Wajda, Andrzej

Pan Tadeusz

A grand and patriotic tale of Poland's struggle for freedom just before Napoleon's war with Russia. Written in poetic style by Adam Mickiewicz, this story follows two feuding Polish families as they overcome their old conflicts and petty lives. However, they are able unite as one with the patriotic and rebelious efforts to free the country they deeply love from Russian control.

Promised Land (Director's Cut)

Andrzej Wajda's interpretation of a classic 19th century epic depicts the sweeping change in values ushered in by the industrial revolution. Three friends hope to build a factory, but their plans are quickly jeopardized by local politics and one of the partner's dangerous love affair. Critically acclaimed for its masterful direction and fine acting, this ever-current film has a strong statement to make about modern times. With the master director's brand new re-edit made possible by Poland's liberation from Communism. In Polish w/ English Subtitles

Landscape After Battle

With its breathtaking cinematography, this Andrzej Wajda films is a romantic yet fatalistic fable of budding love and the war that would not end. Based on Tadeusz Borowski's stories of a German stalag curiously unchanged even after its liberation by the American army, the film tells a powerful love story between two Poles at the end of World War II and portrays the destructive effects of war on the human spirit. When Tadeusz, a sensitive Pole who is fascinated with literature, meets Nina, a girl visiting the war camp, he realizes that he will have to begin his life over again.

Man of Marble

Not only is Andrzej Wajda's award-winning Man of Marble one of the most important films in the history of Polis cinema, it is also one of the most compelling attacks on government corruption ever made. It is a Citizen Kane-styled story where Wajda introduces us to a young woman in Krakow, Agnieszka, who is making her thesis film. She is looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly elevated to the status of a communist hero. She wants to know how his heroism was created and what became of him. She gets a hold of censored footage and interviews with the man's friends and ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero. A portrait of Birkut emerges as a man who believed in the socialist ideals, the workers revolution, and in building housing for all. However, the young filmmaker's hard-driving style and the content of her film unnerve her supervisor, who thinks it's getting too close to a political nerve. The film project is killed with the excuse she is over budget, but the young filmmaker pushes forward against all odds to finish her film.

Andrzej Wajda - Three War Films (A Generation, Kanal, and Ashes & Diamonds) - Criterion Collection

Andrzej Wajda's first three features form a landmark in Polish cinema, and a monument of that great decade of European movies, the 1950s. Working mostly during a thaw in Soviet control over his homeland, Wajda and his collaborators created three films that looked back at the Second World War from the perspective of a new generation whose youth was defined by the catastrophe of Nazi occupation and Soviet control. The first film is titled A Generation (1955), as though to sum up the collective feeling. It's set in Warsaw in 1943, as young workers join the anti-Nazi resistance movement (including an attempt to help Jews escape from the ghetto). Shot in real locations, but with an expressionistic eye, A Generation is especially drawn to the ambiguous supporting character played by Tadeusz Janczar, a much more conflicted and modern character than the nominal hero. (Roman Polanski plays one of the fighters.)

Kanal (1957) tracks the final hours of the Warsaw Uprising, a rebellion by the Poles and their Home Army against the Germans. (The Russian army, parked on the other side of the Vistula River, allowed the Poles to be wiped out without interference.) First we meet the characters in a last stand at a bombed-out field of urban rubble, then follow them in a miserable escape through the dank, gas-filled sewers beneath the city. The desperation of final heroic acts, and Wajda's ingenuity in finding new ways to shoot in the sewer sets, keeps the film balanced in nerve-wracking suspense.

Set on the final day of World War II, Ashes and Diamonds explodes with mixed-up passion and anger, and with the deliberately James Dean-like performance of Polish icon Zbigniew Cybulski. Wadja expands his range here with a visual dynamism that includes a heady use of symbols and striking borrowings from Citizen Kane and film noir. The nervy, dark-spectacled Cybulski plays a Home Army member out to assassinate a Communist official, an assignment bungled in the opening sequence. So the job still needs completing, but the would-be assassin is diverted by a melancholy barmaid and the possibility of turning away from violence... but this is Poland, and wry fatalism prevails. The doomed national feeling is maintained in powerful fashion in these three movies--which are not, technically speaking, a trilogy, though they have always spiritually been of-a-piece.

Criterion assembled this DVD set with Wajda's approval, and he appears in illuminating half-hour interview segments on each disc (along with filmmaker Janusz Morgenstern and critic Jerzy Plazewski). Valuable production stills and posters, Wajda's film-school short "Ceramics from Ilza," and essays are included. Most importantly, the digital transfers themselves are perfectly stunning. --Robert Horton

In 1999, Polish director Andrzej Wajda received an Honorary Academy Award(r) for his body of work-more than thirty-five feature films, beginning with A Generation in 1955. Wajda's second film, Kanal, the first ever made about the Warsaw uprising, secured him the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and started him on the path to international acclaim, secured with the releases of his masterpiece, Ashes and Diamonds in 1958. These three groundbreaking films ushered in the "Polish School" movement and later became known as the "War Trilogy." But each boldly stands on its own-a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, the struggle for personal and national freedom, and Wajda's unique contribution to homeland and world cinema. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this director-approved edition, with new transfer of all three films and extensive interviews with the director and his colleagues.

Kanal

KANAL begins on the 56th day of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. A ragtag group of untrained Resistance fighters hold the frontline. They try to live a relatively normal life, and even play the piano. They achieve many small victories, but must retreat into the sewers. But the darkness stretches on forever...

A work of shocking extremes, KANAL depicts the dignity of ordinary people in the face of unspeakable horror. In dark, underground pits, gorgeous women struggle in rivers of sludge. The darkness itself weighs down heavily - but is punctuated by flickering candles and torches that create unforgettable compositions, and by brutal bursts of light from the world above.

KANAL was the second feature film directed by Academy Award- and Cannes Film Festival-winner Andrzej Wajda. It is the second part of Wajda's acclaimed "war trilogy," which also includes A GENERATION and ASHES AND DIAMONDS.

Young Girls of Wilko

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, this breathtaking Andrzej Wajda films rbings Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz's classic novel to the big screen. After 15 years away, Wiktor returns to Wilko, where he spent a very important part of his life. He comes to realize his own personal impact on the town and meets many people whom he will never forget. His presence, in turn, forces the young girls of Wilko to reconsider their complicated lives and personal failures.

Everything For Sale

Inspired by the tragic death of the great Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski, this Andrzej Wajda film focuses on the behind-the-scenes lives of a director and his actors when they are disrupted by the mysterious murder of their leading man. It is, in director Wajda's words, "a story about the people who make films - the directors and the actors." Film fiction mixes with reality as some of the actors play themselves. Everything For Sale can also be viewed as a glimpse into the way in which Wajda deals with his past and with his friendship with Cybuski.

Lotna

Lotna, by Polish director Andrzej Wajda (Innocent Sorcerers), is about much more than a "marvelous mare." This World War II story, apparently inspired by the director's father, a WWII veteran, encapsulates the Polish war experience through the eyes of the men who love Lotna, a grey and white mottled horse. Passed down by various soldiers as they perish in battle one by one, Lotna eventually comes to symbolize Polish defeat, and is blamed, due to her conspicuous markings, for the opposing forces discovering troops. Cavalry Captain Chodakiewicz (Jerry Pichelski), Lieutenant Wodnicki (Adam Pawlikowski),and Cadet Grabowski (Jerzy Moes) star in this cinematically beautiful drama, whose washed out blue, green, and red fades to black and white as the film's tragic consequences unfold. Funny moments, such as when a village priest tames the wild Lotna, and the romantic, such as when Ewa marries Jerzy in a last-ditch effort for optimism, heighten the poignancy of Lotna, which at times is unbearably sad. Lotna provides an important, unique cultural perspective on the war, and oddly, since its main character is equine, the film feels so much more human. --Trinie Dalton

Andrzej Wajda the son of a Polish cavalry officer killed in the Second World War by Germans made this film as a tribute to the heroic horsemen who faced off against German tanks. It follows the trajectory of an off-white horse which passes among various military officials until it breaks a leg and is shot. In Polish with English subtitles.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN/LATIN Rating: NR UPC: 644527365091 Manufacturer No: DV71521

Ashes and Diamonds (Popiol i Diament)