Filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (born 1926) is considered the founder of modern postwar cinema in his native Poland. Wajda's films chronicle the tragedies of Polish history as interpreted on a more personal, human scale, and they gained him international renown during his country's Communist era, though he worked under the watchful eye of the government - sponsored filmmaking industry for many years. "It is to his credit that his films managed to challenge almost everyone in Poland, not least his Communistoverlords," noted an essay in the "Economist"in 2000, when Wajda was honored with the Academy Award for lifetime achievement.
Wajda was born on March 6, 1926, in Suwalki, Poland. When he was 13 years old, the country was invaded by neighboring Nazi Germany with the help of Soviet Russia, Poland's eastern neighbor. The act of aggression effectively launched World War II, and Germany proceeded to deal harshly with Poles of Jewish extraction, corralling them into walled - off ghettoes in the cities before sending them en masse to concentration camps. As for the rest of the population, German chancellor Adolf Hitler's master plan called for the Poles to be reduced to what was essentially serfdom as factory labor for the German war machine. All secondary education was abolished, for example, and cultural institutions shuttered. The Soviet - Nazi alliance soured, however, and in 1941 Germany launched a massive assault on Russian territory, and Poland became a battleground.
Lost Father in the War
During the war years, Wajda joined an underground resistance group, the Armia Krajowa (Home Army, or A.K.), which was the secret militia of the Polish government in exile. His father died in what became the notorious Katyn Forest massacre near the Soviet city of Smolensk, in which mass graves of some four thousand Poles - including an extraordinarily high number of officers in the Polish Army held as prisoners - of - war - were discovered in 1943. Wajda has sometimes been asked why so many of his films dealt with this period. "World War II is the thing closest to me," he told Aisha Labi in Time International. "The most painful thing in my life."
When the war ended, Wajda enrolled at the Fine Arts Academy in Kraków, where he spent three years. He later attended the High School of Cinematography in Łódź in the early 1950s, and it was during this time that he began making his first movies. These early works followed the strict guidelines set forth by Poland's new Communist government, which had been established by the postwar Soviet occupiers. In 1955, just as Poland seemed to loosen slightly from the grip of harsh Stalinist rule and a cultural thaw emerged, Wajda's first feature film, Pokolenie (A Generation), was released. The work is set in occupied Warsaw, and follows a group of young resisters to the Nazi occupation. "Wajda's young protagonists show courage," noted a Cineaste essay by David Paul, "but unlike the typical heroes of Stalinist art, their courage is interwoven with the bravado of youth and is, therefore, volatile."
Clever Shots Eluded Censors
Pokolenie was the first in what would become Wajda's classic trilogy of World War II films. It was followed by Kanal in 1957, a title that roughly translates to "sewer." It centers on the last stand of the A.K. and other groups, the 1944 Warsaw uprising. The characters in this film are literally forced underground into the sewer system in order to make their way to another part of the city to join a second brigade they believe is still holding off German forces. A year later, with the cultural thaw still in place, he made Popiól i diament (Ashes and Diamonds), which takes place during the immediate postwar period. In it, a hero of the Communist side is assassinated by a member of the underground, who in turn becomes the victim of retaliation. The killer was played by Zbigniew Cybulski, sometimes referred to as the James Dean of Poland for his appealing looks and tragic early death, in a performance that garnered him fame for its nuanced portrayal of a conflicted youth. Cybulski's character is manipulated by his own leaders in the resistance, and is later left to die on top of a pile of garbage when the other side extracts its revenge.
"The censors thought it was good he died on a garbage heap because he had killed a communist," Wajda explained later in interview with Andrew Nagorski of Newsweek International. "But the audiences had a different attitude. They asked themselves: 'What kind of system is this that forces such a sympathetic lad to die on a garbage heap?' " It was one of many clever tricks that Wajda managed to insert into his cinematic works that shaped his reputation as a daring auteur. At one point in Kanal, for example, the characters gaze out through a gated sewer outlet onto the opposite bank of Vistula River. They see a vast stretch of green, but many Poles remembered that spot from a moment just 13 years earlier, when the Soviets were pushing German troops back toward Warsaw. The A.K. had made a last - ditch effort to take control of Warsaw before the Soviets arrived, on orders from the Polish government - in - exile in London. The Poles believed that the Soviets would help them crush the Germans, but instead the Soviet tanks parked themselves on that same river bank and waited for the Germans to decimate the remnants of the Home Army.
The subtle political implications of such camera shots were usually missed entirely by Polish government censors, and Wajda even won an award in Moscow for Kanal. It also took the special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the recognition boosted Wajda's reputation inside Poland - especially with executives of the state - controlled film industry. He went on to make a number of other works, including Lotna, a 1959 film about the German invasion of Poland and released near the twentieth anniversary that occasion, and 1961's Sibirska Ledi Magbet (Siberian Lady Macbeth), the first one of his works to be made outside of Poland. A year after Cybulski's 1967 death in a car accident, Wajda made Wszystko na sprzedaz (Everything for Sale), which featured a film director at a personal crossroads, wandering through the sets of his old projects.
Hailed Across Europe, in Hollywood
During the 1970s, Wajda's reputation outside of Poland grew. His 1974 film Ziemia obiecana (Promised Land) earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film for its tale of factory owners in the textile city of Łódź. His Studio X production unit, funded by the Polish government, trained a new generation of filmmakers, and he grew more daring in his themes. A 1977 film, Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble), was set during the modern era, but had as its centerpiece the tale of a 1950s - era hero - worker, a bricklayer whose impressive work ethic was highly publicized by the state. In Wajda's film, one of his characters investigates what happened to the socialist hero, and grows disillusioned about the government's long history of subterfuge.
Another work from 1977, Bez znieczulenia (Without Anesthetic), was Wajda's first collaboration with noted screenwriter, Agnieszka Holland, who would go on to an impressive career as a director herself. A 1979 film, Panny z Wilka (The Girls from Wilko), played in several countries and was also nominated in the foreign - film category for an Oscar that year. But Wajda's career soon hit a wall, indelibly linked to current events in Poland at the time. The long - range economic policies of the Communist Party leadership, which served the Soviet economic interests over those of ordinary working Poles, had led to widespread discontent. In September of 1980, the country's first independent trade union federation, Solidarność, or "Solidarity," was formed in the Lenin Shipyards in the port city of Gdańsk, headed by a 36 - year - old electrician named Lech Walesa. The still quasi - legal organization began to urge sweeping social and economic reforms, and quickly gained enthusiastic popular support. In the brief period in which the government allowed the Solidarity movement to flourish - until several million of Poles had joined a year later and general strikes began paralyzing the country - Wajda headed to Gdańsk and shot Człowiek z zelaza (Man of Iron).
Though the characters in Wajda's film were fictional, their individual stories and current struggles mirrored life for many Poles. Walesa himself even made a cameo in the film, which was released in July of 1981 under great duress. The government had tried to block its release, but as Wajda recounted in an interview with Independent Sunday journalist Steve Crawshaw, "when the culture minister told me the film could not be screened, the shipyard workers in Gdańsk organised a petition, saying that Solidarity 'requests that the film should be shown'. Solidarity had 10 million members: the ministry had to give way."
A Politician, Briefly
Five months later, martial law was declared in Poland, Walesa arrested, and the Solidarity movement outlawed. Authorities even tried to have Man of Iron withdrawn from consideration in the best foreign film competition for the Academy Awards in 1982; it was nominated anyway, after also having taken the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Under martial law, Wajda's Studio X facility was closed, and he turned for help to other European studios. His 1983 movie Danton, which starred Gérard Depardieu, was made with French help, and as was the case with West German support for Eine Liebe in Deutschland (A Love in Germany). He made just two other feature films over the rest of the decade.
In 1988, a new series of strikes forced the Communist government to open negotiations with the Solidarity movement. It regained legal status in April of 1989 and was allowed to participate in the first free Polish elections held later that year. Wajda served as an advisor to Walesa, and stood for candidacy himself. He served a two - year term in Poland's Senate, during which time Korczak was released. It was based on a true story about a Warsaw teacher who founded an orphanage for homeless Jewish children during World War II. Refusing to abandon them even when a passport to Switzerland is offered to him, Korczak boards the train with them to Treblinka, the Nazi extermination camp. "With this film about Korczak Wajda closed, for the time being, one of the great subjects of his life and work," noted an essay on him in the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers. "He has done this by employing the simplest and therefore the most effective method: black - and - white photography, which renders a sober record of life in a sealed - off ghetto and at the same time pays homage to the unostentatious heroism of a man who, face to face with death, did not forget the moral code of the human race."
Vindicated by Unlikely Success
Poland changed during the 1990s, and though Wajda remained a respected filmmaker, his works did not do well at the box office. American films had flooded the theaters, and the Polish film industry busied itself for a time making Hollywood - style capers to satisfy the public taste. He made four films, but it was not until 1999 and his latest work, Pan Tadeusz (Master Thaddeus), that Wajda suddenly found tremendous commercial success. Somewhat improbably, the period drama was based on a nineteenth - century epic poem from Poland's literary hero Adam Mickiewicz, and its dialogue in rhymed couplets did not deter some six million Poles from flocking to theaters to see it.
In early 2000, Wajda became the first Eastern European filmmaker to win the Academy Award for lifetime achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The honor came thanks in part to Steven Spielberg, who met Wajda in Poland while filming Schindler's List in the early 1990s. As Wajda told Nagorski in the Newsweek International interview, over the course of his long career he had won several prestigious European film festival awards, but "the American award stands completely apart. It's from the country of moviemaking. Cinema may have originated in Europe, but it became what it is today in the United States. I could not have hoped for a greater honor."
Books
International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2: Directors, fourth edition, St. James Press, 2000.
Periodicals
Cineaste, Fall 1992; October 1994.
Economist, February 12, 2000.
Entertainment Weekly, March 1, 2000.
Independent Sunday (London, England), March 19, 2000.
New Republic, June 5, 1989.
Newsweek International, March 20, 2000.
TDR, Summer 1994.
Time International, March 27, 2000.
Variety, February 28, 2000.
