Interrogation
| Cast: | Antonia (Tonia) Dziwisz | Krystyna Janda |
| Morawski | Adam Ferenczy | |
| ??? | Agnieszka Holland |
(Holland is now a well-known film director)
This was the second feature film of Ryszard Bugajski (b. 1943), who had worked mostly in TV in the 1970s. Shot while the first Solidarity era protected artistic liberties, it was not finished in time to be released before General Jaruzelski's martial-law regime clamped down. The film circulated widely as an illegal video during the 1980s, but could only be shown openly in 1990 -- after the Communist regime had expired. Bugajski, his career in Poland ruined, had meanwhile emigrated to Canada.
The beginning of the story can be hard to follow in the film, but it is basically simple. Tonia, a happy-go-lucky cabaret singer with a somewhat troubled marriage, is picked up by the police who are interested in her one-night stand with a military officer, Kazik Olcha (seen briefly early on) for reasons that are never more than hinted at. From there on you will be able to follow without difficulty -- until the very end, which we might discuss.
The setting: Though we are not given precise dates, the action of the film begins in the deepest darkness of the Stalinist night in Poland, about 1950: we are told that Władysław Gomułka has just been disgraced, which happened in two stages in 1949 and 1951. Across Eastern Europe these were the years of paranoid police terror and purge trials. Later the heroine learns of the death of Stalin, so the story has reached March 1953; and the (somewhat) hopeful end of the story can be dated to two or three years after this, well into the post-Stalinist "thaw". The action thus takes place entirely in a period on which Poles (including most of the party) had turned their backs as early as October 1956, when Gomułka returned to power. In spite of this distancing the film was doubtless intended as a powerful indictment of what Communism was capable of, and it was clearly taken in this way by the censors of the (temporarily) revived Communist regime of the 1980s, who suppressed it.
If you admire Krystyna Janda's performance (which won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival), you can look forward to seeing her again in Man of Marble.
To look for:
1. See if you could give a brief summary of the heroine's story. What enabled her to survive? Is this perhaps a story of Tonia's growth from an irresponsible chit to a solid and humane adult? If not, then what is her spiritual trajectory during these years?
2. Could it be said that Tonia in the end defeats her captors? To the extent that this is so, is the film possibly a parable of the wider defeat of the Communists?
3. How does the filmmaker make his points about the system he is damning? How does he organize his story to make its impact on us?
4. In contrast to Ashes and Diamonds or even The Shop on Main Street, this film does not, on the whole, dress up its emotionally effective story-telling with symbolism or flashy camera work. But keep an eye open.
5. The period (the dark Stalinist years) and the subject matter of this film have something in common with those of When Father Was Away on Business, but the films feel entirely different. Could you speculate about the different purposes the two directors were pursuing?