POLISH FILM ACADEMY

50 Years of Polish Film School, Warsaw 2008

Birth Certyificate

Rafał Marszałek

In 1961, Stanisław Różewicz created a novella film "Birth Certificate" in cooperation with his brother, Tadeusz Różewicz as screenwriter. Such brother tandems are scarce in the history of film. Apart from family ties, Stanisław (born in 1924) and Tadeusz (born in 1921) were bound by their unique love for the cinema. They were born and grew up in Radomsk, a small town which had “its madmen and its saints”, and most importantly, the “Kinema” cinema. Stanisław recalls that that cinema was for him “the heaven, the whole world, the enchantment”. Tadeusz admits that cinema still seems to him at the same time a charming market stall and a mysterious temple. “All this savage land has always attracted and fascinated me. I am devoured by cinema and I devour cinema; ‘a cinema eater’."

However, Tadeusz Różewicz, an eminent and a truly unique writer, never concealed that the very form of cooperation was a problem to him. “It is the presence of the other person not only in the process of writing, but at its very core, which is inseparable for me from absolute solitude.” There were some scenes which the brothers wrote together, but some were created by the writer himself who did not avoid discussions with the director. But from the perspective of time, it is “Birth Certificate”, aside “Echo” and “The Wicket Gate”, that seems to Tadeusz Różewicz his most intimate film. It is understandable. The tragic Polish September 1939 was for the Różewicz brothers their personal “birth certificate”. When starting his work on the film, the director said: “This time it is all about shaking off, getting rid of the psychological burden which the war was for all of us. (...) Cooperation with my brother was in this case easier, as we share many war memories. We want to show to adult viewers a picture of war as seen by a child. (...) In reality, it is adults who created the real world of massacres. Children beheld the horrors coming back to life, exhumed from underneath the ground, overwhelming the earth.”

The principle of composition of “Birth Certificate” is not obvious, and surely was not obvious either for the viewers on the brink of the 1960s. When watching a novella film we tend to think in terms of traditional theatre. We expect that a miniature story will finish with a sharp point, while Różewicz’s film lacks this feature. We do not know what will be happen to the boy making his way alone through the forest towards the end of the novella entitled "On the Road". We do not know whether in “Letter from the Camp” the help offered by the small heroes to a Soviet prisoner will rescue him from the fate of his compatriots, transported into the unknown. The fate of the girl from “Drop of Blood” is also unclear. Will she be able to carry her Jewish identity through the hecatomb? Or will remain in her new impersonation as “Marysia Malinowska”? Or will the Nazis rather make her into a representative of the "Nordic race"? Those questions were asked by the director for a reason. He did perceive war as chaos and complete perdition, and not as linear history which could be reflected in the plot. The realistic form of “the way it was” testimony differs from the “how it should have been” usurpation. Although “Birth Certificate” is saturated with moral content, it does not aim to be a morality play. With the immense pressure of the reality, no variant of fate should be excluded. There emerges, however, an analogy with Krzysztof Kieślowski’s "Blind Chance" 25 years later, which pictured dramatic choices of a different era.

 The film novella “On the Road” has a very sparing plot, but it drew special attention of the reviewers. The dominating overtone of the war films created by the Polish School at that time should be kept in mind. Mainly owing to Wajda, those films referred to the romantic heritage. They were full of pathos. Permeated with bitterness and irony, they showed the fate of a Pole with greatest intensity. Różewicz is among them an extraordinary artist. When narrating a story about a boy lost on war paths, about a taborite transporting some documents from the regiment office as if they were a treasure, more au fait with milking cows than waging war, the narrator in “On the Road” discovers rough prose in the area where one should find poetry. And then suddenly, something apparently irrational occurs in this tamed world. The taborite, until that moment resembling the Polish Schweik, sets off for his first and last battle like Don Kichot.   

Some wrote that "from the point of view of the constant anti-somosierra movement, it is an absurd gesture and someone else could surely use it to criticise the Polish style of dying. (...) But the Różewicz brothers do not accuse: they only compose an elegy for the picturesque peasant-soldier, probably the most important veteran of the Polish war of 1939-1945.” And indeed.

“Birth Certificate” is not a lofty statement about national imponderabilia. This part of the film reveals a material plebeian perspective which Aleksander Jackiewicz once contrasted with those "lyrical lamentations" inherent in the Kordian tradition. However, historical overview of Różewicz’s work shows that the distinctive style does not signify here a fundamental difference in illustrating the Polish September. Just like the memorable and mystified scene from Wajda’s “Ephemeral” was in fact an expression of desperation and distress, the same emotions are inscribed in the final scene of "Birth Certificate”. These are not ideological concepts, once seen as such and discussed fervently, but rather psychological creations. In this specific case, as observed by Witold Zalewski, it is not about manifesting knightly pride, but about a gesture of a simple man who does not agree to be enslaved.

The novella “Drop of Blood” is, after Aleksander Ford’s “Border Street”, one of the first narrations about the fate of the Polish Jews during Nazi occupation. A story about a girl literally looking for her place on earth has a dramatic dimension. Especially in the age of today’s journalistic disputes, often manipulated, deprived of empathy or lined with bad will, Różewicz’s story from the past shocks with its authenticity. The small heroine of the story is the only one who survives the German raid on her family home. Physical survival may not, however, entail the return to normality. The fearful departure from the rubbish dump, which was her hideout, leads her to the ruined and ravaged apartment. The walk around it is painful because the still fresh signs of life mix with signs of annihilation. Help is needed, but Mirka does not know anyone in the outside world. Her subsequent attempts express the state of the fugitive's spirits - from hope and faith, through doubt, the sense of oppression, thickening fear to despair.

At the same time, the Jewish girl’s search for refuge resembles the state of the Polish society and reveals different attitudes. The appearance of Mirka results in evasive confusion, and later simply trouble. It was already signalled by Różewicz in an exceptional scene from “Letter from the Camp” in which the boys’ neighbour seeing a fugitive Russian soldier retreats immediately and admits that “now people worry only about themselves.” Embarrassing self-excuses mask fear. During the occupation, no one feels safe. Neither social status nor aegis of a charity organisation protects against repressions. We see the potential guardians of Mirka passing her on to one another. These are friendly hands but they do not want, or can't, offer strong support. The story takes place on a thin line between solidarity and heroism. Solidarity arises spontaneously, but only some are capable of heroism. Help given to the girl not always results from compassion. It sometimes happens that it is based on past relations and personal ties (when the neighbour of the doctors lets the fugitive stay at her house for a few days, she does it because of past friendship). Różewicz portrays all of this in a subtle way. Here, even the smallest gesture has its significance. An example may be the conversation with a stranger on the train: short, as if jotted down on the margin, but so full of tension. And earlier, a peculiar examination of Polishness: the "Holy Father" prayer forced on Mirka by the village boys to check if she is not a Jew. Would not rising to the challenge mean death sentence?

When “Birth Certificate” is viewed after many years, it discloses yet another quality, which is not often met in the works of the Polish school, and used later by B-class war films. The picture of everyday life during war and occupation outlined in the three novellas is meant here. It harmonises with the logic of speaking about a “life after life”. Small heroes of Różewicz enter war reality suddenly, without any experiences or comparative scale. For them, the present is a natural extension and at the same time a complete negation of the past. Just as the sleepy small-town marketplace, through which armoured columns will shortly pass. Meeting the German motorcyclists, who look like aliens from outer space – a picture taken from autopsy because this is how Stanisław and Tadeusz Różewicz perceived the first Germans they met.

Blurred silhouettes of people against the white wall who are being shot – at first they are shocking, but tomorrow they will probably become a part of the grim landscape. In the city centre – a prisoner camp on a sodden bog (“People perish like flies, the bodies are transported during the night”), in the street the children are running after a coal wagon to collect the precious pieces of coal... An everyday bustle around food (older brother reproaches a youngster earning by singing: "The warrant officer’s son is begging in front of the church? I’m going to tell mother!") and the kitchen, which one evening becomes the proscenium of a real drama. Finally symbolic signs: a bar of chocolate forced to the boy by a Wehrmacht soldier like a Greek gift (“On the Road”), father’s shoes which Zbyszek spontaneously gave to a Russian fugitive, a priceless slice of bread treaded down by a policeman into the street gutter (“Letter from the Camp”). As put by the director: “In every film, I communicate my own vision of the world and of the people. Only then the style follows, the defined way of experiencing things. (...) In “Birth Certificate” my approach was driven by the subject. (...) I attempted to create not only the texture of the document but also to add some poetic element. I know it is risky but as for the merger of document and poetry, often hidden very deep, if only it manages to make its way onto the screen, it results in what can be referred to as ‘art’.”

After 1945, there were numerous films created in Europe which confronted the war with the world of children: “Somewhere in Europe” (Valahol Európában, 1947 by Géza Radványi), “Shoe-shine”(Sciusciá, 1946 by Vittorio de Sica), “Childhood of Ivan”(Iwanowo dietstwo, 1962 by Andriej Tarkowski).  The films were however fewer than one would expect because pursuing a similar subject, so endangered with sentimentalism, requires stylistic discipline and a special ability of the director to manage child actors. The author of “Birth Certificate” mastered this ability. And it was not by chance. Stanisław Różewicz was always the ‘good spirit’ of the film milieu. He could unite people around a common goal. He emanated peace and sensitivity, which passed on to his co-workers and pupils. A film, being group work, necessitates some form of empathy – tuning in with others.

In a biographical documentary about Stanisław Różewicz entitled “Walking, Meeting” (1999 by Antoni Krauze), there is a beautiful scene when the director, after a few decades, meets Beata Barszczewska, the actor playing Mireczka in the novella “Drop of Blood”. The woman falls into the arms of the elderly man. They are both moved. He wonders how many years have passed. She answers: “A few years. Not too many”. And Różewicz with his characteristic smile says: “It is true. We spent this entire time together.”

About the film (chosen items):

“Walking, Meeting” (biographical film about Stanisław Różewicz), 1999, directed by Antoni Krauze, production: Telewizja Polska, Agencja Produkcji Filmowej, “Tor” Film Studio, MTM Film Studio

Bryll Ernest, “Birth Certificate”, “Współczesność” 1961 No. 23

Dębnicki K., “Birth Certificate”. Coverage from production. “Film” 1960 No. 45

Eberhardt Konrad, “Birth Certificate”, “Film” 1961 No. 42

Kołodyński Andrzej, “Stylistic Tropes. Conversation with Stanisław Różewicz”, “Film na świecie” 1982 No. 8

Kałużyński Zygmunt, “Child, soldier and war”, “Polityka” 1961 No. 41

Płażewski Jerzy, “Poem and prose”, “Przegląd kulturalny” 1961 No. 41

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