Europe Endless - Eastern Europe: Ashes And Diamonds (Dir Andrzej Wajda , 1h43m, 1958)

Onwards, further into the heart of Europe. and into new cinematic territory. It is easy to lean back into stereotype, to consider Eastern European cinema as overshadowed by Soviet Cinema, a medium largely of propaganda, of social realism, and heavy-handed censorship, replaced by a period in the 1980s and 1990s into which national cinemas arrived, blinking, into the sun and set about getting down to the business of making independent films. This is beyond simplifying things; look no further than our first stop on this season-within-a-season, as we step from the metaphorical train and arrive in 1950s Poland. Polish cinema arrives almost with the medium's birth, its first director, Kazimierz Prószyński, patenting his camera before the Lumieres, and by 1914, Polish cinema was as burgeoning as any other European nation's, including Polish films being released in Germany during the First World War. Even exile in Britain did not stop its film-makers, with the vehemently anti-Nazi avantgarde Calling Mr. Smith (Dir, Franciszka Themerson and Stefan Themerson, 1943) made in the UK. 

Even under the Soviets, directors enjoyed some freedom: the main Polish film company, Film Polski was state owned, and thus gave directors a high degree of access to all elements of Polish life, and during the Khrushchev Thaw of the late 1950s and 1960s, the arrival of film groups, including the most notable, the Polish Film School would change the medium, headed by Krzysztof Zanussi, Roman Polanski, and Andrzej Wajda. Wajda, like the figures that would follow him in becoming lauded in Western Europe and beyond, most notably Krzysztof Kieślowski, director of the Three Colours (1993-94) trilogy and the television film cycle Dekalog (1988), cuts to the quick of what the Polish experience ultimately means, in the Cold War and after; an idea of Polish national identity as dignity regardless of circumstance. Wajda's War trilogy of A Generation (1955), Kanał (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958) typifies this: the last film in particular, adapting Jerzy Andrzejewski's novel, is the best example of the three of Wajda's attempts to reconcile the Second World War and Polish identity.

Ashes and Diamonds explodes into action from its very start and its first shots. Two men in the Polish Underground gun down innocents, on the hunt for Communist leader, Konrad Szczuka (Wacław Zastrzeżyński). The deaths themselves are full of symbolism, the second man falling against the door to a nearby church, opening to reveal a statue of Christ, the two gunmen framed in the door. Both of these would-be assassins are from the Polish Resistance, the Home Army; Wajda refocuses the novel's focus onto this duo, and onto Maciek Chełmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski) to the degree that only the intervention of Andrzejewski himself got the film released, where it was promptly denied a showing at Cannes. Cybulski dominates this film: whilst comparison to James Dean, to Marlon Brando, are inevitable, Cybulski's gun-wielding, sunglasses wearing figure is a cinematic ultra-cool that has few equals. 

Promptly ordered to finish the job by their superior, Waga (Ignacy Machowski), so the two return to their mission; we see both of them watch on as a celebration of the victory of the war plays out in the background, instead drinking to their comrades in a sequence, burning vodka et al, that shows how the average soldier tries to commemorate their war dead - in more recent years, and particularly since the 1990s, Wajda's film has come under some criticism for downplaying both the propaganda aspects of the original novel and the thuggery of the patriotic underground. It is also here that Maciek meets Krystyna, (Ewa Krzyżewska), and where his fellow comrade Drewnowski (Bogumił Kobiela) is practically dragged into the party, in the company of journalist Pieniążek (Stanisław Milski), whose view of Poland is gloomy, declaiming at one point "Poland is exploding!"; the old guard continue to watch on, but it is them being caught in the explosion.

What is clear is that Maciek is a cog in the machinations of a rapidly changing Poland; we see him contemplate an escape from this violent life with Krystyna, though the scenes between them indicate something more unsettling in the heart of the country, their scenes the morning after they spend the night together dominated in the foreground by a crucified Christ upside down, hanging into shot via Jerzy Wójcik's cinematography. Religious, together with images of fire: the flames from the bullets that hit the duo Maciek guns down, the burning shot-glasses, the frequent cigarette smoked by Szczuka; all herald death. Here, after all, he must directly confront his violence, even whilst planning further against Szczuka, in the form of the innocents shot. His fellow resistance fighters are increasingly removed from the post-War running of the nation, the Communist authorities, represented by those toasting the dead, into which drunken journalists and gun-toting partisans, and by the man in his rifle sights, whose relationship with his son echoes and mirrors the rebellious cause of Cybulski's anti-hero, and only echoes it closer once the film reaches its remarkable and stark dénouement.  

Ultimately, Ashes and Diamonds is a film about Polish identity-Wajda himself, and his film's narrative, is split, at once empathising with the Communists and the figures from the Polish Underground that aim to murder one of their leaders, themselves struggling for any degree of meaning in the Post-War years. Atop this is Cybulski's performance, his doomed youth, his undeniable cinematic cool, and a film that aims straight for the heart of Polish, and Post-War European Identity.

Rating: Must See 

Ashes and Diamonds is available on BluRay and streaming from Criterion. 

Next week, banned for 30 years, we listen in to the Czech Cold War drama, The Ear, as the surveillance of the state threatens to tear apart a marriage.