The Eternal Seeker
He lived through cinema. He liked to say that it had allowed him to live seventeen times over – because he had made seventeen films. No two of them alike. Andrzej Wajda called him the father of the Polish Film School, although Kawalerowicz himself never identified with that movement. Tadeusz Konwicki once remarked: “He has a camera under his skull”. Others described him as a “master of form”, an “outstanding recreator of lost worlds”, at once one of the most Polish and one of the most Western of Polish directors.
He began with Gromada, made in keeping with the canons of socialist realism, but after directing Cellulose he came under the spell of Italian neorealism. Soon afterwards, while many of his contemporaries were reckoning with the war, Kawalerowicz turned towards psychological and social dramas such as Shadow, Night Train and Mother Joan of the Angels. Later, he moved on to historical spectacles of extraordinary scale, most notably Pharaoh.
Over the years, he repeatedly turned to Polish literature for inspiration, adapting works by Newerly, Prus, Sienkiewicz, Iwaszkiewicz, Zawieyski and Stryjkowski. Through them, he transported audiences to distant worlds, reconstructing and reviving lost civilisations and vanished realities: in Pharaoh, ancient Egypt; in Austeria, the world of Galician Jews; in Death of a President and Cellulose, interwar Poland; and in Quo Vadis, Rome under Nero. Against these historical backdrops, he staged dramas of power, love and politics. He avoided the trivial and the topical, seeking instead subjects of weight and universality, convinced that these were the proper domain of cinematic art. Few filmmakers cared as deeply as he did for both the force of ideas and the beauty of the image.
In time, he began making films beyond Poland as well. In 1971 he shot Maddalena in Italy, with music by Ennio Morricone. At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, he directed Bronstein’s Children for a German producer. Later, in co-production with the French, he made a film about the final period of Napoleon’s life (The Hostage of Europe), and in 1995, working with Russian partners, adapted Aleksey Tolstoy’s short story What For?.
He went through periods of creative crisis. And although for years he belonged to the cultural elite of the Polish People’s Republic and, alongside Munk, Wajda, and later Zanussi and Kieślowski, was regarded as one of its leading “export directors”, he was often unable to make the films he wanted. Fifteen years passed between his first proposal to adapt Austeria and the moment the authorities finally granted permission. He waited more than thirty years for the chance to bring Quo Vadis to the screen.
He was called a master craftsman, a master of art cinema, one who – as the French film scholar Professor Louis Leutrat wrote – defended “the European Seventh Art against the invasion of American trash”. Yet alongside outstanding works – award-winning films shown around the world and seen by millions (Pharaoh drew an audience of nine million in Poland, Quo Vadis four and a half million) – Kawalerowicz also made less successful films. He knew both the taste of success and the bitterness of artistic failure. He changed his subjects, styles and genres, and never tied himself to a fixed circle of actors. He remained singular, self-contained, unmistakably his own. And yet he gathered a suitcase full of prizes and honours. In retrospect, he emerges as an eternal seeker – and a fulfilled artist.
Of the seventeen films Kawalerowicz directed, several have entered the canon of European and world cinema, and continue to be watched and rediscovered. Much of their lasting power lies in the universal themes pursued by the director of Night Train, as well as in the beauty, richness and philosophical depth that his work still reveals today.
Stanisław Zawiśliński
Cellulose
Cellulose
Cellulose
Night Train
Night Train
Night Train
Night Train
Night Train
As part of the 8 × Kawalerowicz section, the following films will be presented:
- Cellulose (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1954),
- Night Train (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1959),
- Mother Joan of the Angels (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1961),
- Pharaoh (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1966),
- The Game (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1969),
- Death of the President (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1977),
- Austeria (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1982),
- Quo vadis (dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 2001),
- I Have Lived Seventeen Times (dir. Tadeusz Bystram, Stanisław Zawiśliński, Poland, 2009).
The section is curated by Stanisław Zawiśliński.
The section partner is the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA).
Festival passes and accreditations are now on sale. The full programme of the upcoming edition of Timeless Film Festival Warsaw will be announced on April 1, with tickets for individual screenings going on sale on April 9.
The festival is co-financed by the City of Warsaw, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, and the Polish Film Institute.
The festival’s main partner is the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute (FINA).
The festival is co-organized by the Documentary and Feature Film Studios (WFDiF) and the Mazovia Institute of Culture.