WAJDA, Andrzej

W Academy Award for services to film, 1982; Officier, Legion d’Honneur,

France, 1982.

Nationality: Polish. Born: Suwałki, Poland, 6 March 1926. Educa-

tion: Fine Arts Academy, Kraków, 1945–48; High School of
Films as Director and Scriptwriter:
Cinematography, Lodz, 1950–52. Military Service: Served in the
A.K. (Home Army) of the Polish government in exile, from 1942.
Family: Married 1) Beata Tyszkiewicz, 1967 (marriage dissolved), 1950 Kiedy ty śpisz (While You Sleep); Zły chłopiec (The Bad Boy)
one daughter; 2) Krystyna Zachwatowicz, 1975. Career: Assistant to 1951 Ceramika Iłżecka (The Pottery of Ilzecka)
director Aleksandr Ford, 1953, then directed first feature, Pokolenie, 1955 Pokolenie (A Generation); Idę do słoñca (I Walk to the Sun)
1955; directed first play, 1959; made first film outside Poland, 1957 Kanał (They Loved Life; Sewer)
Sibirska Ledi Magbet, for Avala Films, Belgrade, 1962; directed 1958 Popiół i diament (Ashes and Diamonds)
Pilatus und andere for West German TV, 1972; following imposition 1959 Lotna
of martial law, concentrated on theatrical projects in Poland and film 1960 Niewinni czarodzieje (Innocent Sorcerers)
productions outside Poland; government dissolved Wajda’s Studio 1961 Samson
X film production group, 1983; managing director, Teatr Powszechny, 1972 Sibirska Ledi Magbet (Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; Fury Is
Warsaw, from 1989; senator, Polish People’s Republic, 1989–91. a Woman; Siberian Lady Macbeth); ‘‘Warszawa’’ episode
Awards: Grand Prix, Moscow Film Festival, for The Promised Land, of L’Amour à Vingt Ans
1975; Palme d’Or, Cannes Festival, for Man of Iron, 1981; British 1965 Popióły (Ashes)
1967 Bramy raju (Gates to Paradise; The Gates of Heaven; The
Holy Apes)
1968 Wszystko na sprzedaż (Everything for Sale); Przekładaniec
(Roly-Poly)
1969 Polowanie na muchy (Hunting Flies); Makbet (Macbeth) (for
Polish TV)
1970 Krajobraz po bitwie (Landscape after the Battle); Brzezina
(The Birchwood)
1972 Pilatus und andere—ein Film für Karfreitag (Pilate and
Others); Wesele (The Wedding)
1974 Ziemia obiecana (Promised Land) (also as series on Polish TV)
1976 Smuga cienia (The Shadow Line)
1977 Człowiek z marmuru (Man of Marble); Bez znieczulenia
(Without Anesthetic); Umarła klasa (for TV)
1978 Zaproszenie do wnętrza (Invitation to the Inside) (doc)
1979 Dyrygent (The Conductor); Panny z Wilka (The Girls from
Wilko)
1981 Człowiek z żelaza (Man of Iron)
1982 Danton
1983 Eine Liebe in Deutschland (Un amour en Allemagne; A Love
in Germany)
1985 Kronika wypadków miłosnych (Chronicle of a Love Affair)
1987 Les Possédés (The Possessed)
1990 Korczak
1993 The Ring with the Crowned Eagle
1994 Natasha
1995 Wielki tydzien (Holy Week) (+ co-sc)
1996 Panna Nikt (Miss Nobody)
1999 Pan Tadeusz (Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania)
Andrzej Wajda (+ co-sc)

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Publications
By WAJDA: books—
Un Cinéma nommé désir, Paris, 1986.
Double Vision: My Life in Film, New York, 1989; London, 1990.
Wajda on Film: A Master’s Notes, Venice, 1992.
By WAJDA: articles—
‘‘Destroying the Commonplace,’’ in Films and Filming (London),
November 1961.
‘‘Andrzej Wajda Speaking,’’ in Kino (Warsaw), no. 1, 1968.
‘‘Living in Hope,’’ an interview with Gordon Gow, in Films and
Filming (London), February 1973.
‘‘Filmer les noces,’’ in Positif (Paris), February 1974.
Interview with K. K. Przybylska, in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salis-
bury, Maryland), Winter 1977.
‘‘Between the Permissible and the Impermissible,’’ an interview with
D. Bickley and L. Rubinstein, in Cineaste (New York), Win-
ter 1980/81.
‘‘Wajda August ‘81,’’ an interview and article by G. Moszcz, in Sight
and Sound (London), Winter 1982.
Interview with Gideon Bachmann, in Film Quarterly (Berkeley),
Winter 1982/83.
Interview with Marcel Ophuls, in American Film (Washington,
D.C.), October 1983.
Interview with Dan Yakir, in Film Comment (New York), November/
December 1984.
Interview with K. Farrington and L. Rubenstein, in Cineaste (New
York), vol. 14, no. 2, 1985.
Interview with W. Wertenstein, in Sight and Sound (London), Sum-
mer 1985.
Interview with T. Hubelski, in Kino (Warsaw), May 1990.
Interview with J. J. Skreiberg, in Film and Kino (Oslo), no. 4, 1990.
Interview with P. Dowell, in Cineaste (New York), vol. 19, no 4, 1993.
‘‘Wajdas ofullbordade,’’ in Chaplin (Stockholm), vol. 36, no. 2, 1994.
Interview with wanda Wertenstein, in Kino (Warsaw), Novem-
ber 1994.
‘‘Interview with Martti Puukko, in Filmihullu (Helsinki), no. 5–6, 1998.
On WAJDA: books—
McArthur, Colin, editor, Andrzej Wajda: Polish Cinema, London, 1970.
Michalek, Boleslaw, The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda, translated by
Edward Rothert, London, 1973.
Curi, Giandomenico, Cenere e diamenti: il cinema di Andrzej Wajda,
Rome, 1980.
Douin, Jean-Luc, Wajda, Paris, 1981.
Paul, David W., editor, Politics, Art, and Commitment in the Eastern
European Cinema, New York, 1983.
Karpinski, Maciej, The Theatre of Andrzej Wajda, Cambridge, 1989.
Kakolewski, Krzysztof, Diament odnaleziony w popiele, Warsaw, 1995.
Nurczy ’nska-Fidelska, Ewelina, Polska klasyka literacka wedlug
Andrzeja Wajdy, Katowice, 1998.
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DIRECTORS, 4th EDITION
On WAJDA: articles—
Szydlowski, Roman, ‘‘The Tragedy of a Generation,’’ in Film
(Poland), no. 46, 1958.
Michalek, Boleslaw, ‘‘Polish Notes,’’ in Sight and Sound (London),
Winter 1958/59.
Higham, Charles, ‘‘Grasping the Nettle: The Films of Andrzej
Wajda,’’ in Hudson Review (Nutley, New Jersey), Autumn 1965.
‘‘Wajda Issue’’ of Etudes Cinématographiques (Paris), no. 69–72, 1968.
Austen, David, ‘‘A Wajda Generation,’’ in Films and Filming (Lon-
don), July 1968.
Toeplitz, K., ‘‘Wajda Redivivus,’’ in Film Quarterly (Berkeley),
Winter 1969/70.
Cowie, Peter, ‘‘Wajda Redux,’’ in Sight and Sound (London), Win-
ter 1979/80.
‘‘Wajda Issue’’ of Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 1 January 1980.
Aufderheide, Pat, and others, ‘‘Solidarity and the Polish Cinema,’’ in
Cineaste (New York), vol. 13, no. 3, 1984.
Engelberg, S., ‘‘Wadja’s Korczak Sets Loose the Furies,’’ in New
York Times, 14 April 1991.
Ball, E., ‘‘Citizen Wadja,’’ in Village Voice (New York), 23 April 1991.
Coates, Paul, ‘‘Revolutionary Spirits: the Wedding of Wajda and
Wyspianki,’’ in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury), April 1992.
Dowell, Pat, ‘‘The Man Who Put Poland on the Postwar Map of
Cinema,’’ in Cineaste (New York), vol. 19, no. 4, 1993.
Falkowska, J., ‘‘‘The Political’ in the Films of Andrzej Wajda and
Krzysztof Kieslowski,’’ in Cinema Journal (Austin), Winter 1995.
Epstein, Jan, ‘‘Is Cinema Dead?’’ in Cinema Papers (Fitzroy),
August 1997.
Macnab, Geoffrey, in Sight and Sound (London), February 1998.
Seberechts, Karin, ‘‘Andrzej Wajda Homage,’’ in Film en Televisie
+ Video (Brussels), January 1999.
* * *
The history of Polish film is as old as the history of filmmaking in
most European countries. For entire decades, however, its range was
limited to Polish territory and a Polish audience. Only after the
Second World War, at the end of the 1950s, did the phenomenon
known as the ‘‘Polish school of filmmaking’’ make itself felt as a part
of world cinema. The phenomenon went hand in hand with the
appearance of a new generation of film artists who, despite differ-
ences in their artistic proclivities, have a number of traits in common.
They are approximately the same age, having been born in the 1920s.
They spent their early youth in the shadow of the fascist occupation
and shared more or less similar postwar experiences. This is also the
first generation of cinematically accomplished artists with a complete
grasp of both the theoretical and practical sides of filmmaking.
Their debut was conditioned by the social climate, which was
characterized by a desire to eliminate the negative aspects of postwar
development labelled as the cult of personality. The basic theme of
their work was the effort to come to grips with the painful experience
of the war, the resistance to the occupation, and the struggle to put
a new face on Polish society and the recent past. Temporal distance
allowed them to take a sober look at all these experiences without
schematic depictions, without illusions, and without pathetic cere-
mony. They wanted to know the truth about those years, in which the
foundations of their contemporary life were formed, and express it in
the specific destinies of the individuals who lived, fought, and died in
those crucial moments of history. And one of the most important traits
DIRECTORS, 4th EDITION
uniting all the members of the ‘‘school’’ was the attempt to debunk
the myths and legends about those times and the people who
shaped them.
The most prominent representative of the Polish school is Andrzej
Wajda. In the span of a few short years he made three films,
Pokolenie, Kanał, and Popiół i diament, which form a kind of loose
trilogy and can be considered among the points of departure for the
emergence of popular Poland. Pokolenie tells of a group of young
men and women fighting in occupied Warsaw; Kanał is a tragic story
of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising; Popiół i diament takes place at the
watershed between war and peace. Crystallized in these three films
are the fundamental themes of Wajda’s work, themes characteristic of
some other adherents of the ‘‘school’’ as well. In these films we also
see the formation of Wajda’s own artistic stamp, his creative method,
which consists of an emotional approach to history, a romantic
conception of human fate, a rich visual sense, and dense expression
that is elaborate to the point of being baroque. In his debut, Pokolenie,
he renounces the dramatic aspect of the battle against the occupation
and concentrates on the inner world of people for whom discovering
the truth about their struggle was the same as discovering the truth
about love. In Kanał he expresses disagreement with a myth long ago
rooted in the consciousness of the Polish people and propounded in
portrayals of the Warsaw Uprising—that the greatest meaning of life
is death on the barricades. In the film Popiół i diament we hear for the
first time in clear tones the theme of the Pole at the crossroads of
history and the tragedy of his choice. Wajda expresses this theme not
in abstract constructions but in a concrete reality with concrete heroes.
Wajda returns to the war experience several times. Lotna, in which
the historical action precedes the above-mentioned trilogy, takes
place in the tragic September of 1939, when Poland was overrun.
Here Wajda continues to take a critical view of national tradition.
Bitterness and derision toward the romanticization of the Polish
struggle are blended here with sober judgment, and also with under-
standing for the world and for the people playing out the last
tragicomic act on the historical stage. In the film Samson, the hero,
a Jewish youth, throws off his lifelong passivity and by this action
steps into the struggle. Finally, there is the 1970 film Krajobraz po
bitwie, which, however, differs sharply from Wajda’s early films. The
director himself characterized this difference in the following way:
‘‘It’s not I who am drawing back [from the war]. It’s the war. It and
I are growing old together, and therefore it is more and more difficult
for me to discover anything in it that was close to me.’’
Krajobraz po bitwie has become Wajda’s farewell to the war for
a long time. This does not mean, however, that the fundamental
principles of the artistic method found in his early films have
disappeared from his work, in spite of the fact that his work has
developed in the most diverse directions over the course of forty
years. The basic principles remain and, with time, develop, differenti-
ate, and join with other motifs brought by personal and artistic
experience. Some of the early motifs can be found in other contexts.
Man’s dramatic attitude towards history, the Pole at the crossroads of
history and his tragic choice—these we can find in the film Popióły, in
the image of the fate of Poland in the period of the Napoleonic Wars,
when a new society was taking shape in the oppressive atmosphere of
a defeated country divided up among three victorious powers. People
living in a time of great changes are the main heroes of Ziemia
obiecana, which portrays the precipitous, drastic, and ineluctable
course of the transition from feudalism to the capitalist order. A man’s
situation at dramatic historical moments is also the subject of the films
Człowiek z marmuru, Człowiek z żelaza, and Danton, which have met
WAJDA
with more controversy than the preceding works. In Danton and
similarly in Les Possédés another element is present: the description
and criticism of destructive revolutionary forces, which lust for power
and assert themselves brutally without regard for the rights of others.
Wajda’s work reveals many forms and many layers. Over time,
historical films alternate with films on contemporary subjects; films
with a broad social sweep alternate with films that concentrate on
intimate human experiences. Wajda is conscious of these alternations.
From history he returns to contemporaneity, so as not to lose contact
with the times and with his audience. After a series of war films, he
made the picture Niewinni czarodzieje, whose young heroes search
for meaning in their lives. In the film Wszystko na sprzedaż, following
the tragic death of his friend, the actor Zbigniew Cybulski, he became
absorbed in the traces a person leaves behind in the memories and
hearts of friends; at the same time he told of the problems of artistic
searching and creation. Wajda’s attitudes on these questions are
revealed again in the next film, Polowanie na muchy, and even more
emphatically in Dyrygent, where they are linked to the motif of
faithfulness to one’s work and to oneself, to one’s ideals and convic-
tions. The motif links Dyrygent with Popiół i diament. Another theme
of Dyrygent—the inseparability of one’s personal, private life from
one’s work life and the mutual influence of the two—is the basic
problem treated in Bez znieczulenia. In Wajda there are many such
examples of the migration of themes and motifs from one film to
another. They affirm the unity of his work despite the fact that
alongside great and powerful works there are lesser and weaker films.
Such, for example, is Wajda’s sole attempt in the genre of comedy,
Polowanie na muchy, or the adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel
Heart of Darkness, which underwent a cinematic transformation.
Another unifying element in Wajda’s oeuvre is his faithfulness to
literary and artistic sources. A significant portion of his films come
from literature, while the pictorial aspect finds its inspiration in the
romantic artistic tradition. In addition to such broad historical fres-
coes as Popióły or Ziemia obiecana, these include, for example,
Stanislaw Wyspianski’s drama of 1901, Wesele, important for its
grasp of Poland at a bleak point in the country’s history. Wajda
translated it to the screen in all the breadth of its meaning, with an
accent on the impossibility of mutual understanding between dispa-
rate cultural milieus. The director also selected from the literary
heritage works that would allow him to address man’s existential
questions, attitudes towards life and death. This theme resonates most
fully in adaptations of two works by the writer Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz,
Brzezina and Panny z Wilka, in which the heroes are found not in
history but in life, where they are threatened not by war but by old age,
illness, and death, and where they must struggle only with them-
selves. To address such existential tension Wajda also developed
a transcription of Mikhail Bulgakov’s prose work The Master and
Margarita, filmed for television in the German Democratic Republic
under the title Pilatus und andere-ein Film für Karfreitag.
In the 1980s, after a number of years, Wajda goes back to the
subject of war. It is in the nostalgic Kronika wypadków miłosnych,
which deals with young people into whose loves and disappointments
creeps the premonition of a military catastrophe and death. Eine Liebe
in Deutschland is about the tragic consequences of the love felt by
a married German woman for a Polish prisoner. And it is also the
subject of Korczak, the most important work of Wajda’s comeback.
The director based Korczak on an authentic story, and the hero who
gave the film its name is a portrait of a real person. After the arrival of
the German occupying forces in Poland, Korczak followed his
charges from an orphanage into the Jewish Ghetto, and in the end of
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WALSH DIRECTORS, 4th EDITION

his own free will into the extermination concentration camp of

Treblinka. With this film about Korczak Wajda closed, for the time
being, one of the great subjects of his life and work. He has done this
by employing the simplest and therefore the most effective method:
black-and-white photography, which renders a sober record of life in
a sealed-off ghetto and at the same time pays homage to the
unostentatious heroism of a man who, face to face with death, did not
forget the moral code of the human race.
Wajda’s oeuvre, encompassing artistic triumphs and failures,
forms a unified but incomplete whole. The affinity among his films is
determined by a choice of themes which enables him to depict great
historical syntheses, metaphors, and symbols. He is constantly drawn
to those moments in the destinies of individuals and groups that are
crossroads of events with tragic consequences. In his films the main
motifs of human existence are interwoven—death and life, love,
defeat, and the tragic dilemma of having to choose, the impossibility
of realizing great aspirations. All these motifs are subordinated to
history, even a feeling as subjective as love.
Wajda’s films have not been, and are not, uniformly received by
audiences or critics. They have always provoked discussions in which
enthusiasm has confronted condemnation and agreement has con-
fronted disagreement and even hostility; despite some failures, how-
ever, Wajda’s films have never been met with indifference.

—Blažena Urgošiková

WALSH, Raoul Raoul Walsh

Nationality: American. Born: New York City, 11 March 1887 (some

sources say 1892). Education: Attended Public School 93, New
York; also attended Seton Hall College. Family: Married 1) Miriam
Cooper, 1916 (divorced 1927); 2) Mary Edna Simpson, 1941. Ca-
reer: Sailed to Cuba on uncle’s trading ship, 1903; horse wrangler in
Mexico, 1903–04; worked in variety of jobs in United States, includ-
ing surgeon’s assistant and undertaker, 1904–10; cowboy actor in
films for Pathé Studio, New Jersey, then for Biograph, from 1910;
actor and assistant to D.W. Griffith, then director at Biograph,
Hollywood, from 1912; director for William Fox, from 1916; lost eye
in auto accident, 1928; introduced John Wayne as feature actor in The
Big Trail, 1930; director for various studios, then retired to ranch,
1964. Died: In California, 31 December 1980.
Films as Director:
1912 The Life of General Villa (co-d, role as young Villa); Outlaw’s
Revenge
1913 The Double Knot (+ pr, sc, role); The Mystery of the Hindu
Image (+ pr, sc); The Gunman (+ pr, sc; credit contested)
1914 The Final Verdict (+ pr, sc, role); The Bowery
1915 The Regeneration (+ co-sc); Carmen (+ pr, sc); The Death
Dice (+ pr, sc; credit contested); His Return (+ pr); The
Greaser (+ pr, sc, role); The Fencing Master (+ pr, sc); A
Man for All That (+ pr, sc, role); 11:30 P.M. (+ pr, sc); The
Buried Hand (+ pr, sc); The Celestial Code (+ pr, sc); A Bad
Man and Others (+ pr, sc); Home from the Sea; The Lone
Cowboy (+ co-sc)
1916 Blue Blood and Red (+ pr, sc); The Serpent (+ pr, sc); Pillars
of Society
1917 The Honor System; The Silent Lie; The Innocent Sinner (+ sc);
Betrayed (+ sc); The Conqueror (+ sc); This Is the Life
1918 Pride of New York (+ sc); The Woman and the Law (+ sc); The
Prussian Cur (+ sc); On the Jump (+ sc); I’ll Say So
1919 Should a Husband Forgive (+ sc); Evangeline (+ sc); Every
Mother’s Son (+ sc)
1920 The Strongest (+ sc); The Deep Purple; From Now On
1921 The Oath (+ pr, sc); Serenade (+ pr)
1923 Lost and Found on a South Sea Island (Passions of the Sea);
Kindred of the Dust (+ pr, sc)
1924 The Thief of Bagdad
1925 East of Suez (+ pr); The Spaniard (+ co-pr); The Wanderer
(+ co-pr)
1926 The Lucky Lady (+ co-pr); The Lady of the Harem; What Price
Glory
1927 The Monkey Talks (+ pr); The Loves of Carmen (+ sc)
1928 Sadie Thompson (Rain) (+ co-sc, role); The Red Dance; Me
Gangster (+ co-sc)
1929 In Old Arizona (co-d); The Cock-eyed World (+ co-sc); Hot
for Paris (+ co-sc)
1930 The Big Trail
1931 The Man Who Came Back; Women of all Nations; The Yellow
Ticket
1932 Wild Girl; Me and My Gal
1933 Sailor’s Luck; The Bowery; Going Hollywood
1935 Under Pressure; Baby Face Harrington; Every Night at Night

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