director Andrzej Żuławski
screenplay Mirosław Żuławski, Andrzej Żuławski
director of photography Witold Sobociński
music Andrzej Korzyński
with Małgorzata Braunek, Leszek Teleszyński, Jan Nowicki, Jerzy Goliński, Anna Milewska
awards
Honorary Diploma at the Adelaide Film Festival, 1973
Grand Prix, ‘Jantar 73’, at the International Young People’s Film Meetings ‘Youth on the Screen’ in Koszalin, 1973
the Andrzej Munk prize, 1971
ANDRZEJ ŻUŁAWSKI, IN ‘FILMOWY SERWIS PRASOWY’, 1971,
NO. 18 This film differs from many Polish productions (…) It was born from my infinite doubts: about film art in general, about war film, and about my cinematic biography. Essentially, it tells about the time when I was born. I naturally wondered how I would have behaved in my father’s position, or in the position of the main character in such cruel circumstances. Mirosław Żuławski’s short story was (…) a realistic and unemotional account of a day in the life of a lice-feeder (…) That seemed to me an appropriate background for a morality play I wanted to present.
ANDRZEJ MARKOWSKI, STATE OF DANGER [STAN ZAGROŻENIA], ‘FILM’, 1972, NO. 2
The picture of war presented in this film is far from what we are used to (…) Occupation is here a state of total threat, like a plague or a natural disaster (…) The breathless spasmodic pictures filled with scenes of death stripped of dignity and scenes of life born from death, pictures verging on brutality and evoking an atmosphere of fear and nightmare. The accumulation of the pictures creates, however, a certain conventionality, (…) which adds a mysterious poetic meaning to the work.
history periods
