KANAL Movie Review

They Loved Life

In September of 1944, while Nazis are advancing through Warsaw, a group of Polish partisans must retreat to the city's center by way of the sewers ("kanal"). During their ordeal, the characters' individual stories come into focus, giving a personal, human face to the horrors of war. Kanal's subterranean, claustrophobic visual scheme is an ingenious metaphorical image for the impact of occupation, it's in this deep, pressurized desperate world that the protagonists' suppressed secrets, fears, and breaking points are revealed. This second film in Polish director Andrej Wajda's celebrated war trilogy followed his A Generation, and it would soon be followed by his widely acclaimed Ashes and Diamonds. Special Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … A Generation, Ashes and Diamonds, Underground

1956 96m/B PL Teresa Izewska, Tadeusz Janczar, Vladek Sheybal, Emil Kariewicz, Wienczylaw Glinski; D: Andrzej Wajda; W: Jerzy Stefan Stawinski; C: Jerzy Lipman; M: Jan Krenz. Cannes Film Festival '57:Grand Jury Prize. VHS ING, NLC, HMV