#Jerzy Andrzejewski Ashes and Diamonds

[byneddiedingo]

Ewa Krzyzewska and Zbigniew Cybulski in Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958) Cast: Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyzewska, Waclaw Zaztrzezynski, Adam Pawlikowski, Bogumil Kobiela, Jan Ciecierski. Screenplay: Jerzy Andrzejewski, Andrzej Wajda, based on a novel by Jerzy Andrzejewski. Cinematography: Jerzy Wójcik. Production design: Roman Mann. Film editing: Halina Nawrocka. Music: Filip Nowak. The plot of Ashes and Diamonds is simple: A group of men carry out an ambush on a road in the countryside only to discover that their intended target was not among the men they killed. So they return to town to plot another way of assassinating the man. The youngest, most volatile member of the group discovers that the man has taken the room next door in the hotel, but while waiting for his opportunity, his flirtation with a pretty young woman turns serious -- they begin to fall in love. Still, renouncing that chance at happiness, he follows through with his mission: He kills the man, but before he can make his escape from the town he is gunned down. It could have been -- probably has been -- the plot of a Western, a gangster film, a spy thriller, or a war movie. But because it's a film made in Poland during the Cold War, and the story it tells is set on the very day in 1945 when the Germans surrendered, it's an intensely political film, not just in what's on the screen but also in what went on while it was being made and released. I mention this because while I want to think about movies in purely aesthetic terms -- i.e., assessing the quality of acting, writing, direction, camerawork, etc. -- it's  almost impossible to approach a film like Ashes and Diamonds without taking so-called "external" factors like politics and history into consideration. If you try to watch it without knowing anything about the political situation in Poland in 1945, with the Germans retreating, the Soviets advancing, you'll miss half of the motivation of the characters and most of the intensity of the conflict. And if you disregard the fact that Poland in 1958 was a communist country, you can't understand why the plot to kill a communist leader was such a touchy subject for Andrzej Wajda to handle in a film -- and why the way he handled it was so audacious. It's a film that asks you to do your homework. On as pure an aesthetic level as I can get in thinking about the film, it's visually fascinating, with some splendid deep-focus cinematography by Jerzy Wójcik that pays homage to Gregg Toland's work on Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941). Wajda was quite open about the influence of Welles on his filmmaking -- like Welles, Wajda wanted sets to have ceilings -- but he also expressed a love of American gangster movies and film noir, citing Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932) and The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950) among his inspirations for Ashes and Diamonds. The American influence is probably most felt by viewers today in the performance of Zbigniew Cybulski in the role of Maciek, the young assassin. It's a showy, jittery, almost over-the-top performance that validates Cybulski's reputation as "the Polish James Dean." Wajda initially resisted casting Cybulski, wanting a more traditional actor for the role, but once Jerzy Andrzejewski, his co-screenwriter and author of the novel on which the film was based, persuaded him to hire Cybulski, Wajda realized that the handsome young star would attract the younger audience the film not only needed to succeed, but also to educate this audience about their country's past. He even gave in to Cybulski's demand that he be allowed to supply his own wardrobe -- not at all the kind of clothes that a young Polish partisan would have worn in 1945 -- including his signature sunglasses. (A line was inserted to explain that Maciek wore them because he had damaged his eyesight by spending too much time in the sewers of Warsaw during the uprising of 1944.) But Wajda added some idiosyncratic touches of his own to the film, including the bullets setting fire to the jacket of one of the unintended victims of the ambush, and some ventures into symbolism like the upside-down crucifix that looms over Maciek and Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska) when they visit a ruined church and the white horse that wanders the streets of the town near the film's end. Maciek is shot in a field where white sheets are drying on clotheslines, and when he clutches one of the sheets to himself, his blood shows through -- even though the film is in black and white, this is a reminder that the colors of the Polish flag, like the one the hotel keeper takes out to wave at the film's end, are white and red. Wajda also delighted in the ambiguity of Maciek's death scene, one of Cybulski's most extravagant moments, which takes place on a garbage heap. For the communist censors, he observed, this could be interpreted as the fate of rebels against their rule, while young would-be rebels could see it as the state treating them as garbage.

[ptolemywaswrong]

I've seen men who thought they were brave turn out to be shameful cowards. Other people, who thought they were capable of the utmost self-sacrifice, proved to be hardened egotists. And the opposite, too - cowards doing things which needed toughness and unusual courage..... What does it all boil down to in the end? One must judge a man by what he does, and not by what he thinks he would do. Until a man faces the test, he can deceive himself endlessly.

[clearthesilence]

"Sam powiedz, po diabła się dręczyć? Komu to potrzebne? Nie trzeba tego wszystkiego brać zbyt serio. Przepchać się poprostu przez tę cała hecę. Nie dać sie nabrać. I co więcej?"

Popiół i diament, Jerzy Andrzejewski

[2nd-rate-film-school]

“Will there remain among the ashes a star-like diamond, the dawn of eternal victory?”

Ashes and Diamonds (1958) dir. Andrzej Wajda

[pearlposts]

I've seen men who thought they were brave turn out to be shameful cowards. Other people, who thought they were capable of the utmost self-sacrifice, proved to be hardened egotists. And the opposite, too - cowards doing things which needed toughness and unusual courage..... What does it all boil down to in the end? One must judge a man by what he does, and not by what he thinks he would do. Until a man faces the test, he can deceive himself endlessly.

― Jerzy Andrzejewski, Ashes and Diamonds

[bookmonsterzero]

November 2019 in Pictures and Letters

230. Medical Ethics: A... Introduction by Tony Hope 11/01/19

231. Freemasonry: A... Introduction by Andreas Önnerfors 11/01/19

232. Autism: A... Introduction by Uta Frith 11/02/19

233. The Cremator by Ladislav Fuks 11/02/19

234. The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac 11/03/19

235. Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil 11/03/19

236. ® Life of a Good-for-nothing by Joseph von Eichendorff 11/03/19

237. The Everything Store by Brad Stone 11/05/19

238. ® The Sibyl by Pär Lagerkvist 11/06/19

239. ® Utopia by Thomas More 11/08/19

240. Blowout by Rachel Maddow 11/10/19

241. Hotel Tito by Ivana Simić Bodrožić 11/11/19

242. Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris 11/12/19

243. On Language by Noam Chomsky 11/12/19

244. My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose 11/12/19

245. The Death of a Beekeeper by Lars Gustafsson 11/13/19

246. As Trains Pass By by Herman Bang 11/13/19

247. On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui 11/15/19

248. ® Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin 11/15/19

249. Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser 11/17/19

250. The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee 11/18/19

251. The Clue by Carolyn Wells 11/19/19

252. Human Nature and Conduct by John Dewey 11/21/19

253. Lafayette Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell 11/22/19

254. Death Wish by Brian Garfield 11/23/19

255. Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming by Agnes Callard 11/24/19

256. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell 11/25/19

257. Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson 11/26/19

258. On Practice and Contradiction by Mao Zedong 11/27/19

259. Ashes and Diamonds by Jerzy Andrzejewski 11/27/19

260. Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau 11/28/19

261. Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo 11/30/19

262. The Golem by Gustav Meyrink 11/30/19

® Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Judge Dredd (1995)

Kindergarten Cop (1990)

Crimson Tide (1995)

At the Meeting with Joyous Death (1973)

Cinderella (1899)

The Merry Skeleton (1898)

The X-Ray Fiend (1897)

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1986)

Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)

Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894)

Blacksmith Scene (1893)

Poor Pierrot (1892)

Je Vous Aime (1891)

Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890)

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

American Gangster (2007)

Blue Chips (1994)

John Carter (2012)

Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Garbo Talks (1984)

Blue Steel (1990)

Black Mass (2015)

Hitsville: The Making of Motown (2019)

Silent Hill (2006)

Man on Fire (2004)

Flash Gordon (1936)

Ragtime (1981)

The Lego Movie 2 (2019)

Airport 1975 (1974)

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Run for Cover (1955)

High Anxiety (1977)

Sneakers (1992)

Clash of the Titans (2010)

Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007)

Family Guy: Something... Dark Side (2010)

Family Guy: It’s a Trap! (2011)

The Racket (1928)

Dream Street (1921)

The Bourne Legacy (2012)

Taken 2 (2012)

Taken 3 (2014)

Oblivion (2013)

Strange Days (1995)

Lucy (2014)

Official Secrets (2019)

Zero Hour! (1957)

Guava Island (2019)

The Sum of All Fears (2002)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Dolemite (1975)

Spy Game (2001)

The Human Tornado (1976)

Chi-Raq (2015)

Lions for Lambs (2007)

Coriolanus (2011)

Death Becomes Her (1992)

No Home Movie (2015)

The Old Man & the Gun (2018)

Days of Thunder (1990)

® Blazing Saddles (1974)

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

That Certain Woman (1937)

20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)

Duet for Cannibals (1969)

White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

Margin Call (2011)

Joe Kidd (1972)

The Aftermath (2019)

Domino (2005)

The Way We Were (1973)

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)

Colette (2018)

Steve (2010)

Isle of Dogs (2018)

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

Best experiences in bold, other recommended ones are linked. ® revisited.

[mariocki]

Popiól I Diament (Ashes And Diamonds, 1958)

“…or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike diamond… The Morning Star of everlasting triumph… ”