So often are you as a blazing torch, with flakes of burning rags falling about you. Flaming, you know not if flames freedom bring or death. Consuming all that you most cherish, if ashes only will be left, and want, chaos and tempest shall it engulf. Or will the ashes hold the glory of a starlike diamond – the Morning Star of everlasting triumph?
Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821-1853)

Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s 1958 film Ashes and Diamonds is more interesting than entertaining. It explores unusual thematic material and a unique moment in Polish history with style and beautiful camerawork, but largely dissipates those virtues by tossing them into an opaque narrative.

Historical Background: Andrzej Wajda is often described as Poland’s finest film director, although Krzystof Kieslowski comes immediately to mind as a competitor for that accolade. Wajda’s career extended from 1954 up to the year 2000 at least. He is perhaps best known internationally for an early trio of films relating to the World War II Poland, known as his “War Trilogy”: A Generation (1954), Kamal (1956), and Ashes and Diamonds (1958). Some of his better known works from the later portion of his career are Man of Marble (1977), Man of Iron (1980), and Danton (1982). Ashes and Diamonds is the first Wajda film of my own experience.

The Story: The film opens on the last day of World War II in Poland. The Germans are defeated and Poland's future is uncertain and up-for-grabs among the political elements left standing. The Soviet-influenced Communist presence is evident as well as rightist elements of the resistance prepared to swap anti-Communist activities for the anti-Nazi sabotage that they had shared with the Communists throughout the war. Old allies are fast becoming bitter enemies.

The opening scene finds Maciek Chelmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski) and his superior in the Polish resistance, Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski), waiting along a rural roadway by a provincial church to assassinate a mid-level Communist official, Szczuka (Waclaw Zastrzezynski), who is scheduled to drive by. Maciek is armed with a machine gun and the others with more conventional weapons. In a nice touch, Wajda has a young girl show up on the scene asking for help getting into the locked church. The vehicle approaches and the gunmen duly shoot down the two occupants and make a quick departure. Moments later, the dead men are discovered both by local inhabitants and Szczuka, the Communist official, who drives up in another vehicle altogether. The assassins have killed two innocent men by mistake and missed their intended target. Szczuka recognizes that he was the intended victim. The locals are angered by the bloodshed and the death of two of their neighbors and blame the continuing violence on both the Communists and anti-Communists.

Later, in town, Maciek and Andrzej hear the official announcement that Germany has surrendered. They check into the rundown but busy Metropol Hotel. Andrzej uses the phone in the lobby to call his superior to report that the job has been completed but, while he is on the phone, Maciek sees a man enter and overhears him checking in as Szczuka, their intended target. He quickly advises his partner about the error and Andrzej then has to convey as much to his boss. Maciek and Andrzej are advised that the assignment has to be completed.

Maciek chats up the desk clerk, an older man, and they discover that they have shared fond memories of Warsaw – which is presently in utter ruins. Maciek is thereby able to get himself assigned to a nicer room on the first floor, which, conveniently, is right next to Szczuka’s room. Maciek heads for the hotel bar and spots an exceptionally attractive blond, Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), behind the bar. He immediately begins making moves on her, teasing and flirting and finally simply inviting her to his room. She is noncommittal, but he says he’ll be waiting for her there at 10:30, when her replacement arrives. He is half-surprised when she actually shows up, ready for sex, at least, if not love. Maciek’s tough guy nonchalance begins to be shaken as he increasingly falls for this beautiful and sensitive woman, who has suffered as much as anyone else by the war, losing both her parents. He is increasingly torn between the idea of a career change and meaningful relationship with Krystyna vs. his “responsibilities” to his superior and the resistance.

Does he complete the assassination? Do he and Krystyna settle down? These are questions for which a viewing of the film will provide answers.

In addition to the main plot described above, there are a couple of side plots worth mentioning. We learn that Szczuka lost his wife in the war but that he has a seventeen-year-old son. Szczuka had been in the Soviet Union when his wife died and the boy had thereafter been raised by the wife’s sister, despite Szczuka’s express wishes to the contrary. The wife’s sister and her husband are anti-Communist and have raised the boy accordingly. Later, the boy is arrested as part of an anti-Communist faction.

Another subplot concerns the Mayor’s male secretary, who also acts as a contact person for the resistance. The Mayor is in line for a Ministry position and if it comes through, the secretary's position will also be elevated. The secretary learns from a drunken newspaper editor that his boss had indeed been made a minister. He is so excited by the good news that he drinks himself to intoxication with the editor, embarrasses himself and his boss at the celebration banquet, and thereby loses his job.

Themes: One of the main strengths of Ashes and Diamonds is that it tackles some interesting and possibly unique themes and a unique moment in time. It was the brief moment when Poland had cast off the shackles of Nazi occupation without any other authority having yet established itself. The reining mood and circumstance was one of celebration combined with chaos and uncertainty. The jockeying for position in the new order and power structure was already underway. Hopes mixed together with fears. The turmoil of such a moment in history was ably depicted by Wajda through the subplot involving the Mayor’s secretary. In the very act of overly exuberant celebration of his good fortune, he destroyed not only that good fortune but what he already possessed. Similarly, Poland itself was at risk of condemning itself to more bleak future at the very moment of its celebration of victory over the Nazis. Given that this film was made during the Cold War and behind the iron curtain, it is more pro-Communist than anti-Communist, but it is surprisingly even-handed and not jarringly propagandistic.

After years of fighting the Nazis through resistance actions, the young men of the country were armed and used to violence. In such a context, the struggle for power in the new order was bound to take violent expression. Thus, even with the victory over the Nazis, the populace remained in peril of victimization by more violence. One of the profound questions raised in Ashes and Diamonds is the one expressed in the Norwid poem at the opening of this review. Does violence lead to freedom or merely to more deaths? It’s a question that could be posed in relation to every instance of violent action. When is violence justified – even noble or heroic? When is violence merely hateful and hurtful? For knights and samurai and marauding Huns, I suppose, the answer is that violence is always heroic. For full-blooded pacifists, the answer is equally absolute in the other direction. For many people, unfortunately, the honest answer is that violence is heroic when conducted by us against them, but despicable when conducted by them against us. My personal view is that violence is sometimes moral, necessary, and justified, but far less often than violence occurs. The burden of proof rests with the person claiming moral validity and not with those decrying the violence. For the Polish resistance to violently confront the Nazis, who were sending innocent people to gas chambers, was not only morally justified but morally requisite. For these same fighters to assassinate political rivals vying for power in the new Poland was not justifiable because the effect each faction might have on the future of Poland was indeterminate. The killing of innocent people for a morally ambiguous cause is never justified. There was no predictable causal connection between assassinating Szczuka and hope for a “Morning Star of everlasting triumph” in Poland’s future. Ashes and Diamonds is Wajda’s bitter denunciation of the waste of a generation to the continuing violence in Poland following the War.

Production Values: Besides the fascinating thematic issues raised by Ashes and Diamonds, its other great strength lies in its superlative style and visual images. Stylistically, Ashes and Diamonds draws from the tradition of film noir. The cool, calculating yet physically appealing assassin, Maciek, certainly qualifies as a noir-type antihero. Furthermore, the film has that low contrast darkness about it typical of such films. There are some stunning shots provided by Wajda and his cinematographer, Jerzy Wójcik, involving lighting effects, such as backlighting, streaming light, and shadows. Wajda is into religious symbolism as well. One of the men assassinated at the beginning falls dead at the threshold of the church, causing one of the killers to dash off screaming, “Jesus and Mary.” Later, the romancing couple, Maciek and Krystyna, wander into a cemetery with a damaged crucifix suspended upside down. It is there that Krystyna reads the Norwid poem, inscribed on one of the burial crypts. Near the end of the film, there’s a nifty little Felliniesque promenade of eccentric characters, fittingly to a Polonaise.

The weakness of the film is in the muddiness of the narrative. There are too many characters passing through the story and too little basis for differentiation. Who’s fighting on which side and why is not always made clear. Some characters appear to be introduced for no good purpose. One scene is devoted to introducing the circumstances relating to Szczuka’s son. Then, we see him under arrest by the Communist authorities and his father going to fetch him. Then nothing. We never know what becomes of the son. Other times, we see platoons of soldiers marching through town but never know their affiliations. You could build a case that these uncertainties and ambiguities are intentional, in order to give viewers a personalized sense of the uncertainties that existed at that time in Poland. Unfortunately, however, it also destroys narrative clarity.

Cybulski is often referred to as the “Polish James Dean.” He does have something of that punk look popularized in the 1950’s in America by Elvis Presley and later reprised by Fonzi on the sitcom Happy Days. It’s a bit of the insouciance of Belmondo with a Jack Kennedy-like flip of hair. Jack Lord later adopted a similar look as Felix Leiter in Dr. No (1962). Cybulski sports sunglasses indoors and out (reputedly because his eyes had permanently dark-adapted from years living in the sewers in the Polish resistance). His tough guy charm was all wasted on me, however. The get-up seems like someone trying all too hard to be a teen idol. Cybulski’s career transpired mainly within Poland in films that seldom reached America. He died in a train accident in 1967. Ewa Krzyzewska, who provided the love interest in the film, was quite a beauty in 1958. I’d change professions for her or stand on my head. She could name her price!

Bottom-Line: Ashes and Diamonds ends up precariously balanced between impressive strengths and troublesome weaknesses. While is probes thematically rich territory with some truly striking visuals, it is compromised by profound narrative weaknesses, confusing viewers with too many characters inadequately developed and plot fragments left dangling. There are also irritating technical difficulties with the DVD release from Facets. Subtitles are too often out of synch with the oral speech, making it difficult to tell who is saying what. The subtitles are also marred by some rather basic typographical errors, reflecting some sloppiness in production of this DVD. Ashes and Diamonds is in Polish with English subtitles and has a running time of 97 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Poland:

Knife in the Water
Man of Iron
A Year in the Quiet Sun

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age