POLISH FILM ACADEMY

50 Years of Polish Film School, Warsaw 2008

"Goodbye, till tomorrow"

Marek Hendrykowski

Produced almost fifty years ago, the film "Goodbye, till tomorrow" belongs to the category of Polish films which not only have their own history, but also became a legend. Everything started with this historical social meeting organized by the students of the fine arts academies during the workshops organized in Jadwisin, near Warsaw; this was the place where the would-be movie makers of "Goodbye, till tomorrow" met for the first time and became friends, namely, Janusz Morgenstern, the oldest of them all, who at that time studied film directing at the Łódź Film School, and the other two: Zbyszek Cebulski and Bogumił Kobiela - brilliant and extremely innovative students of the Kraków  School of Acting.

This was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship and understanding. Having graduated from the film academy, Janusz Morgenstern became a director assistant of Kawalerowicz and Jakubowska, and then a second director at Wajda's productions. At the same time, Cybulski and Kobiela, young MA graduates, decided to follow the path of a stage career, and under the leadership of Lidia Zamkowa, a director, left Kraków and went back to Gdańsk, to form with some other actors a theatre group called "The Coast Theatre". The Stalin area was  crumbling; the Polish culture and art were coming back to life. In Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia, a number of students'  theatres were quite active then, e.g. the Students' Theatre of Satire (since 1953), and then "Bim-Bom", and the Hand Theatre "What's that" (both since 1954). All these projects were initiated by young actors, architects and visual artists from Gdańsk and Sopot who were in search of artistic freedom. All these theatre soon became unconventional laboratories of young culture.

New performances, as well as cabaret and theatre programmes were springing one after another; and a premiere was chasing another premiere. A group of exceptionally talented and creative people (e.g. Jacek Fedorowicz, Tadeusz Wojtych, Tadeusz Chyła, Tadeusz Chrzanowski, Janusz Hajdun, Jerzy Afanasjew and many others), created in Gdańsk and Sopot a lively, dynamic intellectual and artistic  circle, the impact of which could be felt far beyond the Gdańsk Coast part of Poland. The Three Coastal Cities, so vibrant with artistic life, soon gained the reputation of  the most important cultural centre of Poland. Two personalities played the main roles there, namely Zbigniew Cebulski, the unquestionable leader of the group, and his closest friend - Bogumił Kobiela. Yet again, these two met with the young film maker – Morgenstern who then was a second director   on the set of   Wajda's film; and they both owe to Morgenstern their contracts for "Ashes and Diamonds".

The concept of "Goodbye, till tomorrow" began to take shape in 1958, during intervals at the site of "Ashes and Diamonds". Making an attempt at his directing début, Janusz Morgenstern was dreaming about shooting a film not about the war and the German occupation, but about than the contemporary youth; all his plans enjoyed an enthusiastic support of  Zbigniew Cebulski who had become Morgenstern's invaluable ally. The "Goodbye, till tomorrow" screenplay, contracted by Morgenstern and co-written by Cybulski and Kobiela, was soon sent to the "Kadr" Film Studio. Unfortunately, the project was rejected due to some bureaucratic regulations according to which actors cannot be approved as  screenwriters.   The authorities kept postponing the decision to give the production its go-ahead  for months; however, the matters had begun to roll after Kawalerowicz and Konwicki asked the writer, Wilhelm Mach, to lend his name to the screenplay as a third co-screenwriter.

In summer 1959, the film crew begun shooting in Gdańska and Sopot, engaging  as actors a significant number of authentic representatives of this circle, or those who were its friends (e.g. Fedorowicz, Chyła, Wojtych, Bielicki, Polański, Komeda and others); and consequently, the entire event was doomed to have its own significant social impact. According to the  three co-authors of the project, the entire concept of the film was to be based on a simple, lyric and subtle plot unfolding a story of two young people falling in love, i.e. Jacek -  a talented actor and a young French woman, who was so fascinated with Poland , but was about to leave the country for good in a few hours' time. Comparing with other Polish films, the whole concept of this film was fresh and very unconventional. The authors deprived  consciously the plot of any political or historic references. What mattered was only the  feeling of love cherished by  the Boy and the Girl; the feeling which was as beautiful as a dream, although dying at the moment of its birth, and remaining so unfulfilled.

An excellent choice  made with the main cast was a key to success; the line-up was almost deprived of any professionals. The main role in "Goodbye, till tomorrow" was played by the idol of that time, namely Zbyszek Cebulski  who was still surrounded by an aura of fame following his breathtaking success of the Maciek Chełmicki role in "Ashes and Diamonds". Cebulski together with the other co-screenwriter, Bogumił Kobiela,  based the entire story on their own experience and encounters, filled with their personal affections and nostalgias which became part of their live at the Gdańsk Coast. Although, the director was convinced beyond any doubts that the main role should be played by Cybulski, he was also quite aware about the risk;  namely the potential confrontation with the iconic role of Maciek.

The role of Margueritte, the French girl, was given by Morgenstern to one of the most beautiful and charming Polish actresses of all times – Teresa Tuszyńska, who was the winner of the contest called "Beautiful girls for screens" organized by the "Przekrój" magazine. Cybulski and Morgenstern met this dreamlike-beautiful girl at a party organized by the "Batory" Secondary School in Warsaw. At that time,  she was not even eighteen, and the contract for the film had to be signed by her mother. The aspiring actress and Zbyszek Cybulski created together one of the most unusual and unforgettable couples  in the entire history of the Polish film making; and this does not refer to their acting, which at times left a lot to be desired, but to the emanation of two fascinating and beautiful personalities, as well as to their charming on-screen encounter.

The Margueritte character was completely imaginary, although it had its own living model. Between 1956 and 1960, an elegant and impressive residence in the centre of Sopot used to house a French consulate which was  surrounded by  a high fence; in that residence lived a consul's young and beautiful daughter - Françoise (who later became Madame de Bourbon). This most fascinating young lady used to attend a secondary school in Vienna, but she spent every summer and holidays at her parents' house in Sopot. Taking advantage of the charms of  summer while in Poland, she used to play tennis at the Sopot Tennis Club; but she also became a friend to many artist there while occasionally visiting various students' clubs.

The film story about the love between Jacek and Margueritte seems to express  the lightness of breeze and the charm of summer love story. In order to create such impressions, it was necessary to hire a film operator quite capable of creating a cosy atmosphere with the use of a camera and light; for Morgenstern, the ideal choice was Jan Laskowski – an outstanding Polish filmmaker (the director of photography for "The Last Day of Summer" by Tadeusz Konwicki, 1958). Laskowski himself had discovered the advantages of the Polish seaside for filmmaking; with this project, he offered one more added value: masterful camera movements following the main characters while wandering along the streets and spots in Gdańsk and Sopot. 

It is also worth mentioning one aspect of "Goodbye, till tomorrow" which has not been fully appreciated so far; and  in this respect, the film can be regarded as a forerunner, not only for the Polish, but also European filmmaking. The film is marked by a specific lifestyle which was once named by Walter Benjamin, a famous sociologist of culture, and following the words of Charles Baudelaire, as "flaneuring". For almost 90 minutes, we watch a young, Polish-French couple "flaneuring"  and simply finding pleasure in wandering aimlessly, in a spontaneous   manner,  along the streets of a large city, visiting its beauty spots and enjoying communion with culture and arts.

The same atmosphere was created on the sound track consisting of swing and jazz compositions by Krzysztof Komeda; it was most visible in the subtle performance  and transposing of the leading motive. The music conveys here the nostalgic atmosphere  of a departure in a very literal (the unavoidable parting of the Boy and the Girl), as well as  figurative manner (biding farewell to youth and the idealized Costal Three Cities from which Cybulski and Kobiela themselves departed not so long ago). If one wishes, the film may also bid farewell to the  spirit of the October transformations, since in some of its scenes, a swansong can be heard telling about futile hopes and disillusionments   which were shared by that generation of young intelligentsia, just shortly before the arrival of the "small stabilization" era.  Furthermore, the fact that the "Bim-Bom" students' theatre seized to exist in the very same year of 1960 when "Goodbye, till tomorrow" was released, bears also some symbolic significance in this context. 

Although history and politics were pushed into the background in Morgenstern's film, they could not be eliminated entirely. A pinch of either was present in  "Goodbye, till tomorrow" by showing the concept of a prearranged meeting between two worlds; it was depicted by two people separated by different  life experience, the language barrier, complicated dialogues of   two people who hardly know each other, and finally by the futility of the East meting the West. To make this story quite credible language-wise, a particular care was taken about the line read by  Margueritte. Here, Teresa Tuszyńska received support from Eleonora Kałużyńska, whose foreign accent  (although not entirely French, which was in fact not so important) made the character more convincing.

A high fence surrounding  the consulate of a Western country and separating it from the rest of the city, and by which some of the scenes of "Goodbye, till tomorrow"  were shot,  functioned here as a symbol of the Iron Curtain; it became a boarder line which is impossible to cross, and consequently, separated brutally the main characters by splitting their world into two. The same refers to the geographical directions. Neither for the first nor the last time did the geographical directions of the world, showed in a Polish-made film, have such geopolitical overtones. The attentive audience would not fail to notice the scene on the beach when  Margueritte suddenly asks Jacek: "Where is the East?"; a moment later, she reminds him that she belongs to another world and has lived her entire life on the opposite side.

The authors of "Goodbye, till tomorrow" aimed high. They did not have in mind just to show a tearful melodrama, but something more; what they meant in fact was something that  Zbigniew Cybulski once defined as "a dream which becomes a source of driving power". And as Łukasz Maciejewski quite rightly said: this fairy-like story, with its graceful lyrical plot about the love between Jacek and Margueritte, has something in common with the Little Prince and the Rose, who were brought to life much earlier thanks to the imagination of Antoine  de Saint-Éxupery. And this is not just an overinterpretation that matters here. Quite to the contrary. A direct link to the Little Prince appears in several dialogue lines read by both characters. This myth unquestionably helped to create a new myth by simply allowing the film to photograph and immortalize an unusual phenomenon of the Polish culture, namely the students and artists' circle of the Gdańsk Coast with a gallery of its outstanding personalities.

The official premier of "Goodbye, till tomorrow" was organized on the 25. day of April 1960 in Warsaw; but the overwhelming success came following the  show at the Gdańsk students club  "Żak" and attended by the cream of the local society. Following its distribution, Morgenstern's film did not raise so much interest among the film circles and wider audiences; this did not come as a surprise. The film was produce at times which were not quite favourable  to the Polish film making - just days away from the crack down of the political authorities on the Polish Film School. "The reviews were somehow lukewarm. My film was avoiding the use of thunderous slogans, and was not in the centre of the ideological conflict at that time. It proposed a new perception, and was open to the present; after my film, Wajda made his "Innocent Sorcerers", and soon after the first films by Polański and Skolimowski were distributed", recalls the director.

Janusz Morgenstern début as a director has been regarded as one of the most original Polish films produced at the end of the 1950s. And although it was not such a success in Poland, the film gained some recognition abroad. At the prestigious  Stratford Festival of Canada (1961), Janusz Morgenstern was presented with an award for the best director; at the Melbourne Film Festival (1961), Janusz Laskowski was awarded for his photography. Today, it has to be said that "Goodbye, till tomorrow" was to some extend a turning point in the development of the Polish film making.

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