A GENERATION Movie Review

Pokolenie

Polish director Andrzej Wajda made his directorial debut with this stark and absorbing tale about a young man named Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki) whom we first meet searching for work in Nazi occupied Poland. Stach gets a job in a woodworking shop, where he meets Dorota (Urszula Modrzynska), a woman who introduces him to the resistance movement, and with whom he falls in love. Stach may be less drawn into the resistance at first for political reasons than for the companionship of Dorota, but when she dies attempting to help prisoners of the ghetto escape, Stach's grief will be channeled into continuing the movement, and to teaching a new, younger generation about the fascist menace. A Generation is clearly the work of a major new film artist, though he would surpass this achievement quickly. It was the first film in what was to be known as Wajda's “war trilogy”; the films that followed were Kanal in 1956, and the widely acclaimed Ashes and Diamonds in 1958, the later making a major star of Zbig-niew Cybulski. (Look for Cybulski in the small role of Kostek in A Generation. And look for Roman Polanski here as well, in the role of Mundek.)

NEXT STOP … Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, Man of Marble

1954 90m/BPL Tadeusz Lomnicki, Urszula Modrzynska, Zbigniew Cybulski, Roman Polanski; D: Andrzej Wajda; W: Bohdan Czeszko; M: Andrzej Markowski. VHS FCT, HMV, ING