Martin Scorsese Presents: Innocent Sorcerers

There was a brief and shiny moment during Poland’s tragic years of Communism when disillusioned youth could pursue Bohemianism. It did not last. Of course, many of those early 1960s musicians, artists, and would be drop-outs joined the Solidarity movement as fed-up adults. However, life still seems to have a lot of possibilities outside of politics for Bayzli and his associates in Andrzej Wajda’s Innocent Sorcerers, which screens as part of the Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema film series that has made its way from the Film Society of Lincoln Center to the Denver’s SIE FilmCenter.

Bayzli (a.k.a. “Medicine Man”) is a sports doctor who moonlights as a jazz drummer, or vice versa. He takes nothing seriously, even including music, but least of all women. While doggedly avoiding his ostensive girlfriend Mirka, Bayzli reluctantly agrees to help his hipster buddy Edmund separate the Holly Golightly-esque Pelagia from her square boyfriend.

However, instead of steering her back into the club to wait for the exceedingly interested Edmund, the two somehow wind up back at the doctor’s flat. For the rest of the night, they engage in verbal parrying worthy of Eric Rohmer. Maybe it is significant, but perhaps it is all meaningless. Nonetheless, neither of them is ready to let go of the evening, despite their determined efforts to play it cool.

Although Sorcerers was Wajda’s immediate follow-up to his WWII trilogy, it is something of an anomaly in the director’s filmography. Unlike Man of Iron and Katyn, it almost never addresses political or historical controversies. However, there is a deep-seated skepticism informing the characters’ world views. They spend their nights partying and their days sleeping, because they clearly do not believe their contemporary society is offering anything worth sacrificing for.

Yet, the film is distinguished by a lightness of mood. On paper, this one-crazy-night story sounds largely interchangeable with any number of modern day indies, but Wajda, the young master, never lets the proceedings get too cynical, sentimental, or quirky. Rather, it all unfolds rather effortlessly and matter-of-factly.

One thing is certain, nobody could ever assemble a cast like this again, including co-screenwriter and future auteur Jerzy Skolimowski appearing as a punch drunk boxer. It would also be difficult to corral international fugitive Roman Polanski, who plays the bass-player leader of Bayzli’s band. Sadly, Zbigniew Cybulski (sometimes called “the Polish James Dean”) is no longer with us, but he brings plenty of manic method as Edmund. Likewise, the late and very great Krzysztof Komeda and the not quite as well known but still late and pretty great Andrzej Trzaskowski added some real deal jazz cred, essentially playing themselves.

In fact, Komeda’s score sounds fantastic. It swings hard, but still has a pensive character. You can real hear how he links early 1960s hardbop to the more open but emotional resonant music of his protégé, Tomasz Stanko. Indeed, it is a major reason why Innocent Sorcerers is such an enduring masterwork. You know it must be good, because it still managed to generate official flak for Wajda, even though he thought it was completely apolitical. Highly recommended, it screens this Monday (8/18) at the SIE FilmCenter, during the Denver run of the Masterpieces of Polish Cinema touring film series.

Martin Scorsese Presents: To Kill This Love

Can a rotten political system corrupt the youth? It certainly will not do Magda and Andrzej any favors.  The two attractive lovers should have a bright future ahead of them, but there is no space for either of them in Communist Poland’s universities. The critical strategies of Socialist Realism are turned back on the Socialist state in Janusz Morgenstern’s To Kill This Love, which screens tonight as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

It was always Magda’s ambition to be a doctor, but it appears she will have to settle for being an orderly. Andrzej never had a calling per se, nor does he have a job of any sort. He would seem to have a future of manual labor to look forward to (if he is lucky), but Andrzej is not the settling type. Hoping to move into their own place, Magda and Andrzej will scrimp as best they can and put the arm on their problematic parents. However, Andrzej will take short cuts that could poison their relationship.

In a way, Magda and Andrzej are the Polish Jack and Diane—two kids growing up the best that they can. It will not work out. Like a good Socialist Realist, Morgenstern is not exactly subtle in his approach.  Frankly, it is a small miracle To Kill did not give some poor apparatchik a cerebral hemorrhage.  The contrast between the grim prospects faced by Polish young people tossed aside by the state’s educational system and the constant reports of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing (a pinnacle of Yankee scientific achievement) is hard to miss.

Perhaps even more heavy-handed are the more impressionistic interludes featuring a corrupt night watchman (who fences the goods he is supposed to protect) and his faithful-to-a-fault canine companion. When he chooses graft over love an entire class of petty Party hacks stand indicted.

Every frame of To Kill screams 1972, in both good and bad ways. One can readily detect the influence of the youth culture and the tripped out psychedelic cinema of the age, as well as old school proletarian social drama.  Maybe Andrzej Malec’s namesake would have been considered a catch at the time, but his charms have not aged well. While it is hard to fault his mercurial performance, the character’s dubious motivations and self-destructive tendencies are a quite a load to labor under. In contrast, Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak brings an innocent yet passionate presence, like an early (straighter) forerunner to Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Color.

To Kill is clearly a product of its time. For an intimate story of an affair on the outs, it ranges pretty far and wide. Still, despite its stylistic eccentricities, it retains considerable bite. Recommended for dedicated connoisseurs of Polish cinema, To Kill this Love screens tonight (2/15) at the Walter Reade, as part of the Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, which will continue on its thirty city North American tour following it New York run.

Martin Scorsese Presents: The Hourglass Sanatorium

Smuggling a censored film was a trickier proposition in 1973. Instead of a flash drive, you had to schlep cans of film. Nevertheless, Wojciech Has managed to convey his banned mind-bending prestige production to Cannes, where the jury led by Ingrid Bergman awarded it the Jury Prize. While never explicitly political, it is easy to see why Has’s The Hourglass Sanatorium (trailer here) would be too much for a risk averse Communist apparatchik to countenance when it screens as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Based on the novel and short stories of Bruno Schulz, Hourglass is never intimidated by the constraints of narrative. Józef is traveling to a remote sanatorium, where his lower middle class merchant father Jakub is a patient. Actually, his father is already dead everywhere else except the decaying sanatorium. Within the crumbling walls, the randy inattentive staff apparently has the power to roll back time to a point where his father is still living. Through the strange power of the sanatorium, Józef is able to revisit his past through his subconscious (or vice versa) for a series of chaotic encounters with his sort of late father. Or something like that.

You could debate just what Hourglass is until the cows come home, but no way, no how is it Socialist Realism. Meaning that densely ambiguous spells nothing but trouble for a professional censor. To make matters worse, Has chose not to soft pedal the main characters’ Jewish heritage while the Polish Communist Party was still engaged in its campaign of anti-Semitic purges. At times, Has even evokes images of the Holocaust, even though the work of Shulz (himself a fatal victim of National Socialism) predated WWII.

Good for Berman for digging Hourglass. It will not be to everyone’s tastes. However, it is visually stunning. The depth of vision Has employs with his swooping camera is truly dizzying. It might be heresy to suggest, but Hourglass could be that rare classic worth giving the 3D fixer-upper treatment. Ironically, the film authorities clearly opened the coffers during the production stage. The work of art director Andrzej Halinski is absolutely baroque, even decadent in an evocatively decayed way. Viewers may well wonder if Hourglass was an early influence on a young Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam.

Hourglass is an auteur’s film in just about every way, rather than an actor’s showcase. It is dashed difficult to forge an emotional connection with the audience amid all the trippiness, but at least Jan Nowicki looks convincingly lost as Józef.

Undergarments are rather loose in Hourglass, so parents should be strongly cautioned. More to the point, it is sure to raise questions with no objective answers. This is definitely high-end cult cinema, but those who appreciate extravagant set pieces and dark fantasyscapes will dive into the experience. Recommended for the adventurous and literarily inclined, The Hourglass Sanatorium screens this Friday (2/14) and Sunday (2/16) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Jump

He is possibly a con man or a holy fool. Either way, the Stranger has a rather torturous relationship with reality. Nobody remembers him, yet he quickly finds himself enmeshed in the town’s Twin Peaks-ish intrigues. It will be a decidedly strange civic celebration when the Stranger teaches the town to dance the “Salto” in Tadeusz Konwicki’s Jump, which screens with newly translated subtitles and a restored print as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Presumably, the man who might be named Kowalski or possibly Malinowski, has a good reasons for jumping off a speeding train. Barging in on his unsuspecting host, he claims to have known the older man when he lived in town way back when. The hospitable chap does not remember the Stranger, but he assumes this is due to the lingering effects of his wartime post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the Stranger’s paranoid ravings suggest his mental state is far more questionable than his host’s. Nevertheless, he sort of pulls it together when he is around Helena, his host’s temptress daughter (whom the Stranger makes a show of mistaking for her mother).

As he ambles through the town and the plot, the Stranger apparently cures sick children, freaks out a fortune teller, and underwhelms in his efforts to seduce Helena. Konwicki will reveal all in the closing minutes, but not before indulging in sorts of trippy weirdness. Jump (a.k.a. Salto) is indeed a product of the 1960’s and Konwicki certainly captures the tenor of the time.

Unfortunately, Jump also carries some rather unintentional and uncomfortable irony. In real life, Zbigniew Cybulski (often dubbed the Polish James Dean) tragically died making a leap from a moving train, much like the one that opens the film. Konwicki penned some brilliant screenplays and novels, but his Jump script is more of an invitation to play than a cohesive narrative. Still, there are bits and pieces that stick in the soul, particularly the old man who survived the war despite looking like Blumenfeld, a famous Jewish actor—and might indeed actually be Blumenfeld, as the Stranger insists.

Regardless of what fate had in store, Cybulski is perfect as the Stranger, somewhat resembling Marcello Mastroianni in 8½, when not raging like a madman at whomever and whatever. The large ensemble is definitely a hodge-podge, but Wlodzimierz Borunski taps into some deeply sad places as the man who claims not to be Blumenfeld.

Konwicki and cinematographer Kurt Weber craft some striking images and the overall tone of the film is considerably more playful than you would expect from a Warsaw Pact-era head trip. In fact, things get pleasantly funky when it comes time to do the Salto. Recommended for adventurous viewers, Jump screens tomorrow (2/9) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Pharaoh

As the country that gave the world Quo Vadis, Poland has always appreciated a good epic. After all, Henryk Sienkiewicz’s short stories ran about five hundred pages. In the spirit of grand historicals, Jerzy Kawalerowic unleashed his inner Cecil B. DeMille in Phaoraoh, which screens with newly translated subtitles and a restored print as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Ramses XII will soon be Pharaoh, but his father’s long, slow decline has allowed the priests to consolidate their hold on behind-the-scenes power. For decades, their coffers have swelled, while the Pharaoh’s have shrunk. Acutely aware of the situation, Ramses the younger makes no secret of his disdain for the clerical class and the superstitions they use to control the populace. He is also spoiling for a war with the Assyrians—a fact that suits the Phoenicians just fine. However, Ramses’ reckless nature will be his conspicuous vulnerability. Taking the Jewish Sara as his favorite mistress also raises eyebrows.

Throughout Pharaoh one can easily pick up on Kawalerowic’s affinity for shots of characters marching with a purpose, often culminating in an extreme close-up in the foreground, with a striking vista of sand dunes in the background. This is definitely big picture, cast-of-thousands filmmaking, shot in Łódź soundstages and on location in Uzbekistan and Egypt (for a handful of pick-ups). For obvious reasons, Pharaoh features a color palette heavy on the yellows and golds, as well as costumes decidedly on the skimpy side, especially for the standards of 1966. It is hardly Caligula, but there is at least one scene of old school revelry.

On one level, Pharaoh is a big juicy historical melodrama, with all kinds of intrigue and betrayal. Yet, the dynamic below the surface is also quite fascinating, particularly when considered as another celebrated collaboration between Kawalerowic and Tadeusz Konwicki, who would subsequently move in very different directions politically.  Konwicki would become a Solidarity supporter and pen the highly personal protest novel, A Minor Apocalypse. In contrast, Kawalerowic would basically sign-off on whatever was demanded of him (which greatly complicated his later career).  We can readily discern an “absolute power corrupts absolutely” theme reflective of Konwicki’s principles, whereas the depiction of priestly authority actively exploiting the masses would have surely satisfied Kawalerowic’s minders.

As the impulsive Ramses, Jerzy Zelnik came to play, unleashing all kinds of passion and fury, while staying grounded in the tradition of classical tragedy. There is indeed of touch of Hamlet in his Ramses. One could argue they both had father issues. And mother issues. And issues with women. Speaking of which, Barbara Brylska truly scorches the screen as Kama, the Phoenician priestess charged with seducing Ramses.

The Polish cast playing ancient Egyptian characters might sound a little odd, but it really is no different from the sword-and-sandal films Hollywood cranked out in the 1960’s. Elizabeth Taylor was not anymore Egyptian than Brylska. Lusty and sprawling, Pharaoh is an enormously entertaining cinematic indulgence, with unexpected bite in the third act. Highly recommended, it screens this Friday (2/7) and Sunday (2/9) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Mother Joan of the Angels

In 1994, Polish jazz trumpeter-composer Tomasz Stańko recorded a tribute album to a film whose only music was diegetic, liturgical, and largely intended to be disturbing. It might sound like an odd source of inspiration, but Stańko is a genius and the film is a true touchstone of Polish cinema.  Handpicked by the ambassador of film restoration, Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels (trailer here) screens with newly translated subtitles and a restored print as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

The nuns of provincial convent have not been themselves lately. Four priests have already been dispatched to restore order, after their local Father was burned at the stake. The neurotic Father Jozef Suryn seems like a dubious candidate to reinforce the quartet of exorcists, especially to the naïve cleric. However, his earnest spirit might somehow forge a connection with Mother Joan.

Supposedly possessed by nine demons, she is considered the key to the convent’s occult hysteria. If she can be saved, the evil spirits controlling the rest of the nuns should duly fall away. She will be a devilishly hard case, but at least the scandal will entertain the rustic locals.

Visually, Mother Joan is one of the most arresting black-and-white films perhaps ever.  Jerzy Wójcik’s cinematography is absolutely gorgeous yet eerie as all get out. Each frame reflects the soul-shattering stakes in play.  Based on the same notorious Loudun witchcraft inquisition that inspired Ken Russell’s The Devils, it is one of the few non-genre films to seriously depict demonic possession. It is highly charged sexually, but it is distinctly austere and ascetic, much like the self-flagellating Father Suryn. Among lurid nunsploitation films, it is the spiritually severe stylite.

Lucyna Winnicka’s titular performance is a legitimate tour de force, revealing everything while still maintaining a world of ambiguity. Is she truly possessed, psychotic, or repressed? Sure, take your pick. Mieczyslaw Voit provides the perfect counterpoint as the increasingly alienated Father Suryn, as well as a small but significant dual role held in reserve for the third act.

One of the great collaborations between Kawalerowicz and screenwriter-novelist Tadeusz Konwicki, Mother Joan is loaded with enough symbolic significance for several dozen cinema studies theses.  It is a heavy film, with a theme of eternal sacrifice that predates The Exorcist by more than ten years. Not horror, but profoundly unsettling, Mother Joan of the Angels is highly recommended when it screens this Saturday (2/8) and the following Tuesday (2/11) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Wajda’s Man of Iron

It is the first and arguably the only true sequel to win the Palme D’Or, but it has far wider historical significance than mere festival laurels. Picking up exactly where Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble left off, it depicts the heady days of Solidarity’s initial victories with documentary-like immediacy—and even boasts Lech Wałęsa appearing briefly as himself. Wajda’s Man of Iron is a true masterpiece that fittingly opens Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema this Wednesday at the Walter Reade Theater.

Sadly, Iron almost immediately undercuts the exhilarating ending of Marble. It had seemed Agnieszka, a muckraking journalist in training, would finally reveal the true fate of Mateusz Birkut, a former labor hero of state propaganda conspicuously scrubbed from public records, with the help of his son, Maciej Tomczyk. Oh but not so fast, say her superiors at the television station.

It turns out the acorn has not fallen far from the tree in the case of the modest, self-effacing Tomczyk. Following Birkut’s example, he has become a leader in the budding Solidarity movement, largely modeled on Wałęsa, Wajda’s Man of Hope. Although muzzled by the Party, he and Agnieszka have fallen in love. Alas, she is not there to appreciate Tomczyk’’s increasing prominence as a democracy activist. As an independent journalist living in a police state, she is exactly where Thoreau would say she should be.

In accordance with the historical record, Solidarity calls a strike in the Gdansk shipyards in response to the punitive dismissal of Anna Walentynowicz (who also briefly appears as herself), but their protests are embraced far more widely by the general public than they ever expected. Recognizing the seismic shift in the zeitgeist, leaders like Tomczyk and Wałęsa pivot away from  small ball agenda items to big picture demands. Caught flatfooted, the Communist Party resorts to dirty tricks.  Enter the sheepish Winkel. A former independent journalist from Agnieszka’s circle, he has sold out to the powers that be. Yet, given his history, the Party expects him to win back his former colleagues’ confidence, only to betray them once again with a report exposing whatever scandal he can muster on Tomczyk.

There is a lot going on in Iron, but it can be readily appreciated simply as a document of Solidarity’s unprecedented 1980 breakthroughs. However, it is an even richer experience for viewers who have seen Marble. Try to imagine a sequel to Citizen Kane equally accomplished as the original, in which William Alland turns his attention to a long lost son of Charles Foster Kane, at the behest of the Pulitzers, and you will have a vague idea of Iron’s full significance.

While she necessarily has far less screen time given the circumstances of her character, the truly heroic Krystyna Janda (truly devastating in the duly banned The Interrogation) returns as Agnieszka, fortifying the film with integrity in each of her scenes. Arguably, Jerzy Radziwilowicz surpasses his work as Birkut in Marble, playing the quiet but forceful Tomczyk with richer nuance. Yet, Marian Opania ultimately stands alone defining Iron as the acutely tragic Winkel, showing the audience just how hard it is to regain a soul sold cheap. It is an extraordinarily powerful performance, precisely because it comes from such an unlikely figure.

Man of Iron is a great way to start a stellar film series, personally curated by Scorsese. Obviously, he is an expert in just about everything film related, but the editorial consideration he brought to bear on the Masterpieces of Polish Cinema collection is impeccable. Fully restored with newly translated subtitles, Man of Iron is highly recommended to anyone who cares about cinema. It kicks off the series this Wednesday (2/5) at the Walter Reade Theater.