixed up thoughts and mantras representing the fears of the average fifties youngster in a nutshell, as well as showing the devastating impact of war on an entire generation and nation (a theme even more shockingly expanded on in Kanal).  Yet the film also shows relevance to the modern era, and though it may seem from a totally different world to the cool, almost documentary clarity of Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, it remains fresh to this day.  You really felt the cold in Spielberg’s film, but there’s a different sort of realism to the war-torn surroundings in Wajda’s film.  It subconsciously recalls Rossellini’s Open City and Germany, Year Zero, whilst also looking forward to Wajda’s even more sombre Landscape After Battle a decade or so later. 

            For all the political subtexts, though, what people lock in their memory banks is the performance of Cybulski in the lead.  Forget the comparisons with James Dean, as he’s a very different actor, but this is his defining moment.  Mixing youthful swagger in his shades, with an aching tenderness in his love scenes with Krzyzanowska (a typical naturally attractive Polish blonde heroine), he’s a cinematic snapshot for the entire decade.  So that though Wajda continued working into his seventies (giving fresh meaning to the Diamonds mantra “while we’re still alive, let’s work“), he never matched his work here.  Diamonds is gritty, for sure, but it shines like a De Beers through the years.