POLISH FILM ACADEMY

Jerzy Kawalerowicz. Malarz X Muzy /Jerzy Kawalerowicz. Painter of the Tenth Muse, Editor: Mieczysław Kuźmicki, Krystyna Zamysłowska, Stanisław Zawiśliński, Publisher: Muzeum Kinematografii w Łodzi, 2012

Kawalerowicz - a cinema aristocrat

(sketch for a biography)

Stanisław Zawiśliński

Cinema was his life. For over half a century he contributed to the history of cinema and he has left a deep impression. Some called him a ‘master of form’, others saw him as an ‘eminent recreator of lost worlds’, one of the most Polish and yet the most western among Polish film directors.

I.

When he was born in 1922, the first episode of Dziga Vertov’s Kinopravda was showing in Moscow and Germany saw the premieres of Murnau’s Nosferatu and Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. But in the small town in which he learned to walk no-one would have been aware of that. In that provincial multicultural world the pace of life was defined by a trotting horse. People lived without electricity, radio and cars – in harmony with nature, accompanied by various legends and tales spread by word of mouth.

He was born into a family settled in the Eastern Borderlands, with Polish-Armenian-German-French blood in their veins, in the small town of Gwoździec (now Ukraine). His father was the local postmaster, his paternal uncle – bank director and sports organiser, his great-uncle – a teacher and amateur theatre director, his maternal uncle – a renowned painter. His aunts played the zither in public. His mother Zofia (née Klement) was a housewife but had a talent for embroidery.

All these family pursuits shaped his personality and later artistic interests. Equally important was his growing up in the atmosphere of pre-war mythical Galicia, which gave birth to such artists as Bruno Schulz, Isaac Singer, Sholem Aleichem, Leopold Buczkowski and Joseph Roth. ‘Never again did I see a world so diverse, so colourful. I became saturated in it and its traces leaked into my films,’ he confessed in an interview. Would he have thought of Austeria, had he not met with Hasidim? At first he was afraid but with time he grew accustomed to them. Years later he gave a heartrending picture of their destruction. But he also showed the kind of friendship between a Polish and Jewish boy that he knew from personal experience.

Take Mother Joan of the Angels (Matka Joanna od Aniołów) which was obstructed by both the Polish Episcopate and the Communist establishment but which won the Silver Palm Award at Cannes and won European fame. The film owes much to the director’s memories of his hometown. He was inspired by the local Observant monastery where he served as an altar boy and by the nuns who he would meet by the nearby rushing rivers Prut and Cherniava.

II.

Kawalerowicz’s first contact with cinema was in the early 1930s. In his home town he saw Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen. He remembered this to the end of his life because of the shocking circumstances: the projectionists were burnt alive after the show together with their travelling cinema. He also remembered the second film – a silent adaptation of Sienkiewicz’s Quo vadis which was shown at the Mars Cinema in Kolomyia. Little did he suspect that he himself would make another version one day. He became an avid cinema fan back in his schooldays in Stanisławów (now Ivano-Frankovsk). A schoolmate’s father ran two cinemas (the Ton and the Orzeł) and he was allowed to watch various films for free – mainly with Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich. Prompted by his romantic father, he also read a lot. But what fascinated him most was sport. He was a great swimmer and a good athlete; he practised decathlon; he played volleyball – he dreamt of a sporting career. When the war broke out and the Russians took over the town he enrolled at the Institute of Physical Culture and Sport. He did not stay there long – in the summer of 1941 the Russian occupation was replaced by German control. Education had to give way to a fight for survival. He had to earn a living: he did odd jobs at a depot, worked as a station porter and storeman because that ensured him ‘good papers.’ Not for long.

In the autumn of 1944 he and his family had to flee the Germans. From Stanisławów he got to Kraków where his relatives lived. While digging trenches near Wawel he met Maria Guntner, whom he soon married. She was six years older and painted beautifully. She persuaded him to follow her in studies at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. He was admitted conditionally because he lacked a high school certificate (he passed the exam later externally). He enrolled at Wojciech Weiss’s studio; he also took lessons from the excellent graphic artist Czesław Rzepiński.

When the war ended he was 23. He tried to pull himself together and adjust to the new reality. He had many interests; painting was not enough for him. He attended lectures in psychology at the Jagiellonian University. He also soon joined a film training course. At the time Kraków was the second centre (after Łódź) of revived cinematic activity. Young film fans gathered around Antoni Bohdziewicz and the training course was tutored by Tatarkiewicz, Ingarden, Szuman, Kudliński, Furmanik – they knew little about filmmaking but could talk entertainingly about art, philosophy and aesthetics. The course lasted a year. Many of the graduates, like Wojciech Has, went straight onto film sets, for filmmakers were in short supply and it was often not the certificate that counted but good intentions. Kawalerowicz never obtained a filmmaking diploma. Like several other well-known Polish filmmakers of his generation, he learned his skill simply by observing older experienced directors on set.

III.

Already in 1946 he had assisted the making of the propaganda film Into Peasant Hands (W Chłopskie Ręce) by Leonard Buczkowski. Then he observed the production of Forbidden Songs (Zakazane Piosenki). He wrote documentary screenplays and joined the crew for The Last Stage (Ostatni Etap) by Wanda Jakubowska. In cinema he saw a chance for personal development and a career, but also for better pay than in painting. It was on the set of Devil’s Gully (Czarci Żleb) directed by Aldo Verdano and Tadeusz Kański that he had access to a camera for a longer time. He shot one third of the takes in the High Tatras by himself. This was an incredible adventure after which he gave up his studies at the Academy. ‘I didn’t know yet what a horrible, profound and incurable bug filmmaking is. From then on, I could think of nothing but this kind of work,’ he recalled much later.

IV.

His next work was Gromada, which he made with Kazimierz Sumerski, a graduate of the Academy of Arts. It followed the canons of social realism strictly and his superiors determined that he had all the makings of a good director. Although the Politburo decided that the film needed additional shots to enhance it ideologically, he held out against the pressure, especially because he was soon to be sent to the Karlove Vary festival and afterwards he was invited to film Igor Newerly’s Cellulose (Celuloza), a novel that quite suited him.

‘When I looked at Szczęsny – the main character with socialist views – I saw myself,’ he confessed. While shooting Cellulose he started a relationship with the actress Lucyna Winnicka. Artistically, he was being seduced by the Italian neo-realism and this showed in the film. It was noticed that Kawalerowicz was an acute observer of reality and had the knack of portraying ‘ordinary people’. ‘Both Polish and Italian neo-realism was determined mainly by the social situation at the time, that is by the widespread poverty after the war; film studios were very poorly equipped and we had to go out into the street,’ he explained. Munk, Wajda, Kutz, Konwicki – were re-examining the war and national mythology – he took a different direction and made an expressionist para-crime story, Shadow (Cień), an insightful psychological drama, The Real End of the Great War (Prawdziwy Koniec Wielkiej Wojny) and the innovative Night Train (Pociąg), a film in ‘new wave’ style, shown in over 30 countries. Andrzej Wajda called Kawalerowicz ‘the father of the Polish Film School’ mainly because as the head of Kadr he helped create the flagship titles, including Canal (Kanał), Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament), Eroica.

‘I did participate in its foundation but not in production. That kind of romantic hero was not my type,’ Kawalerowicz explained. ‘He preferred a more rational approach,’ says the film critic Maria Kornatowska.

V.

In 1961 he undertook an adaptation of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s short story Mother Joan of the Angels (Matka Joanna od Aniołów). The result was an artistically polished and highly controversial work which attracted the attention of all the European critics. With it he achieved the reputation of a disobedient, courageous and... somewhat contradictory filmmaker. Afterwards he got down to the adaptation of Prus’s Pharaoh (Faraon). The whole production took over four years, the shooting itself – almost two. The final effect was an impressive, huge, historical spectacle which earned an Oscar nomination in 1966.

There is no denying: for years Kawalerowicz adapted good Polish literature – works by Newerly, Prus, Sienkiewicz, Iwaszkiewicz, Zawieyski, Stryjkowski. These were the pillars of Polish cinema at the time. They carried the spectator to faraway regions, reconstructed and resurrected past worlds: ancient Egypt in Pharaoh, Jewish Galicia in Austeria, inter-war Poland in The Death of the President and Cellulose, Napoleonic times in The Hostage of Europe, exiles in 19th-century Russia in Why? (Za co?), Nero’s Rome in Quo Vadis He used history as a background for dramas of power, love and politics. He avoided trivial, ephemeral topics; he looked for important universal issues. He was unique in his attention to the message and artistic quality of the film. That was where the aristocracy of his art lay.

VI.

With time he started to make films abroad. In 1971 in Italy he made Maddalena with the music of the famous Ennio Morricone, but he was not pleased with the production. Nor was he happy with two later films – The Game (Gra) and Encounter on the Atlantic (Spotkanie na Atlantyku). When shooting Maddalena, he contemplated staying in the West but finally decided to come back to Poland. At the turn of 1980’s he directed Bronsteins Kinder for a German producer. Then, together with the French, he co-produced The Hostage of Europe about the last stage of Napoleon’s life. In 1995 together with the Russians he adapted Aleksey Tolstoy’s short story Why?

VII.

Tadeusz Konwicki, an excellent writer and film director but also Kawalerowicz’s collaborator of long standing, used to say that the author of Mother Joan of the Angels had a camera under his skull. Kawalerowicz was called a master of craft. And the master would change his interests, styles, genres; he never grew attached to actors. On set, he displayed an impressive consistency and culture in realizing his artistic vision. His output includes notebooks in which – like Fellini – he had scenes of many of his films drawn in detail, with camera settings and actors’ positions. The film director Janusz
Majewski described his way of working thus: ‘He was a tyrant, but his tyranny had always one aim: to strive for perfection in every detail... It was obvious that he knew a lot about each film craft (...) He led the actors by the hand like a puppeteer – from gesture to gesture, from one facial expression to the next (...) The rest he did himself on the editing desk (...) Many average actors created great roles in his films. It was said that he was the only film director who could make an actress out of his wife.’ The film critic Bolesław Michałek believed that Kawalerowicz’s real passion was ‘to seek a style, rhythm, manner of expression, artistic effect, contrast, tension, surprise – all give his works a unique form and everlasting value.’ He made films exactly as he had imagined them. But then we shall never know for sure what exactly he imagined.

‘It’s a real success if you manage to realize 50 to 60 per cent of what you intended,’ he used to say. He was always creatively dissatisfied and claimed that in every film there was room for improvement. Apart from his outstanding films collecting awards at prestigious festivals and attracting millions to the box office, Kawalerowicz had also less successful productions on his record. He knew the taste of success and defeat. Polish critics did not deal kindly with him; maybe they never got to know him well. He never succumbed to passing trends. He was different, independent. And yet somehow he was always being honoured and receiving awards. He had collected a whole suitcase of awards, medals, certificates of distinction.

VIII.

He used to have occasional creativity crises. Sometimes he did not have enough motivation together with a good idea to start shooting. Although for years he was classified – along with Munk, Wajda or later Zanussi and Kieślowski – as a film director ‘for export’, he was often prevented from doing what he wanted. Politics and censorship would often get in the way. And not only that. He was on the verge of making a film together with Luis Buñuel, yet the Mexican producer Louis Alatriste, who originated the idea, ran into financial difficulties and the plan was dropped. Also talks with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were well under way when they were shattered by the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981...

Obviously, such situations are part of the job of a film director and Kawalerowicz never despaired or brooded over lost opportunities. He seemed to be a fulfilled artist. However, he once confessed that his career would have developed differently, had he got the green light for Austeria just after Pharaoh. He had made plans for that film already in 1967, when together with Julian Stryjkowski he had written the screenplay. He was not able to shoot until 1981 during the ‘carnival of Solidarity.’ It was released – censored - two years later with the end of martial law. The Russian embassy protested and used its influence to prevent Austeria from being entered as the Polish candidate for an Oscar nomination.

IX.

He was not only a film director but also a co-founder of the legendary film production unit Kadr and headed it for half a century. For many years he was Chairman of the Polish Filmmakers Association, of which he was a co-founder. He also co-organized the Festival of Polish Feature Films. He was a Member of Parliament for one term. In 1954 he joined the Communist Party, prompted by Wanda Jakubowska, a confirmed communist and co-organizer of START, a pre-war leftist avant-garde film association. He remained a party member until its dissolution.

He was not only a witness but also an active contributor to practically all Polish transformations and turbulences after the war. He belonged to the cultural élite and to the nomenklatura of the communist era. All in all, in the variety of roles and functions that he performed he seems to have preserved his integrity.

Paradoxically, when in the late 1970’s after conflicts with a Party secretary, he lost his chairmanship of the Filmmakers Association, he was kept under surveillance by the secret police, as were some other leading film directors... He remained a consistent leftist to the end of his days. His views earned him both criticism and praise. When Communism fell with the Berlin Wall, some tried hard to discredit him or disparage his artistic achievements. Those schemes misfired because of the high quality of his art. Kawalerowicz’s best films have not dated – they are still watched, reconstructed and re-released on DVD. And sometimes rediscovered.

X.

Kawalerowicz’s last work was an adaptation of Sienkiewicz’s Quo vadis He wanted to confront ‘the barbarian world with humanising faith.’ He had written the screenplay already in the 1970’s; he shot nearly four and a half million viewers; he was sad that many did not like it (some reviewers were furious at the fact that it was premiered in the Vatican in the presence of John Paul II). Only very few praised it; some attacked it from political and ideological positions (‘an atheist communist has made a film about the first Christians...’ Scandalous!). But can you forbid an artist from doing something? An artist is a constant searcher. Kawalerowicz was no exception here.

XI.

He did not make friends easily but many remembered him as friendly and witty. Half-jokingly, he explained that he owed his vigour to his daily glass of whisky with milk. ‘Milk???’ ‘Oh well, a drop of milk won’t do you any harm, will it?’, he would answer. He knew how to savour life, how to appreciate beauty in it. He had four children: Kinga and Jacek – from his first marriage with Maria Guntner, Agata and Piotr – with Lucyna Winnicka. His third wife, whom he married at the age of almost sixty, was Małgorzata Dipont, a well-known film critic. ‘No wonder I met her in the cinema,’ he joked. His last love was... cats.

XII.

The film critic Tadeusz Sobolewski describes him as ‘a disillusioned sceptic who portrayed people in a labirynth of passion, politics and fate.’ Me, I once named him ‘a Pharaoh of Cinema’ for his role in Polish cinematic art. Now I would change the ‘pharaoh’ for ‘aristocrat’. An aristocrat never fraternizes with mediocrity. Aristocrats hate shoddy workmanship and set standards high, both for themselves and for cinema. For Kawalerowicz cinema was first and foremost Art. But then it was also his sense and way of life.

He probably never gave up the thought of making another film. When in the summer of 2007 he was on set for the last time – this time as a character in a documentary – he noted: 'I know that I won't make another film, but I like to think that I will.' And he sketched out his film idea about this old film director who goes on a journey. 'From Capri... to Galicia. Do you have any idea what might happen during a journey like this?'

What might happen indeed?

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