The law and the fist
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The law and the fist |
| Original title | Prawo i pięść |
| Country of production | Poland |
| original language | Polish , German |
| Publishing year | 1964 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Jerzy Hoffman Edward Skórzewski |
| script | Jozef Hen |
| music | Krzysztof Komeda |
| camera | Jerzy Lipman |
| cut | Ludmiła Godziaszwili |
| occupation | |
| |
The law and the fist (original title: Prawo i pięść , alternatively also Das Recht und die Faust ) is a Polish feature film by the directors Jerzy Hoffman and Edward Skórzewski from 1964 . The German premiere took place on March 15, 1969 on ARD .
Brief description
In 1945, immediately after the end of the war, a group of Polish volunteers was sent to a town that was abandoned by Germans in the former German eastern territories to prevent looting . Almost all members of the group turn out to be corrupt looters whose only goal is personal gain. A recently recruited member, who joined the team in good faith, tries to prevent the raid, which he succeeds.
action
In 1945 tens of thousands of Poles were resettled from the lost Polish eastern territories to the former German eastern territories. People wander aimlessly. On a stopover, the Polish former resistance fighter and Auschwitz prisoner, educator Andrzej Kenig (played by Gustav Holoubek), saves a young woman from rape by marauding resettlers. He is then sent by a young Polish militia soldier to the local administrator of the "Regained Territories", where, after a brief conversation, he is assigned to an armed, six-person task force composed ad hoc whose main task is that of Germans in the fictional village of Graustadt to secure left belongings against looting as "public property". During his interview, Kenig made no secret of the fact that he was acting primarily for material reasons. A Mr. Mielecki, who has a medical doctor's diploma, is appointed group leader.
In the deserted, ghostly gray city, the troop first encounter four young Polish women. After a brief thought, Mielecki invites the women to stay, but half-jokingly points out the discipline that prevails in the troop. In fact, at least one of the women is brutally raped later.
Suddenly a speech by Adolf Hitler can be heard from street megaphones, followed by the Horst Wessel song . Kenig follows the electrical wiring and finds a now empty broadcasting studio; he destroys the current record. In a side street, the women meet a German hotelier who is drunk and who has obviously put on the record beforehand. Interrogated by Mielecki, the German explains that while he was intoxicated he missed the evacuation of the city. Mielecki pretends to be "the new mayor" to the hotelier. He and his people are then honored and lavishly entertained by the hotelier.
In between, a young commissioner from the Polish citizens' militia appears in Graustadt. When Mielecki learns that the functionary is supposed to set up a guard in the city and that nobody is expecting his return soon, he has the young man sneakily shot and his body hidden in a cellar.
Kenig soon realizes that the members of the squad are actually themselves ruthless looters who prepare a robbery on a large scale and proceed with the utmost brutality. The "doctor" Mielecki bought his diploma on the black market and only has the aim of removing and selling the equipment from the local hospital. Another member of the gang, the strictly Catholic Smółka, happened to discover extensive art treasures in a cellar, some of which had obviously been stolen from Polish museums. He shows the works of art to Kenig, who describes them as priceless and asks the Smółka to notify the authorities, which the latter rejects out of greed. After a short fight, Smółka Kenig reveals the true intentions of his comrades. Smółka, plagued by guilt from now on, returns to the gang and loudly criticizes the criminal plan. Mielecki has Smółka shot.
Kenig tries to call for administrative assistance. The attempt is exposed, but Kenig is not caught in the act. The hotelier shows Kenig the body of the murdered commissioner.
Kenig decides to stop the raiders on his own. He apparently comes to an agreement with Mielecki and announces that he will be working together on the removal for a large share. On the day on which the stolen objects are to be transported away, Kenig kidnaps one of the stolen trucks, which is already loaded with stolen goods, and shoots the tires of the other three trucks, which are also fully loaded. In a showdown , Kenig kills almost all opponents except Wróbel, like himself a former concentration camp inmate, whom he spared and let go. When the Polish militia finally arrives in the city and Kenig offers the mayor's office on behalf of the new government, the educator decides to leave the city. He is driven by a militia functionary in an off-road vehicle towards the east, against the incoming, endless stream of resettlers who are pulling towards Graustadt. Both the resettlers and Kenig face an uncertain future.
Narrative technique and film language
Except for short scenes at the beginning and at the end, the action takes place in the few streets and interiors of Graustadt. The market (“Rynek” in Polish) plays the central role. The black and white photos emphasize the gloomy atmosphere of the war-torn, deserted city. The unusually high and low camera angles underline the oppressive atmosphere of the “no man's land”.
The narration is linear, without flashbacks and with only a few, very short side threads. The people are mainly endowed with only a few characteristics. This and the narrative situation “good versus evil”, in which a righteous man alone has to compete against the unjust majority, has given the film the reputation of a “Polish Western”. However, the film mainly shows characteristics of a film noir: the dilapidated, abandoned city with narrow streets, bars and dark vaults as a labyrinth metaphor, the low-key lighting, the extreme oblique views of the camera. the viewer learns little or nothing about the past and origin of the respective persons; the only secure "IDs" seem to be the tattooed numbers of the former concentration camp inmates (which largely corresponds to the realities of the time).
Location
The historic old town of Toruń served as the backdrop for the fictional “gray city” . The structure of the old town was in need of renovation in 1964, so that only a few set design work was necessary for exterior shots. In 2008, a bronze sculpture was placed on Nowy Rynek (Neumarkt), the focus of everything in the film, to commemorate the shooting.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack composed by Krzysztof Komeda had a decisive influence on the film. The music has long worked independently of the film and moves between ballad and experimental free jazz. The title ballad “Nim wstanie dzień” (German: “Before the day begins”) sung by Edmund Fetting is a well-known cultural asset in Poland and has been covered several times. The lyrics by Agnieszka Osiecka tell of hopes for a better, peaceful world after the horrors and turmoil of war.
"Between the lines"
The film addresses the subject of the expulsion of the German population after the Second World War and the resettlement of the Poles from the eastern Polish territories, which were incorporated by the USSR, into the now new western Polish territories, which was actually taboo due to communist censorship at the time of its creation. In order to circumvent the censorship, the topic was treated with extreme caution and predominantly with allusions. According to the government representative, the civilian population of Graustadt was "probably evacuated by the retreating Wehrmacht". The only German appearing in the film, the hotelier, does not correspond to the cliché that was common in Poland in the 1960s of a German who blindly executes orders, is educated, but callous and even brutal; the maitre d'hôtel is instead a tragic-comic character, who is rather sympathetic due to his forlornness and strong propensity for alcohol, who also undergoes a positive change of heart in the course of the plot. The rapes against women are always presented discreetly and euphemistically on the sidelines.
criticism
The lexicon of international films saw the grotesque satirical note of the film due to the use of set pieces from the western and the gangster film and summed up: “A bitter attack on corruption and opportunism, set in a deliberately timeless environment, so that the criticism on conditions becomes transferable in modern Poland ” . According to Christoph Huber, the film turns cowboys into anti-fascist resistance fighters in order to circumvent the genre that was classified as "fallen and shameful" at the time in the Warsaw Pact states .
Web links
- The law and the fist in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Polish Film Week from September 2nd to 8th, 2010 in the movie theater "The Crank" (PDF; 509 kB)
- ^ Jörg Taszman: Westerns from the East. In: deutschlandradiokultur.de. February 3, 2011, accessed March 3, 2017 .
- ↑ Frieder Monzer: Posen, Thorn, Bromberg with Greater Poland, Kujawien and Southeast Pomerania . Trescher Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-89794-201-1 , p. 230 ( preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ The law and the fist. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Western in the Eastern Bloc , in: Die Presse, February 3, 2011, quoted from [1]