Polish Cinema on Disc

[Perkins Cobb]

MichaelB, thanks for the Telewizja Kinopolska updated list. You've saved us all some legwork.

Couple of questions ... First, can you confirm that the other Kazimierz Kutz box set (from GM Distribution, containing the films Na straży swej stać będę, Skok, Upał, and Paciorki jednego różańca) does not have English subtitles?

And also, are any of these out of print, or am I just having trouble retrieving the earlier ones on Merlin? After some persistent searching I found everything on my wishlist except the Grzegorz Królikiewicz set, which I see for sale on import websites, albeit with a radically inflated sticker price.

[MichaelB]

Couple of questions ...

...which I've only just spotted, so apologies for the delay.

First, can you confirm that the other Kazimierz Kutz box set (from GM Distribution, containing the films Na straży swej stać będę, Skok, Upał, and Paciorki jednego różańca) does not have English subtitles?

I'm guessing it doesn't, but I haven't seen it at first hand.

And also, are any of these out of print, or am I just having trouble retrieving the earlier ones on Merlin? After some persistent searching I found everything on my wishlist except the Grzegorz Królikiewicz set, which I see for sale on import websites, albeit with a radically inflated sticker price.

When I was in two branches of Empik in Kraków back in April, they seemed to have pretty much everything in stock apart from the specific box I was after (the then newly-released Horrory) - certainly going right back to the original Skolimowski/Holland releases. So I'm guessing everything's still in print.

I know what you mean about the import prices: they're utterly absurd when set against Polish retailers. You absolutely shouldn't have to pay more than £20/$30 for the boxes themselves, and postage can be minimised by ordering several - my typical Merlin order contains at least 7 or 8 items.

Talking of which, my latest Merlin box arrived this morning, so I can confirm the following:

• Krzysztof Kieślowski's Kartoteka does not have English subtitles (as expected, but I also managed to get a copy of the play The Card Index off Amazon, so hopefully it'll be relatively straightforward to follow).

• I also bought the edition of Andrzej Munk's Eroica from this series. I'd been tipped off in advance that it didn't have subtitles, and this turned out to be correct - but I was curious to see whether the "digital reconstruction" improved on the hideous, grainy, contrasty versions previously put out by Best Film Co, Polart et al. In a word, yes: the film is unrecognisable from before, and none of those adjectives now applies. It's not perfect - I think they've been a little overzealous with the DNR - but it's light years ahead of any other version I've seen. Second Run got as far as announcing a release date for the film before dropping plans after hearing that this restoration was under way - hopefully they'll be picking it up (presumably they still have the UK distribution rights) and adding decent subtitles. The film was superb even in a barely-watchable copy, so I can't wait to watch it in a version that actually does it justice. Incidentally, the book that makes up half the package is surprisingly good - a very short essay about the person under review (in this case the actor Edward Dziewoński), and most of the remaining 90 pages are taken up with a filmography illustrated by large, well-produced stills in both black and white and colour. So unlike many Polish DVD booklets, it's not a write-off if you don't know the language.

• Best Film Co's new spine-numbered series 'Kanon Filmów Polskich' does have English subtitles, as mentioned not only on the back but also very prominently via a Union Jack sticker on the front. The booklets are in Polish only, though. There are three colour-coded series, so here's a complete list of the 'Komedie' ('Comedies'):

1. Our Folks/Take it Easy/Big Deal (Sami swoi/Nie ma mocnych/Kochaj albo rzuć, d. Sylwester Chechiński, 1971/74/77)
2. How I Unleashed the Second World War (Jak rozpętałem II wojnę światową, d. Tadeusz Chmielewski, 1968)
3. Teddy Bear (Miś, d. Stanisław Bareja, 1981)
4. The Cruise (Rejs, d. Marek Piwowski, 1970)
5. I Don't Like Mondays (Nie lubię poniedziałku, d. Chechiński, 1971)
6. Sex Mission (Seksmisja, d. Juliusz Machulski, 1984)
7. Go For Broke/Go For Broke II (Vabank/Vabank II, d. Machulski, 1981/85)
8. Kingsize (Kingsajz, d. Machulski, 1987)
9. Boys Don't Cry (Chłopaki nie płacz, d. Olaf Lubaszenko, 2000)
10. Coyote Morning (Poranek kojota, d. Lubaszenko, 2001)

August sees a similar 'Klasyka' ('Classics') collection, containing:

1. Kanal (d. Andrzej Wajda, 1957)
2. Ashes and Diamonds (Popiół i diament, d. Wajda, 1958)
3. Night Train (Pociąg, d. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959)
4. Goodbye Till Tomorrow (Do widzenie, do jutra, d. Janusz Morgenstern, 1960)
5. Innocent Sorcerers (Niewinni czarodzieje, d. Wajda, 1960)
6. Knife in the Water (Nóż w wodzie, d. Roman Polanski, 1962)
7. Salto (d. Tadeusz Konwicki, 1965)
8. Interrogation (Przesłuchanie, d. Ryszard Bugajski, 1982)
9. My Nikifor (Mój Nikifor, d. Krzysztof Krauze, 2002)
10. Saviour's Square (Plac Zbawiciela, d. Krauze, 2006)

The booklets mention a third series, 'Ekranizacje' (i.e. 'Screen Adaptations'), but individual titles haven't been announced yet. However, one website lists these five titles as possibilities:

• Peasants (Chłopi, d. Jan Rybkowski, 1973)
• Pharaoh (Faraon, d. Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1965)
• Nights and Days (Noce i dnie, d. Jerzy Antczak, 1975)
• The Wedding (Wesele - I'm guessing Andrzej Wajda 1972 as opposed to Wojciech Smarzowski 2004)
• In Desert and Jungle (W pustyni i w puszczy, d. Władysław Ślesicki, 1973)

[Perkins Cobb]

MichaelB, thanks for the new info. At the moment my problem is not so much finding someone to sell me the Krolikiewicz set as finding the money to pay for it ... and now I'll also have to come up with the cash for Salto and Pharaoh, at least.

[MichaelB]

Szpital przemienienia (1978)

The film is set in a psychiatric hospital in early 1940's Poland.

An English-friendly DVD is available in Poland.

It's one of the three films in the latest Telewizja Kinopolska box, this one devoted to Edward Żebrowski.

Full contents are:

• Salvation (Ocalenie, 1972) - drama about a prominent biochemist whose grave illness makes him change his attitude towards the world and humanity.
• Hospital of Transfiguration (Szpital przemienienia, 1978) - story of the terrible problems faced by the staff of a Polish hospital under Nazi domination during World War II.
• In Broad Daylight (W biały dzień, 1980) - 1905, during the resurgent movement of nationalism against Austrian, Russian and German rule, a young student, acting from idealism, fright, and the love of a woman, becomes a hired killer for the nationalists, but begins to question the guilt of his 'target'.

I'm assuming specs will be identical to all the other boxes - i.e. adequate transfers and English subtitles - and I've updated my master list of the entire series.

[admira]

Are all those blu-ray titles released already? Or in some cases it's a pre-order?

[MichaelB]

I've just received my latest Merlin package, and I'm happy to confirm that Salto has English subtitles - and the same Union Jack logo on the front. It's probably safe to assume that this is true of all ten releases in the 'Klasyka' collection (see above for list). (UPDATE: The Salto transfer is diabolical - VHS quality at best, and that may be being generous. I suspect that this edition is significantly better, given that it's labelled 'digitally restored' and that the other releases that I've seen in the same series have been vast improvements on the old Best Film Co editions - but it doesn't have subtitles, and I couldn't find an English .srt file online.)

I did a bit of Googling to see if there's any more info about the 'Ekranizacje' (Adaptations) series, but this link suggests that it's just the five mentioned above. No confirmation of English subtitles yet - precedent suggests that it'll have them, but I can't be sure just yet.

The Żebrowski box also has English subtitles, in line with everything else in the Telewizja Kinopolska series - but no extras. The booklet says that the next box will be devoted to Aleksander Ford, but I can't find any indication of titles yet: here's hoping it'll be important rarities like The Boys from Barska Street rather than yet another reissue of the crappy Knights of the Teutonic Order transfer (if they include the latter, I don't for one second imagine it'll be the restoration).

I was so impressed with the Eroica improvements (see above) that I bought The Saragossa Manuscript in the same series. My old Mr Bongo DVD was nowhere near as bad as the previous editions of Eroica, but even so the new version is startlingly clean by comparison. Running both on the same hi-res monitor one above the other (handily, the Scope format facilitates this well), it's clear that the new transfer improves on every level - the image is rock-solid (Mr Bongo's is distinctly jittery), less contrasty, with noticeably more fine detail and with a fair chunk of additional information at the sides thanks to the full Scope ratio. I took part in a discussion a few years back about whether the Mr Bongo (and Image) discs had been cropped or squished, and can now confirm that the answer is definitively "cropped".

It's probably worth waiting to see if a Blu-ray is on the cards (one was announced but postponed a year ago), not least because my new DVD doesn't have subtitles. That said, I had little difficulty finding a usable set online, though I had to fiddle with the timings to get them to work - not least because this new version splits the film across two DVDs (reflecting the original two-part structure). Incidentally, the Zbigniew Cybulski booklet is excellent - the essay is in Polish only, unsurprisingly, but the bulk is taken up with high-quality stills from just about all his major work.

[Lazertron]

The Aleksander Ford box is now listed at Merlin.

Films included are:
Piątka z ulicy Barskiej
Pierwszy dzień wolności
Krzyżaków
Ulica graniczna oraz dokument: Kochamy i nienawidzony

[MichaelB]

Just to flesh that out in more English-friendly form:

Border Street (Ulica Graniczna, 1948)
The Boys from Barska Street (Piątka z ulicy Barskiej, 1954)
Knights of the Teutonic Order (Krzyżacy, 1960)
The First Day of Freedom (Pierwszy dzień wolności, 1964)

I'm prepared to bet a great deal that Knights of the Teutonic Order will be the same cropped and crappy transfer that's already been released in Poland and Britain - though I suppose it won't be BBFC-snipped, so it'll be a marginal advance on my Second Run edition.

That aside, it looks like a pretty good package - the first two films are two of the more important Polish films from the immediate postwar period. It's a shame they didn't include The Youth of Chopin (1950), a rather amusing attempt at giving the composer a Socialist Realist spin (in reality, he was decidedly conservative politically), but I've got a copy of that anyway.

[petoluk]

But, doesn't '...oraz dokument: Kochamy i nienawidzony. Dramat życia i smioerci twórcy "Krzyżaków"' mean '...and documentary: Loved and hated. The drama of life and death of the creator of "Krzyżacy"'? Seems to me "Krzyżacy" as such won't be included in the box... :-s

[MichaelB]

Yes, you're absolutely right - sorry, I took Lazertron's list on trust and should have been suspicious of the spelling of 'Krzyżaków'.

Oh well, that's good news - I want the restoration, not another edition of the lousy version, and given Telewizja Kinopolska's modus operandi with these sets it's bound to have been the latter.

[Lazertron]

Please forgive my lousy Polish, I did believe that it would be included in the box set.

[Zinoviev]

With the flurry of older Polish films coming out in new DVD editions, can anyone tell me whether Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Death of the President (Smierc Prezydenta) has come out in a good (and subtitled) edition? I've long wanted to use this film in an E. European history course I teach, but the Facets DVD is so bad (lousy transfer and entire scenes without subtitles).

[MichaelB]

With the flurry of older Polish films coming out in new DVD editions, can anyone tell me whether Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Death of the President (Smierc Prezydenta) has come out in a good (and subtitled) edition? I've long wanted to use this film in an E. European history course I teach, but the Facets DVD is so bad (lousy transfer and entire scenes without subtitles).

It's out in Poland, but I'm reasonably sure that it doesn't have subtitles. Also, given that it's from Best Film Co and going very cheap, the chances are that it's the same transfer as the Facets/Polart edition - it'll be a PAL original rather than a PAL-to-NTSC conversion, but I suspect that won't make a huge amount of difference.

[Perkins Cobb]

Major disappointment about Salto. Would've been at the top of my very long Polish wish list.

[MichaelB]

A Blu-ray of Salto, based on the recent restoration, was prematurely announced last year - but I think it's still on the cards. It'll be in the same series as the Ashes and Diamonds, Night Train and Austeria Blu-rays, all of which had English subtitles.

[Perkins Cobb]

... or the Knights of the Teutonic Order Blu-ray, which still doesn't exist?

[MichaelB]

I don't know about that one, but the Studio Kadr titles are apparently still on the cards - from what I hear (from two sources) they were postponed rather than cancelled after Gazeta Wyborcza funded a series of book+DVD editions based on the new restorations.

[MichaelB]

Beaver on Arrow's new dual-format edition of Ashes and Diamonds.

As far as I'm aware, the source transfer is the same as the one that fuelled Pro-Motion's Polish Blu-ray, but while that had no significant extras to speak of (bar trailers and a "before" and "after" restoration demo), this has a 25-minute high-def interview with Wajda and an extremely comprehensive booklet that turned out better than I'd envisaged when I was asked to compile it. I originally sent them my introductory essay and two Polish-sourced ones (by Wajda himself and by film historian Marek Hendrykowski), assuming that they'd pick just one of the latter - but in the end they boosted the page count to cram everything in.

Oh, and my contact at Arrow says that the Beaver is wrong about the region code - it should be region-free.

[MichaelB]

Not strictly on-topic, but anyone in or near London who fancies a choice of 49 (!) Polish films on the big screen between next week and the beginning of December should have a look at this.

[Duncan Hopper]

.

[MichaelB]

I've seen more or less exactly half, and the quality threshold is impressively high (which was presumably the point).

[John Edmond]

Can anybody recommend a book that provides a nice survey of Polish cinema? In other words, what are Haltof's two books like?

[MichaelB]

I consult Haltof's books more frequently than any of my others, so there's your answer!

Polish National Cinema is probably the best single-volume chronological overview of Polish film history in English - my edition goes from its origins until well into the 2000s, though it stops short of the post-2005 cultural and commercial renaissance.

The Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema is exactly what the title implies: an alphabetised survey of key films, people, events and other subjects that's rather more wide-ranging than the BFI Companion to Eastern European and Russian Cinema (though, to be fair, the latter seeks to cover a much bigger area). I'm guessing that the cheaper An A to Z of Polish Cinema has a huge amount in common, and may even be a straight reprint.

For more detailed surveys of individual periods, Sheila Skaff's The Law of the Looking Glass: Cinema in Poland 1896-1939 is hard to beat for thoroughness, especially given that many of the films from that period no longer exist. And while I have to declare an interest in that I'm one of the contributors, Polish Cinema Now! is a hugely valuable survey of post-1989 Polish cinema that brings it more or less up to date (i.e. well past Haltof's coverage), and also comes with a superbly curated double-disc collection of 21 Polish films, one per year. Anthony Nield reviewed it here.

Annoyingly, decent English-language coverage of two of Poland's great film art forms, animation and documentary, is harder to come by. Giannalberto Bendazzi's Cartoons should be mandatory for animation fans anyway, but its remit is even wider than the BFI book mentioned above, and the only dedicated book on Polish animation that I'm aware of is currently in Polish only. As for documentary, the booklets that come with PWA/NiNA's DVD sets beat any separately-issued book that I'm aware of.

[John Edmond]

Thanks, that's pretty much the exact overview I was looking for. I was mainly worried that Polish National Cinema would be distinctly lacklustre - looks like I'll be grabbing it up with Polish Cinema Now! to follow.

[L.A.]

Stara baśń: Kiedy słońce było bogiem / An Ancient Tale: When the Sun Was a God (Jerzy Hoffman, 2003)

Anyone familiar with this?