The Andrzrej Wajda War Trilogy Details

A Generation

This film - A Generation - from 1954 struck me at first as rather peculiar. Expectations that the story of a Polish youth living under Nazi occupation to be filled with soliloquy by the main character and dramatic events to move the plot along proved misplaced. After watching it a second time, I got it - this isn't a big dramatic film but a quiet story with real complexities underpinning it. The carpentry business where he goes to work as an apprentice is clearly making bunks for concentration camps whilst the owner stashes guns and money for the Polish resistance. These contrasts are presented quiety, in a matter of fact, daily life as it goes on kind of way yet the impact upon the character of our would-be hero is brilliantly understated. He meets and falls in love with a leader of the resistance who is eventually captured by the Nazis and taken away. As he comes to terms with unutterable loss of his love, a new bunch of recruits turns up looking now to him for leadership. Self-denial takes over as he stops his tears and looks towards his new responsibilities that have been forced on him by circumstance. The use of light in the film - or more exactly the absence of it - creates a real sense of claustrophobia. The settings are mostly in close quartered buildings or alleyways - only the last scene offers any expanse of space, but by this time any reassurance this may offer has gone. Very moving film making.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Ashes and Diamonds crumbling with age

Not really lasted the test of time, what would have been meaningful and potent at the time now is more a testimony of how it was made at the time. The performances are varied with the actor who plays the assassin who was supposed to be the James Dean of his time now coming across as more Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo. I remember having seen Man of Marble and Man of Iron many years ago and they are far maturer works.