Wry Smiles, Suspicious Glances: The Films of Andrzej Munk january 30 - february 7, 2002 photo: eroica The Kosciuszko Foundation, Inc.

about the series | film descriptions and times Stuart Klawans's article on Andrzej Munk can be found in the online Film Comment site. Polish director Andrzej Munk would have turned 80 this past October, and no doubt that birthday would have occasioned numerous tributes around the world to a major body of work. Tragically, Munk was killed in a car accident in September of 1961, just shy of what would have been his fortieth birthday, robbing Poland - and all of us - of what would have been no doubt an exemplary film career. To honor the memory of this director, whose work was so full of promise, we present this homage to Andrzej Munk, featuring all his feature films (including his great, unfinished Passenger) as well as a selection of his remarkable shorts. Andrzej Munk was born into a Jewish family in Cracow, Poland, in 1921. After studies in architecture, he enrolled into the Polish National Film School at Lodz, and soon worked as a cameraman and eventually director of documentaries. Working under the watchful eye of the Staliinist-era authorities, Munk learned how much louder images could speak than words; in his short films such as Railman's Word and Sunday Morning, scenes of daily life call in to question so many aspects of the official Party line. In a short time Munk would bring his brand of healthy skepticism to his work in feature films. His characters never seem to know what it is they really want; at best they're naïve, at worst simply dishonest. His film is always about the individual, never really about the collective. Unlike the "model heroes" of the early postwar cinema, Munk's protagonists call the very notion of heroism into question; much of their screen time is spent reacting to events over which they have little or no control. Of course, Munk's work must be read within the context of the tremendous flowering of Polish cinema in the late 1950s - the first Eastern bloc cinema to "de-Stalinize" - that saw the emergence of Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Wojciech Has, Tadeusz Konwicki and others. All had lived through the war as young adults, and had a sober understanding of the extremes - of kindness as well as cruelty - of which human beings were capable. Each artist would work their memories and experiences into their work in different ways; for Munk, they would result in a kind of black humor that pervades much of his work, a black humor that measures the distance between the world his characters think they live in and the one in which they actually operate. Forty years after his tragic death, Munk's films look better than ever, and continue to provide inspiration for filmmakers in Poland and elsewhere (there's a veritable Munk "cult" in Japan). We hope you'll take this opportunity to discover - or re-discover - a unique body of work that remains forever fresh, forever young. This series was organized by the Film Society with the help of Film Polski and the Polish State Committee on Cinematography, and received generous support from The Kosciuszko Foundation, Inc., An American Center for Polish Culture. Special thanks to Tadeusz Scibor-Rylski, Jolanta Galicka, Andrzej Brzozowski, and Koukou Chanska for their help in arranging this series. Thanks to The Polish Cultural Institute for their marketing assistance. Airfare provided by LOT Polish Airlines.

the men of the blue cross man on the tracks railman's word passenger peasant memories a visit to the old city bad luck

THE MEN OF THE BLUE CROSS / BLEKITNY KRZYZ Andrzej Munk, Poland, 1955; 60m Made at the tailend of the Stalinist era in Poland, THE MEN OF THE BLUE CROSS roughly follows the outline of so many of the films of that time, detailing the bravery of partisan forces and the unity of the people of the soon-to-be-formed socialist bloc. On the border of Poland and Czechoslovakia, rugged Polish mountain guides, the "Blue Cross," patrol the high Tatra Mountains. One day near the end of the war, a man makes his way to their station; he is Yourai, a Slovak doctor who runs a partisan hospital behind enemy lines. Fearing the imminent attack of German troops, Yourai comes to ask the Blue Cross's help in transporting his patients out of danger. This is when Munk - who began as a documentary filmmaker - really takes off. The majesty of the mountains, and the ever-present possibility of death for the climbers, soon overwhelms any attempt at an ideological message. One feels the grueling paces Munk must have put himself, his crew and his cast through to get so many of these extraordinary images. Preceded by Sunday Morning / Niedzielny Poranek (1955; non subtitled, simultaneous translation provided), a delightful color short by Munk in which a bus ride through re-constructed Warsaw gives the city's inhabitants a chance to reflect on their lives. Total Program: 80m Wed Jan 30: 1 & 5; Thurs Jan 31: 3:15 & 7:15; Tue Feb 5: 1; Thurs Feb 7: 1 MAN ON THE TRACKS / CZLOWIEK NA TORZE Andrzej Munk, Poland, 1956; 89m As the film begins, Orzechowski, an old train engineer, is hit by a speeding train; fearing the possibility of sabotage, the authorities begin an investigation to determine who exactly this victim was. Munk's second feature combines elements from Citizen Kane and Rashomon for its dissection of the "model" socialist hero. Casting Kazimierz Opalinski, a well-known actor from the pre-war era, as the engineer, Munk presents us at first with a cantankerous and even bitter man, often aloof and self-centered. Yet in the course of the investigation into Orzechowski's character, Munk seems to pointedly ask why there shouldn't be room in the "new Poland" for someone like him as well, as he's gradually revealed to be a man of unexpected complexity. There are several remarkable sequences featuring characters climbing about the outside of high-moving trains, and cinematographer Romuald Kropat's beautiful nighttime images positively shimmer. Preceded by Railman's Word / Kolejarskie Slowo (1953), an early Munk documentary that follows a train shipment of coal from the mines of Silesia to the port of Szczecin. Total program: 113m Wed Jan 30: 2:45 & 8:45; Thurs Jan 31: 1, 5 & 9; Tue Feb 5: 2:45; Thurs Feb 7: 2:45 PASSENGER / PASAZERKA Andrzej Munk (completed by Witold Lesiewicz), Poland, 1961-63; 60m During the making of PASSENGER, Andrzej Munk was killed in a car crash, just a few weeks shy of his 40th birthday, robbing Polish cinema of one of its greatest talents. Over the next two years, his friend Witold Lesiewicz assembled the footage that had already been shot, adding to it production stills and some voice-over commentary, giving a sense of what Munk's completed film might have been. Returning to Europe after many years living abroad, a German woman, Liza, spies a passenger who she believes might be Marta, a prisoner she knew while working as a guard at Auschwitz. The encounter triggers memories of her time in the camp, yet it soon becomes clear that some of her memories are attempts at self-justification for working on the side of the executioners. As critic Annette Insdorf points out in her book Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, the film operates in three tenses: the present, the past, and the conditional (what might have happened). A fascinating work that even in this uncompleted form is still one of the strongest films about the Holocaust. Preceded by Peasant Memories / Pamientniki chlopow (1952; non-subtitled, simultaneous translation provided), a look at the changes in life in the Polish countryside. Total program: 73m Wed Jan 30: 6:45; Sun Feb 3: 1:30, 5:15 & 9; Wed Feb 6: 3:15; Thurs Feb 7: 9:30 EROICA Andrzej Munk, Poland, 1958; 88m "At last, a Polish film worthy of Renoir. Its title refers to the heroic gesture and bitter irony of Polish fate. This film is a revelation." - Trybuna Ludu Munk shot to international acclaim on the success of EROICA, a bitterly comic meditation on the varying notions of heroism during wartime. Written by Jerzy Stawinski, EROICA is composed of two separate stories.ø Set during the Warsaw Uprising, Scherzo Alla Pollacca follows Dzidzius, a small time con artist and black marketeer whose wife is carrying on an affair with a Hungarian officer. Even though his nation is allied with Germany, the officer proposes to bring two divisions over to the Poles if there is a guarantee that the Russians will accept the Hungarians as allies. Thus begins Dzidzius's adventure, traipsing through insurgent strongholds and across enemy lines, never quite sure when or how his mission will be completed. The second story, Ostinato Lugubre, is set in a prisoner of war camp, holding many of the officers involved in the Uprising. Their morale is kept up by the example of Lieutenant Zawistowski, who everybody believes escaped; in reality, he's been hiding in the rafters. A kind of hierarchy based on knowledge of this ruse is created among the prisoners, causing jealousies and rifts that wind up derailing efforts to resist the Germans. Throughout, Munk's direction is razor sharp, pitching the events of each section on the thin line between tragedy and absurdity. Preceded by A Visit to the Old City (1958), an impressionist tour of the "old town" of Warsaw in the company of a precocious young girl. (Total Program: 107m) Fri Feb 1: 1 & 5:30; Sat Feb 2: 2:30 & 8:45; Sun Feb 3: 3; Wed Feb 6: 8; Thurs Feb 7: 5 BAD LUCK / ZEZOWATE SZCZESCIE Andrzej Munk, Poland, 1960; 120m Working again with screenwriter Jerzy Stawinski, Munk creates a kind of contemporary Candide in this hilarious tale of Jan Piszczyk (the wonderful Bogumil Kobiela), a Polish Everyman who just can't help being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Starting in the 1930s, with his attempts to be a model Boy Scout, through his checkered military career in the 1940s, and finally to his stint as a member of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the post-war era, Jan is so busily trying to please others that he never seems to notice the enormous changes happening all around him; indeed, prison, with its never-varying routine, would be the safest place for such a person. The film ran afoul of the Polish authorities, who declared it "cynical," but was a great hit with Polish audiences. "Piszczyk's escape from freedom begs the question of freedom not so much in terms of psychological motives as from the point of view of a world which is not even worth the bother of an opportunist." - Bronislawa Stolarska, In Search of Hope: The Films of Andrzej Munk Fri Feb 1: 3:15 & 9:15; Sat Feb 2: 6:20; Sun Feb 3: 6:45; Wed Feb 6: 1 Thurs Feb 7: 7:15 THE LAST PICTURES / OSTATNIE ZDIECIA Andrzej Brzozowski, Poland, 2001; 50m Forty years after Munk's death, Andrzej Brzozowski, his assistant on PASSENGER, reconstructs the events that took place during the course of its shooting. Weaving together archival footage, excerpts from PASSENGER, letters from Munk to his wife, and interviews with some of Munk's collaborators, Brzozowski creates a sense of the unease that haunted the production, filmed partially on actual locations inside Auschwitz. Munk himself actually lived in the office of Auschwitz camp commander Höss during the shooting there. A haunting tribute to a dear friend and great director that powerfully reveals Munk's many struggles as he attempted to complete what surely would have been his masterpiece. Fri Feb 1: 7:30; Sat Feb 2: 1 & 4:45 about the series | film descriptions and times