Story of a sin

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Movie
German title The story of a sin
Original title Dzieje grzechu
Country of production Poland
original language Polish
Publishing year 1975
length 130 minutes
Rod
Director Walerian Borowczyk
production Helena Nowicka
music Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - Violin Concerto in E minor, played by Konstanty Andrzej Kulka
camera Zygmunt Samosiuk
cut Lidia Pacewicz
occupation

The film adaptation The Story of a Sin ( Dzieje grzechu , 1975) is a passion drama by the Polish film director Walerian Borowczyk .

action

At the beginning of the 20th century in the middle classes of a Polish city. Young Ewa, who lives with her parents, falls into an obsessive love for a lodger who is trying to get a divorce from his wife.

When he moves out again without leaving an address, she persistently looks for him against her mother's sharp resistance, finds what she is looking for, and they get involved out of wedlock. After his attempt at divorce in Poland fails, he sets off for Rome to raise his case there. The surprised Ewa has to find out that she is pregnant and hides in the country, where she kills the child right after the birth. She travels after him. When she arrives there, her lover has already left for Paris. Destitute and susceptible to blackmail, she becomes dependent on the favor of different men and lives in different locations on the Riviera, in Paris, Vienna and Krakow. She lets herself be caught in a robbery by asking one of her suitors, a count, to come to her in Vienna with all his money, where her accomplices kill him. Another stop for her is the brothel, before a philanthropist gets her work in a greenhouse. The murder brothers catch up with them and use them as bait to rob the lodger. She realizes that his life is in danger, warns him and is killed in the subsequent shootout.

background

Literary template

The film is based on a story by Stefan Żeromski , which was first published in 1908 as a series. Borowczyk's version is the third film adaptation since 1911 and 1933.

actor

Leading actress Długolecka did not need to rehearse for the cast; she only met the director the day before shooting began and was immediately engaged. He just noticed how she looked and how she was moving. Significantly, he was not present when the intense birth scene was filmed. Długolecka became a victim of her acting performance, as she was committed to the role of Ewa after this film and for years did not receive any suitable role offers.

meaning

The story of a sin has a lot in common with Borowczyk's earlier film Blanche (1971) : Both are dramas in a historical setting, with a woman and several men who passionately desire but also abuse them. But while the woman in Blanche remains a passive, completely innocent victim, in the story of a sin she is involved in her own fate by frantically indulging her longing. “The object, full of passions, violence and extreme melodramatic situations, allows Borowczyk to recreate the universe that has always fascinated him - an eroticism tainted with perversion - while indulging in a subtle stylistic game. "

After Blanche , Borowczyk shifted the emphasis in the Immoral Stories to artistic eroticism, which he has significantly reduced in the story of a sin in favor of feelings, before then in La Bête (1975) they both balance each other and in later films eroticism becomes dominant again .

Borowczyk had lived in France since the late 1950s, where almost all of his films were made; the story of a sin is the only one in Poland and filmed in its mother tongue.

Reviews

  • Lexicon of international film : a tearful melodrama, excellent and staged in aesthetically exquisite pictures. In terms of content, however, nothing more than a magazine novel in luxury packaging.

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Grazyna Długolecka in conversation, bonus material on the DVD edition "The Story of a Sin", Nouveaux Pictures, NPD1018
  2. ↑ Jacek Fuksiewicz: Le cinéma polonais. Les Editions du Cerf, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-204-04046-0 , p. 141.

Web links