Jadwiga Barańska

Jadwiga Barańska (2009)

Jadwiga Barańska (born October 21, 1935 in Łódź ) is a Polish actress , director and screenwriter . The theater and film actress became known to a wide audience through her decades of collaboration with Jerzy Antczak , who used her as the leading actress in his award-winning films Countess Cosel and Nights and Days (1975).

biography

Jadwiga Barańska studied at the State Theater School (PWSTiF) in Łódź. In 1958 she finished her acting training and from 1959 to 1966 she was a member of the ensemble of the "Classical Theater" ( Teatrze Klasycznym ) in Warsaw . There she acted in plays such as Gabryela Zapolska's Die Moral der Frau Dulski or in the title role of Lodoiska . In 1966 Barańska moved to the Warsaw “Polish Theater” ( Teatr Polski ), where she was successfully seen in various plays until 1972.

In addition to her work in the theater celebrated Barańska 1957 her feature film debut with a supporting role in Ewa Petelskas and Czeslaw Petelskis Romance wrecks in which Zbigniew Cybulski played the leading role. Three years later she first acted under the direction of Jerzy Antczak in Przechadzka między dobrem i złem (1961), the implementation of Michał Choromański 's work of the same name for the Polish television theater ( Teatr Telewizji ). Barańska then worked increasingly with Antczak, who staged numerous classics of world literature for television and with whom she also found her private happiness. She took on leading roles in Honoré de Balzac's father Goriot ( Ojciec Goriot , 1962), the role of Laura in Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie ( Szklana menażeria , 1963), Lavinia in Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Elektra ( Żałoba przystoi Elektrze , 1965) or Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters ( Trzy siostry , 1968). She achieved international success on the big screen for the first time in 1968 when she took on the title role in Jerzy Antczak's costume film Countess Cosel . The part of the lover of August the Strong (played by Mariusz Dmochowski ) brought her the Actor Award of the Phnom Penh International Film Festival in 1969 .

Barańska succeeded in surpassing this success in 1975 with the female lead in Antczak's Nights and Days . In the film adaptation of Maria Dąbrowska's four-part family saga, the actress and Jerzy Bińczycki slipped into the role of a Polish couple who witnessed the political, social and economic change in Poland from the January uprising in 1863 to the First World War . The drama, dubbed by critics as the Polish equivalent of Victor Fleming's Gone with the Wind , received an invitation to compete at the 26th Berlin Film Festival in 1976 , where Barańska was awarded the Silver Bear for best actress at the film festival. For her portrait of Barbara Niechcic, the competition jury led by Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz preferred the 31-year-old to well-known actors such as the American Geraldine Chaplin ( Buffalo Bill and the Indians ) or the French Miou-Miou ( F for Fairbanks ). Barańska was the first Polish actress to triumph in Berlin. A year later, Nights and Days was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film , but it was left behind for Jean-Jacques Annaud's longing for Africa .

Awarded several awards in Poland for her performance in nights and days , including the country's Golden Cross of Merit in 1975 , Barańska left her socialist homeland with her husband Jerzy Antczak in the late 1970s and emigrated to the United States . There Antczak worked as a professor of film and television at the University of California (UCLA) in Los Angeles .

The couple returned to Poland in the early 1990s. Barańska then supported her husband as co-scriptwriter on the television version of Humphrey Cobbs Paths of Glory ( Ścieżki chwały ) and Dama kameliowa (both 1995), a Polish remake of Alexandre Dumas ' The Lady of the Camellias with Anna Radwan and Jan Frycz in the leading roles . A year later she was involved in the script and direction of Antczak's television adaptation Cezar i Pompejusz (1996) based on Henry de Montherlant . She took on her last film role to date in 2002 under the direction of her husband in Chopin - Longing for Love (2002). In the award-winning biopic about Frédéric Chopin (played by Piotr Adamczyk ), she acted as the mother of the well-known composer and was again jointly responsible for the script and direction.