director Andrzej Wajda
screenplay (based on a drama of the same name by Stanisław Wyspiański) Andrzej Kijowski
director of photography Witold Sobociński
music Stanisław Radwan
with Daniel Olbrychski, Ewa Ziętek, Marek Walczewski, Andrzej Łapicki, Wojciech Pszoniak, Marek Perepeczko, Czesław Niemen (voice of the Stawman)
awards
Silver Shell at San Sebastian International Film Festival, 1973
Grand Prix, Golden Grape, and prize awarded by the Studio Cinemas Council (Rada Kin Studyjnych); awards for the screenplay, cinematography and art direction (Tadeusz Wybult, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Maciej Maria Putowski) at the Lubuskie Film Summer in Łagów, 1973
Golden Camera, ‘Film’ Magazine Award, 1974
ANDRZEJ KIJOWSKI, ‘MAGAZYN FILMOWY’, 1971, NO. 32
[Beginning to work on the script] I was trying to get an insight into the situation in which Wyspiański’s ‘The Wedding’ came into being. And the situation was as follows: a group of intellectuals and artists found themselves in a village just a few kilometres away from the border dividing two empires occupying our country. All this was happening before the Great War during which the two powers were to spring at each other, thus resolving the fate of our country. But on the wedding night nobody has any knowledge of this yet. But there are some distressing premonitions, imagination is haunted by phantoms of impotence, everyone is tormented by a sense of helplessness resulting from the fact that nobody can influence the course of the national history. In the images I propose, I suggest this closeness of the border and the imminence of war on the eve of which the wedding-party guests see historical and literary phantoms…
ALEKSANDER JACKIEWICZ, MY FILM LIBRARY. POLISH CINEMA [MOJA FILMOTEKA. KINO POLSKIE], WARSZAWA 1983
Historical and literary phantoms are realism, too. (…) Polish poetry, from ‘Forefathers’ Eve’ and ‘Great Improvisation’ to the drunken-poetic procession of phantoms in ‘The Wedding’ is this kind of poetry which is through and through realistic, its realism being forcible and profound. (…) Despite fairly numerous changes introduced in the film in relation to the original drama, Wajda is very faithful to ‘The Wedding’ by Wyspiański. Already ‘Ashes and Diamonds’ shows that Wajda’s creative work is inspired by Wyspiański’s poetics. Later on, also in ‘Everything for Sale’, a story of yet another Polish night, overflowing with poets, straw-men, phantoms of the past and katzenjammer. And earlier and later, it can be spotted in various cuts and fragments, e. g. in ‘Landscape after the Battle’. Therefore it is so fine that Wajda, who owes so much to Wyspiański, has created a ‘classical’ replica of ‘The Wedding’.
history periods
