POLISH FILM ACADEMY

The first film dedicated to the tragedy of the Warsaw Uprising and the Home Army soldiers, starting a trend soon to be named the Polish Film School. The work, full of expressive, metaphoric images, united a romantic philosophy with the theme of Polish death.

Warsaw, 1944. The Uprising is coming to an end. After a failed attempt to break through the German lines, Lieutenant Zadra’s company enters the sewage canals at the corner of Bałuckiego and Szustra streets in Mokotów. They are headed toward downtown, but out of more than forty insurgents not one will survive.

The unit is soon broken into three smaller groups wandering blindly around the stinking bowels of the capital. Daisy, a liaison, and the wounded Korab, are trapped by the barred exit at the mouth of the canal; Halinka commits suicide; composer Michał succumbs to insanity. Mądry finds an exit at Dworkowa street, before getting captured by a German patrol. After wandering through the canals for 17 hours, Zadra, Kula and Smukły finally find the right hatch. The Corporal is killed while disarming booby trap grenades hanging at the entrance, and Zadra returns to the canaltohis soldiers, not knowing that they had all shared Mądry’s fate.

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Jan Słodowski, Leksykon polskich filmów fabularnych, Warszawa 1996