POLISH FILM ACADEMY

50 Years of Polish Film School, Warsaw 2008

The Noose

Seweryn Kuśmierczyk

In the mid-1950s creation of Film Companies and changes brought by October 1956 resulted in conditions allowing many young directors to make their debut. Wojciech Jerzy Has, as a film-maker proven in short productions, commenced negotiations in the ‘Iluzjon’ Film Company concerning his first feature film. He chose a short story by Marek Hłasko who at the time was at the height of popularity. Some years later, referring to his debut Has said: ‘We all worshipped Hemingway then, and Hłasko tried to inculcate in our literature the concise, ‘manly’ style of the American writer. And at the same time he was so Polish – unsentimentally sentimental, brutally melodramatic. (…) I liked “The Noose”. Its subject matter was close to my heart; it had excellent dialogues, precise construction, condensation of events, atmosphere. Passage of time, and premonition of catastrophe, some undetermined fatalism and the feeling of encirclement. This was very close to my way of perceiving and sensing things’[1].

After the film had been approved for production, the works progressed fast and smoothly. The Company manager, Ludwik Starski, who had a rather vague notion of directing, was worried about the young film-maker’s debut. He also disapproved of the film’s subject matter, ‘inspiring despair and hopelessness’. Has shot the on location scenes when Starski was away in Cannes. The material turned out to be good, and the movie was completed without problems.

In the credits of ‘The Noose’ we can see Marek Hłasko as the co-screenwriter. In reality the screenplay was written by the director himself. Has made no secret from the fact that writers whose works he then based his screenplays on – Hłasko, Dygat, Czeszko – could not create scripts. In his feature debut and his subsequent films the director credited the writers, thus giving them moral satisfaction, and some financial compensation. Yet he wrote his screenplays, maintaining original dialogues or modifying them only slightly.

Marek Hłasko’s short story is written using concise language. Place descriptions are reduced to a minimum. Kuba’s tragedy is expressed mostly in succinct dialogues. Alcohol I the reason for his solitude. The description of Kuba’s inner fight presented in the short story is devoid of visual details. The protagonist’s calamity leading to his suicide is an internal process.

In Has’s film Kuba’s alienation and loneliness are reflected in reality that surrounds him. The space expands in the screenplay and script, becomes much more distinct and detailed, it takes a specific artistic form and texture. It carries – like in all Has’s films – a specific cachet. The director renders the space surrounding Kuba subjective. Internal nightmare of the protagonist in the film becomes an external tragedy.

The protagonist of Hłasko’s short story is an engineer who lost his job because of his addiction. In Has’s screenplay he becomes a neurotic intellectual with complexes. The tragedy depicted by Hłasko becomes an existential drama in the film. In Has’s world Kuba lives in the reality of his imagination, in the world of fears and obsessions. The director made a film about solitude and alienation, and about internal disintegration experienced by man. Alcohol served only as an explanation of this situation.

Critically ‘The Noose’ was probably the most misunderstood film of ‘the great dramatist of oneiric space’.  Most frequently Has’s first feature film was perceived only as an ‘anti-alcohol poster’. The movie’s function was assigned among the measures whose aim was to solve one of the ‘most urgent’ social problems.– ‘We are looking forward to next films that instead of a mischievous wink towards “nice” drunkards and “comical” tipsy guys will courageously tell us the truth and nothing but the truth concerning the horrendous effects of alcoholism as a social disease’ wrote one of the reviewers.[2] Has’s way of rendering the space subjective was perceived by most critics expressing opinion on the film as an incomprehensible affectation. They wrote about artistic improbabilities and pseudo-symbols undermining the realism of ‘The Noose’.

However, actor creations in Has’s films were appreciated almost universally. The roles of Gustaw Holoubek, Tadeusz Fijewski, and Stanisław Milski were considered excellent. ‘Holubek is true in every word, every gesture, mimically exceptional… He does not play a drunkard, does not resort to cheap tricks, does not slur, does not wamble. He constantly creates a suspense, he teases, and inspires fondness. His conversation in the bar with Tadeusz Fijewski is an acting concerto that could appear in any top film of the world.’.[3]

Fifty years after the film’s premiere the above-mentioned opinion has not lost its validity. Casting Gustaw Holoubek as an alcoholic, Has gave the protagonist a universal character. The actor endowed Kuba with additional metaphysical anxiety. The costume that Has chose for Kuba – a coat and a hat ‘à la Humphrey Bogart’ – emphasized the protagonist’s loneliness and distinguished him from the crowd. It also acted as a kind of mask and protective cover.[4]

‘The Noose’ was a real challenge for reviewers. Not many of those who tackled the film could get to its core. Stanisław Janicki pointed to the fact that ‘The Noose’ presents extremely subtle internal feelings. Bolesław Michałek emphasized a well-organized, stylistically homogeneous vision present in the film, and artistic maturity of the director. In his opinion ‘the tragedy based on psychological and social reasons is somehow transferred into the sphere of destiny, eternal matters of life and death, and the people who appear are a bit like masks of unearthly powers wear to speak to Kuba.’[5] Juliusz Kydryński thought that ‘The Noose’ was ‘the first Polish film with almost every frame flawlessly composed’. [6] The merit was also contributed to the author of cinematography, which was noted in reviews: ‘Mieczysław Jahoda’s images literally surprise. They are a revelation. Excellent both at night and during the day, they create a sense of great depth. The flat, the backyards, streets and pubs in Jahoda’s interpretation, creating the atmosphere we are looking for, are one of the primary assets of this film.’ [7]

Wojciech Jerzy Has took great pains preparing for making ‘The Noose’. In interviews he repeatedly stressed the essential role of the script: ‘a film has to be thoroughly written and seen even before it is made. It is a time-consuming method, yet it allows me to feel I’m not missing anything’.[8] When adapting a literary work for his purposes, he treated it rather freely. He searched for solutions inherent for film production in its own right, and such that suited his own artistic vision.

Means of expression employed by Has often encouraged reviewers of ‘The Noose’ to point to associations with expressionist poetics. The director argued this way of interpreting his film. ‘The film uses intensive images, plays with symbols etc., yet it doesn’t mean that it is expressionist. If there is expressionism in it, then it is filtered through surrealism. I was instantly fascinated by surrealist perception. I devoured their poetry. A surrealist tint – this was what I aimed at, what I strove to achieve. Changes that I employed in Hłasko’s short story were steps in that direction.’ [9]

In ‘The Noose’’s script we can already find precisely recorded solutions thanks to which the film’s plot was to take place in reality built from elements expressing the protagonist’s state of mind, being its visual counterpart. These guidelines are followed very consequently in the film by means of space structure, lighting, costumes, and props.

The director’s intention becomes clear in the very first scene, in which we see Kuba in his flat. It is extremely difficult to determine the place’s topography. The viewer cannot find his way around it. It is more of a collection of fragments of space presented by the camera. We can see clearly those elements that are somehow related to the character’s state of mind. In one of the first takes we can see the wall separating Kuba’s flat from the stairway, and the door located in it. The wall is untypical; it is more a half-transparent partition made of milky, translucent glass. There is no clear border between the space of this flat, acting as some sort of refuge for the protagonist, allowing him to wait for Krystyna, and the external space – full of threats linked to his addiction. The window has a similar function – behind it we can see an advertising wall-painting of a girl trying on a string of beads. This image reminds Kuba of the necklace’s theft.

‘The face from the wall-painting – Has said – is in a way a projection of Kuba’s psyche, his internal obsession. Krystyna- cool and perfect- belongs to the outside world, and in fact is alien to Kuba. For this role I chose an actress with a cold appearance, with some cruelty in her look. The costume only adds to her impersonal coolness, and her face in close-up seems dead, expressionless. Unlike her, Szmigielówna who represents the past, is warm, like a nostalgic memory of something lost forever.’ [10]

The protagonist’s internal world, the situation perceived by him as the person addicted to alcohol and wishing to kick the habit, is projected onto the outside world and influences the sequence of events. The phone rings obnoxiously in the flat, and the callers remind Kuba of recent brawls and question his chance of quitting drinking. The tailor brings him his coat cleaned after a drinking-bout; a face of the man holding a glass in his hand looks at him from the cover of a magazine. A peddler buying bottles appears on the backyard of the house. When Kuba leaves his flat and enters the street, the caretaker invites him for vodka. A necklace in the jeweler’s window reminds him about the theft again. Workers crossing the street recognize him as a drunk.

In one of the scenes Kuba walks the deserted streets of the city as if he were to escape the reality taking on the appearance of a nightmare. He wishes to leave the maze, in which he is captured by his addiction and his awareness of this habit. As if in response to his internal craving, the sky lights up above the city; the rain stops, and the sun comes out. It seems the sun tries to accompany the protagonist’s internal monologue: ‘Even if I wake up in the middle of the night, when I can’t fall asleep, when I dream that I roam the empty streets. Then it is so easy to drink. If it is possible to return to something, I will return to life. I will be with other people, and that’s something… Everything has to change from now on.’

Kuba wishes to wait for that moment in the cafe. Behind his back a cleaner opens the doors, displaying the second part of the room, in which there is a rehearsal of songs with the piano. They will accompany Kuba during his conversation with an old flame. One of them is about love. Or maybe the lyrics of the song bring back old memories when the protagonist orders coffee? And the woman present in these memories enters the café and approaches Kuba to talk to him?

The reality surrounding the protagonist seems amazingly in line with his state of mind and his thoughts, also in the scenes that take place in the police station, and in ‘The Eagle’ bar. The fate of a drunkard – regularly stopped by the police, suffering from delirium – may become Kuba’s fate in the future. His words uttered at the police station prove that he is perfectly aware of that.

In the bar scene, Władek appearing behind the protagonist’s back tells the story of his life, which seems to be a tale of the fate that looms over Kuba. During this conversation Kuba starts to perceive his life as a nightmare with no way out- like a maze that he was imprisoned in. This is a journey within the vicious circle, in the looped reality, with its visual counterparts that reappear throughout the film: a telephone cable, a jumping rope, a saxophone strap, a stolen necklace.

After returning home, events start to repeat themselves: Krystyna comes back at eight, the soiled coat was given to the tailor’s for clearing, the picture’s glass got broken again, and the phone started ringing. We are again at the starting point of the time and space of ‘The Noose’…  

In his first feature film Has proved that physical and unphysical spheres may be interchangeable and inseparable aspects of the same reality, and the film is able to express that unity. [11] He continued his tale of extraordinary relations of spirit and matter in his subsequent films.

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