director Tadeusz Konwicki (rendition of the sequence ‘The Holy Family’ [Święta Rodzina] by Stanisław Latałło)
screenplay Tadeusz Konwicki
director of photography Mieczysław Jahoda
music Zygmunt Konieczny
with Andrzej Łapicki, Gustaw Holoubek, Maja Komorowska, Anna Dziadyk (Anna Dymna), Alicja Jachiewicz, Ewa Krzyżewska
awards
Special Prize for the screenplay awarded at the International Festival of Independent Films in San Remo, 1973
Jury Special Prize, Golden Grape, for the Best Leading Role awarded to Maja Komorowska (together with her part in ‘Family Life’ [Życie Rodzinne]) and Golden Grape for Best Sound (Jerzy Wroński) at the Lubuskie Film Summer in Łagów, 1972
Warsaw Mermaid (Syrenka Warszawska) – Film Critics Club SDP Award, 1972
[MONOLOGUE FROM THE FILM]
Andrzej: I did not know why I had remembered for the first time in my life this picture of a Jew being carried away into dreadful nothingness by devils as punishment for his sins. Maybe because I grew up amongst people of various religions, different languages and opposing ways of thinking. Or maybe because I recalled later what stuck at the beginning of my memory like remorse for the repeated infliction of death to people by people.
KLEMENS SZANIAWSKI, MY FILM: ‘HOW FAR, HOW NEAR’ [MÓJ FILM: ‘JAK DALEKO STĄD, JAK BLISKO’], ‘KINO’, 1981, NO. 5
The experiences of all those rapidly changing into adults during the war were in fact similar (…) Konwicki’s narration is not a picture of the past but a tiresome attempt at hiding in the past, and one doomed to failure. It is full of longing for one’s childhood and youth, a phenomenon well known and long exploited in art. Here, however, it is movingly intertwined with memory of a world destroyed long ago. The coexistence of cultures in the Eastern borderlands: a Russian Orthodox wedding, a Jewish funeral, a Catholic procession… The picturesque settings, the quiet of the provinces… Beautiful camerawork of Jahoda, including the famous motive of the falling Jew, sparkling with reds and violets. A projection of a childish fear: ‘carried by a devil, I sink into nothingness.’
history periods
