Without anesthesia
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Without anesthesia |
| Original title | Bez znieczulenia |
| Country of production | Poland |
| original language | Polish |
| Publishing year | 1978 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Andrzej Wajda |
| script |
Agnieszka Holland , Andrzej Wajda |
| production | Zespół Filmowy X |
| camera | Edward Kłosiński |
| cut | Halina Prugar-Ketling |
| occupation | |
| |
Without anesthesia is a Polish feature film by Andrzej Wajda from 1978.
action
Jerzy Michałowski is a popular Polish journalist and foreign correspondent . At the beginning of the film there is a show on television called Three Against One . Jerzy is confronted with questions from three journalists. The show gives an insight into his life, which is shaped by the experiences in different crisis areas of the world. He was a war correspondent in Honduras and El Salvador as well as in Chile during the 1973 coup . Jerzy's wife Ewa watches the program with her lover and Jacek Rościszewski. During the broadcast, Ewa drives to the airport with their little daughter to pick up Jerzy from a trip abroad. When they arrive in front of her house, Ewa announces that she has left Jerzy. A world collapses for Jerzy. The busy man hadn't noticed anything of a marital crisis.
Jerzy seeks advice from his wife's best friend. Wanda is a dentist and pulls a tooth from Jerzy without anesthesia while she explains the situation of his marriage to him. Marital problems are not Jerzy's only problems, however. In the editorial office he argues with his biggest competitor Jacek Rościszewski, who has meanwhile also become his biggest competitor in his private life. His university lectures are suspended and his next trip abroad has not been approved. A gradual process of dismantling has begun. However, Jerszy tries hard not to raise these problems by the big bell. Although he fights with his competitor Jacek, who realizes that Ewa is not the right partner for him, all efforts to get Ewa are unsuccessful. At one last meeting for dinner he can convince Ewa. Both of them remember old times, but for Ewa also the realization that she will never be able to emancipate herself from Jerzy intellectually. Eventually the couple ends up before the divorce judge. The couple are silent about the mud fight organized by Ewa's lawyer. Both are deeply hurt by the process and leave the room. A little later Ewa comes to Jerzy's house, where an ambulance is taking away the dead Jerzy. The gas stove had been broken for some time and has now exploded.
background
The film is designed very realistically and does not require any film music. The set designer Allan Starski created the decorations . Without anesthesia is one of the most important films of the so-called cinema of moral unrest (Kino moralnego niepokoju) .
Reviews
"Brittle and dialogue-oriented statement against conformity and mediocrity, subtle in terms of milieu and character, excellent performance."
“Without anesthesia” is a ghostly film, at the same time the most artless film that Wajda has ever made. He uses the camera like an indiscreet television reporter: lots of close-ups, simple shot-counter-shot cuts, flat, cold light, calculated volatilities with the handheld camera. So there is no sentimental story of the Passion to be seen, but a brutal protocol, very direct, straightforward and also "without anesthesia" for the viewer. "
Awards
Andrzej Wajda won the Polish Gdynia Film Festival in 1978 with this film and entered the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1979 . In Cannes he was awarded the Ecumenical Jury Prize .
literature
- Andreas Janser: "Without anesthesia". in film positions VSETH & VSU , Ed .: Science Fiction. - Andrzej Wajda. Documentation 1990. Association of Students at the University of VSU, Zurich 1990, without ISBN, pp. 58–63