The channel
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The channel |
| Original title | Channel |
| Country of production | Poland |
| original language | Polish |
| Publishing year | 1957 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Andrzej Wajda |
| script | Jerzy Stefan Stawiński |
| production | Film studio Kadr |
| music | Jan Krenz |
| camera | Jerzy Lipman |
| cut |
Halina Nawrocka Aurelia Rut |
| occupation | |
| |
The Canal is a Polish feature film about the Warsaw Uprising during World War II .
action
The film is set in Warsaw in September 1944 . It describes the last days of the Warsaw Uprising. In the first scene the main characters are introduced by a narrator. The film has a documentary-authentic effect from the start. The main characters are the last people in a company in the Polish Home Army . The company commander Zadra wants to lead his last survivors safely out of the hellish battle with the German occupiers. Few are real soldiers. In the company two girls fight as well as a little boy.
The situation becomes more and more hopeless when the Germans attack again. Zadra is ordered to retreat to the city center with his people. The only way to get there is through the Warsaw Canal System. So the group of different people moves into the dark, smelly sewage system. Here the film develops individual stories around the main characters.
There is the injured 23-year-old Korab, who fell in love with the smuggler “Daisy”, who knows the canal system through her smuggling tours. There is the girl Halinka, who spends a night of love with the soldier Mądry before moving out through the canal and has to discover in the canal that her lover is married and only wants to survive for his family. She commits suicide in a hopeless situation. There is the accountant Kula, who shows his superior Zadra that the group is still together, although in reality it has already broken up.
Kula sticks to Zadra, who eventually leads him out of the canal to safety, but then realizes that only Kula could follow him. He shoots Kula and climbs back into the canal. Mądry finds her way out alone, but German soldiers are already waiting for her. Korab and daisies drag themselves to an exit of the canal on the Vistula , see the sun again, but the exit is blocked by a concrete grate. The film has no happy ending , just as there could be no happy ending for the Warsaw Uprising.
background
The film is based on a short story by Jerzy Stefan Stawiński, a participant in the Warsaw Uprising. He himself wrote the script. The finished script was first given to the director Tadeusz Konwicki , who gave it to Andrzej Wajda. The film was made in 1956 at the end of the Stalinist era in Poland . Like every script at the time, it had to be submitted to a commission for approval. So far, the Warsaw Uprising has not been allowed to be the subject of a film, as a representation of the uprising could always be interpreted in an anti-Soviet way. The Soviet Red Army was already on the eastern bank of the Vistula before the outbreak of the uprising. The reasons for the failure to intervene in favor of the Polish Home Army are still controversial among historians today. Military and strategic reasons are mentioned as well as the politically anti-Soviet orientation of the Polish Home Army. In the official interpretation of the time, the uprising was an attempt to create facts in favor of Poland's future orientation towards the West through a liberation without the help of Soviet troops. Compared to this position, a film about the Warsaw Uprising could have given the Polish Home Army an upgrade.
In the commission, however, there were also former supporters of the uprising, who were emotionally touched by the script. Wajda argued that the uprising was only a background for depicting individual personal fates. The script was eventually approved. Wajda realized the film on the outdoor area of the Film School in Łódź . The canal was built there true to the original. The film would not have been shot in a real canal due to the darkness, but it still had the real light effect of sunshine shining into the open exits. The final scene of the film was shot in the ruins of Warsaw that still exist. Wajda's assistants were the later outstanding directors Kazimierz Kutz and Janusz Morgenstern .
The film follows the tradition of Italian neorealism by directors such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica . The young Polish filmmakers of the 1950s saw in these directors brothers in spirit who inspired them to create a new Polish film that stood in contrast to the Polish cinema of the 1930s. The canal is one of the outstanding examples of Polish neorealism of the time.
Reviews
“A harrowing war document that focuses on individual tragedies, but at the same time illustrates the historical situation in a harrowing way. Excellent in the image design. "
“It doesn't accuse, this film - it accuses, but without any tearfulness, without pathos. ... This film shows a modern inferno in images of unforgettable character. "
“Bitterly honest, the film reconstructs the commanded and from the start hopeless march of a troop of resistance fighters of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 through the underground sewers and reproduces the miserable perishing of these people in flowing rubbish and disgusting fumes. Although the director was unable to capture the desolation of the process in a tight plot, he succeeded in depicting bravery, failure and the humiliating nonsense of the war in scenes that outclass more routine heroic films from NATO countries . "
Awards
- The channel was shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1957 . Andrzej Wajda, then 31, received the jury's special prize . It was the first international success of Polish cinema and for Andrzej Wajda it became the basis for his further career.
literature
- Muzaffer Kirgiz: The Canal. In Filmstellen VSETH & VSU (ed.): Science Fiction. - Andrzej Wajda. Documentation. Association of Students at the University of VSU, Zurich 1990, without ISBN, pp. 26–29
Web links
- The channel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Channel - A film by Andrzej Wajda
- The channel on Andrzej Wajda's homepage
- The channel on Filmpolski.pl with photos
Individual evidence
- ↑ Humans like rats . , in: Die Zeit , No. 31/1958
- ↑ Der Kanal (Poland) , in Der Spiegel , No. 36 of September 3, 1958