director Andrzej Wajda
screenplay (based on motifs of the novel of the same name by Jerzy Andrzejewski) Jerzy Andrzejewski, Andrzej Wajda
director of photography Jerzy Wójcik
music ARRANGED BY Filip Nowak
with Zbigniew Cybulski, Ewa Krzyżewska, Wacław Zastrzeżyński, Adam Pawlikowski, Bogumił Kobiela
awards
FIPRESCI Prize at the International Film Festival in Venice, 1959
award of the Canadian Federation of Film Associations at the International Film Festival in Vancouver, 1960
Diploma of Merit at the International Film Festival in Ibadan, 1967
Honorary Commendation at the International Film Festival in Addis Abeba, 1967
the Crystal Star, French Film Academy Award for Ewa Krzyżewska, 1960
the David O. Selznick Silver Laurel, 1962
Film Critics' Award, 1962
Czechoslovakian Film Critics' Award, 1965
the Golden Duck (Złota Kaczka), ‘Film’ magazine Readers Award, 1959
CYPRIAN KAMIL NORWID, IN THE DIARY [W PAMIĘTNIKU]
Then it is a test, then all of it is on a scale,
How much? control you took over yourself;
Your worth emerges bare from under the veil
And you see who-ye-are?… without asking.
And what titles you usurped at this or that Time?
Or were called by the name of your forefathers.
You see – and how much? you took on your climb
From tradition? tone? style? or examples of others?
Now and then from you, as from a resinous tree,
Flaming rags come flying around;
Burning, you don’t know if you’re becoming free,
Or, perhaps, all that’s yours, will to be hell-bound?
Whether just chaos and ashes will remain,
Which the storm hurls into a chasm? – or
The ashes a starry diamond will contain,
A dawn of everlasting triumph!…
STANISŁAW GROCHOWIAK, ‘WALKA MŁODYCH’, 1958, NO. 43
Andrzej Wajda’s ‘Ashes and Diamonds’ is the work of a moralist and philosopher – a work in which political reasons serve as the groundwork for a battle of ultimate truths. (…) Here, right after the end of a horrible war two worlds of political rationale come to a clash. (…) Although the authors are aware which side was objectively right, they are fair: they are able to bow down before the tragedy of both fighting sides with equal forbearance.(…) But this is one plane of the film – the horizontal one. The dialogue of life and death is carried on also deep inside. (…) ’Ashes and Diamonds’ has human ashes, death-rattling, convulsions of pain. (…) The cold eye of the camera registers to the very end the awesome process of sinking into nothingness. And at the same time, right next to those nauseating scenes of dying, most tender erotic scenes silvered with light. (…) There must be a world where living is not tantamount to just waiting for death. Where is this world? From Poland – from the heart of Europe, anxious look out.
history periods
