I am watching an old film by the Polish director, Andrzdj Wajda,
Ashes and Diamonds, made in 1958. It is one of many the independent
post-War films that made the 50s and early 60s a renaissance of
serious film making unlike anything that the world had created before
or since. It seems to have been a response by film makers like
Truffaut and Godard, Bergman and Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa,
Fellini and Visconti to the artificial, high-budget, studio
productions of Hollywood, the so-called spectacular films like Ben
Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra and Becket. Although much can be
said of these spectacular films, there is no doubt that they did not
portray the intricacies and complexities of the individual as the
Neorealist and New Wave films did. The Ten Commandments and films of
that type were larger-than-life and did not even attempt to portray
the lives of ordinary human beings coping with a post-World War II
world where much of what had been expected by the survivors of that
war was hopelessly and painfully lost. As the planet fell into new
power groupings around Communist and Capitalist camps, the
aspirations and continuity of Western Civilization itself was daily
disappearing from the lives and experiences of the common man and
woman. Television had not yet become the propagandizing monster it
is today and there was still a demand, a need, in many for a
portrayal of human beings living in a changing world while still
desiring the culture, authenticity and continuity of the features of
Civilization that were most cherished: literature, art, music, dance,
philosophy, history, told in the context and in a way that appealed
to the majority of society, not the moguls of grand cinematic
extravaganzas.
Wajda was the foremost Polish director of this period and
created, within the confines of the Communist system, many films that
explored Polish life and history in a way that most people could
understand intuitively and emotionally.
Ashes and Diamonds follows, during the course of one day and
night, the life of a young Polish anti-Communist sent to assassinate
a rising Communist political figure, a man who was—on the last day of
the Second World War—already selected to be the Party Secretary of
the Polish Communist Party. The young man had fought in the rising
of Warsaw, which was a disaster that the Allies allowed Russia to
impose on the Poles, by standing back while Germany eradicated most
of Poland's Freedom Fighters, who had risen in opposition to the
Nazis in 1944. It is a tragedy that couldn't have endeared Poland to
the approaching Russians, who had already made up plans for the post-
War occupation of Eastern Europe.
The young man in the film has grown up in warfare and has never
known life except as a soldier. Yet, he is still a young man: he
falls for a young bar maid and makes love to her, he recites poetry,
he tries to imagine a better world, even while his experiences have
told him nothing good is really to come after so much struggle and
sacrifice. It is a sad, pathetic story of resignation, while still
hoping against hope for a better world, a better life, and an
existence where love and culture and beauty can still exist.
While I was watching this film I was struck by how beautiful it
was: the black-and-white film was somehow appropriate to the dull,
dank, post-War atmosphere of the small Polish town in which the
action takes place. The cinematography was excellent, every frame
having significance and poignancy: like a series of paintings,
focusing on the facial expressions or postures of the characters
involved in the action. The political details of the assassination
come out slowly, while you learn more and more about the protagonist,
climaxing in the affair between him and the bar maid. You realize
that this is just a young man, like young men everywhere, and a girl,
like young girls everywhere, and they want to love, to go to school,
to live decent fulfilling lives. But, the demands of the political
situation pull them apart; he is always distracted by it, torn from
his natural impulses toward a destiny that is tragic and, ultimately,
futile.
When I stopped the tape to come write this commentary, the
momentary flash of commercial television came upon the screen. The
artificial tone of the actor's voice, the shallowness of what he was
saying to the audience, the lack of artistic handling of the camera,
the whole paltry reality of modern day television was in stark
contrast to what had been done 50 years previously by far grander
souls with far less money and resources. I realized that the
discussion of the New Wave and Neorealism is still a meaningful and
important subject, that we have lost something over the course of
time that can be followed but never replaced; and that there is much
that filmmakers still have to achieve in the creation of cinema.
Criticism has to become sensitive again to the valuable creations of
cinema and stop focusing on what are undeniably bad films created
merely for monetary purposes. The films of the past are to be
treasured and their strong points pointed out. Culture is
progressive. When it strays from the path of creative expression, we
must reject those standardizations and return to art forms that
work. The French New Wave began as a community of critics who
discussed the beauty of film and the nature of its worth. Then they
went on to create it themselves. A discourse of this kind is again
necessary if the art form is to move forward. History demands it and
so does our culture.
Chris