Original subtitles

Ashes and Diamonds,

Andrzej Wajda's next film afterKanal,

that I personally consider to be the best one,

certainly one of the three best Polish films to date.

Ashes and Diamonds is a story about the last days of the war.

But the Germans have gone, the war continues somewhere far away,

and here in this town, far behind the front line,

there's a celebration,

a party celebrating the last day of the war.

But there was a difference between the last day of the war

in America, France, or even the Soviet Union,

and that in Poland.

In those three countries I mentioned, it was a day of victory

and joy that it was finally over.

“Our sacrifices and casualties made sense.

Now we can breathe in peace.”

tn Poland it was the opposite,

because, on the one hand, the German occupier retreated,

but on the other hand, the Russian occupier,

about whom we didn't yet know much, was approaching.

But we strongly suspected that the worst was yet to come.

The difference in atmosphere

between the last days of the war here and there

made clear that we had something to say to the world,

something new and different,

that could only happen here, on this soil,

something impossible to transfer to an American context.

Ashes and Diamonds is an adaptation

of à very popular book by Jerzy Andrzejewski

published right after the war.

I didn't even read this book when it was published,

because it was required reading for students,

and I have to say I wasn't interested in it.

1 think Tadeusz Janczar got me interested in it.

I was especially interested in what he told me.

He said, “There's this fantastic scene at the end.

It's dawn, and everybody is still dancing even as they leave.

Like in The Wedding, by Wyspianski.”

That stimulated my imagination,

and I began to take an interest in the book.

When I read the novel, I realized there was only one solution:

to film it such that everything happens

over the course of one day and one night.

The first thing was to condense everything into the night of May 9th,

when Poland and the entire communist bloc

were celebrating victory.

The war is ending, but it still haunts all the characters:

left-wing communists and resistance fighters

entering this new reality,

carrying the baggage of everything that happened before.

The screenplay was approved —

But this was an easier case,

because the book was recognized as a revelation,

and it was very well received by the authorities,

because for them the most important character was the party secretary,

whom they believed to be à positive hero.

Of course, they didn't suspect that —

They didn't realize the film version would be

decidedly different from the book.

I eliminated a few story lines from the book

and concentrated on Maciek Chelmicki,

who became the main character of the movie,

whereas the main character in the book had been à communist named Szczuka.

Maciek Chelmicki had been fust one of the characters.

Andrzejewski liked that idea,

and that was the key to the future success of the film.

Because nobody was interested in an old communist,

but they were interested in a young resistance fighter

who confronts the new reality — which ends up Killing him —

and who has obligations

not only to his superiors, but also to the oath he took.

So this choice was a decisive factor in the film's success.

Later, Jerzy Andrzejewski wrote some new scenes and dialogue.

He added a lot of things,

because we recognized that the communist in the book...

wasn't colorful enough to use in the film.

So we added his son, whom he wants to rescue.

The son is on one side. The father on the other.

The son is still in the forest with resistance fighters,

the young men who wouldn't leave the forest

because they thought WWIII could start at any moment.

And on the other side is this old prewar communist

who wants to build à new reality.

I decided to create a Spanish past for this old communist,

meaning he was a communist who had fought in the Spanish war.

1 came up with this entire made-up scene.

Our first days in Spain.

Grabowski died in the forest,

and Rubacki in France in 1944.

You remember there were 36 of us at first?

And who's left now?

Those were good times.

And these will be good times too.

Those communists who had gone to fight in Spain

were judged differently in Poland,

because they had gone to Spain to fight for somebody else's freedom.

This was an old Polish tradition.

We didn't have freedom ourselves, so we fought for the freedom of others.

And in a moral sense, this group was better received by society

than those who had come from the Soviet Union.

Stalin dealt with that group later, and quite bloodily, for the most part.

So all those who had managed to survive

not only Spain but also Stalin's repression

were a kind of rarity.

I would call them ideological communists.

This was a very important point for me.

That personal plot about his son, and the fact that he had fought in Spain,

cast him in a different light for the audience.

1! wanted his character to counterbalance

this young resistance fighter, Maciek Chelmicki, played by Cybulski.

When the screenplay was ready,

we realized — especially Andrzej, of course —

that the film's success, its victory, so to speak,

would depend greatly on how we cast the lead role.

And I won't hide the fact that I was completely involved

and wanted Zbyszek Cybulski to play it right from the start.

Nevertheless, I met with a certain resistance on Andrzej's part.

I suggested Zbyszek to him, of course —

But I wasn't surprised,

because Andrzej had already made à note —

He had apparentiy envisioned, even while the screenplay was being written,

that Tadzio Janczar would play the part,

because he was so amazing in Kanal

and helped create such a convincing character.

And that role was close to this character,

because there, he'd been involved with the underground and would be so here.

So I believe Andrzej was completely disposed towards that.

As far as Cybulski was concerned,

my problem lay not only in the fact

that he wanted to act in his own shoes, pants, jacket,

and dark glasses, which was totally irrational,

but on top of that, because I knew very well how those young men looked,

I was afraid he would be so far removed in his behavior

from those Home Army fighters

that everybody would recognize it, and nobody would accept him.

I was still representing the audience from the time of the war.

I didn't realize that a different kind of audience would come to the theater,

that it was going to be a young audience,

that they would need their own hero,

and that he would be a hero for that audience.

And that's why I hesitated.

However, for me it was very important

that Zbyszek Cybulski should play the role for a number of reasons.

I won't try to hide the fact that one of the reasons was very selfish.

We had begun writing the screenplay of my debut film

Good-bye, Till Tomorrow,

and I knew that if we were separated for six months —

because we were going to shoot the film in Wroclaw,

and back then filming took a long time,

and there were lengthy preparations,

and I knew that if Zbyszek and 1 got separated for à long time,

we wouldn't finish the screenplay.

And so, I attempted to sow some seeds of uncertainty in Andrzej.

I must admit, I really agonized over that critical night,

when 1 told Kuba Morgenstern — who was not only his supporter,

but was trying to explain to me that I wouldn't find anybody better.

And, of course, he was right.

I held out until the last moment,

because I still thought somebody better would come along.

But I had also suggested Zbyszek for Kanal.

We watched the screen tests together.

And Andizej said, Listen, I've always believed” —

And rightfully so. I give him that. “/'ve always believed

that the eyes are crucial when it comes to actors.

See how Zbyszek looks without glasses.

He has such tiny eyes, and he loses the personality of the character.”

Back then, of course, I was working as Andrzej's assistant for the first time,

and Andrzej convinced me —

In fact, Tadzio Janczar did a fantastic job with the part,

and it was a success.

But this time I tried to convince Andrzej,

and Andrzej agreed that Zbyszek could come for a screen test.

Slowly, gradually, he got me used to the idea

that I didn't have any other choice.

That this was it, and that fate wanted it that way.

So we did some rehearsals,

because Andrzej would only come by when we had something concrete.

There was à scene that was later staged in the bathroom

where Zbyszek is standing and swinging on the door.

And Andizej was so convinced and liked Zbyszek so much after aí,

that we saw 1 hadn't just found an ally.

He had his heart set on Zbyszek playing the part,

and, of course, he made the decision.

Cybulski as Maciek Chelmicki.

Here a problem arose.

What did those young men look like? Who were they?

I knew that very well, because, for one thing, I had been one of them,

and second, I knew how they dressed.

Cybulski wanted nothing to do with how they had dressed.

I remember when he categorically refused to put on a costume.

He thought he should wear what he normally wore.

His shoes, his pants, his jacket.

He had seen during the screen test

that you could play that role in glasses and jeans, carrying that kind of sack.

He was so convinced by this character.

I have to say that from a distance,

from the perspective of almost 40 years later,

when I watch Ashes and Diamonds,

I think that was the moment when I became a real director.

Namely, I was able to not direct what didn't need to be directed.

I was mature enough...

to let others make their own contributions to the film.

Before, I wouldn't have allowed it. I would have told him to change.

I would have taken his glasses off,

because he didn't look like the young men of that time.

So I encouraged him to play it the way he wanted.

1 liked it,

and he could feel I accepted him from behind the camera,

that he could do even more, be even bolder.

Nobody in Poland acted like he did.

We understood each other very quickly,

because a few months before we started shooting Ashes and Diamonds,

Cybulski had gone to Paris.

He was working there, and he saw some movies.

I asked if he saw Rebel Without a Cause, with James Dean.

He said, “Yes, I did.”

I said, “So what more can I say? That's what I like.”

That film made a great impression on me.

That ambivalence in movement and behavior,

his behavior and screen presence

were so unexpected and unpredictable.

James Dean gave us wings.

Now we knew you could act like that,

that you could approach that level of truth.

And Zbyszek realized his potential in this movie,

because nobody imposed anything on him.

I didn't fashion him after those young resistance fighters.

If I had dressed him in knee-high boots and short pants, like those young men,

he would have looked funny.

Because he was clumsy and awkward.

If I had dressed him in a jacket —

and they all wore those homespun jackets back then —

he would have been a funny character, and a historical character.

But thanks to his clothes and the dark glasses he wore,

he was à young man of “today,” of 1956, not 1945.

And that's why he was immediately accepted by the audience.

As far as other actors were concerned,

there was a problem about who would play the principal female role.

It wasn't easy to find an actress with a strong presence,

who was beautiful

and who could also act.

First, not that many movies were being made.

Television didn't exist.

Secondly, acting schools were accepting actors

who were to play factory workers and peasants,

so they were looking for totally different types.

I received instructions from Andrzej

to go look in all the acting schools,

because it needed to be a young, cool girl,

one who would be a personification, let us say,

of a girl from the Home Army who took part in the uprising.

1 went, among other places, to the school in Kraków,

where I looked at all the girls,

and I asked Ewa Krzyzewska to come for à screen test.

Ewa Krzyzewska definitely looked beautiful on screen.

Maybe she wasn't as spirited as I would have liked,

probabiy because there was so much life in Zbyszek?

But after many years, it turned out she was accepted

a lot more by others than I had accepted her as a director,

that her role had some kind of mystery to it, a melancholy,

that I couldn't see and wanted to root out.

But it turned out to be good.

It created in that character something mysterious, unsaid,

something feminine.

Ewa Krzyzewska received

a Crystal Star Award for her creation.

Not Cybulski, but her.

And she went to accept that award.

René Clair presents her with the award and falks with her.

There's à picture of her with Bergman.

She was traveling with the film, and I couldn't get a passport.

1 was sitting at home, and she was representing our film.

Because we had to send someone to accept this award,

but it couldn't be the director.

They wanted to punish me in à way.

1t's worth mentioning what's most typical of Wajda in this film.

That Wajda,

who also studied to become a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków,

was very fond of purely visual effects.

Jurek Wójcik, the cinematographer on the film,

suddenty began to work differently from Jerzy Lipman.

Our ideal was no longer Italian neorealism.

Our ideal was American film noir, gangster films.

We liked The Asphalt Jungle,

and movies like Scarface.

Those movies were exciting, and Wójcik was shooting like that.

Hyper-expressive shots, in high contrast, intense.

Everything that takes place in the film was shot in a studio.

The entire hotel was built in a studio and artificially lit.

At dawn, when a light is cast over the people dancing —

1t's impossible to find that in a natural environment.

Impossible.

The most important fact was that working under such perfect conditions —

because everything was shot in a studio —

we could rehearse a scene first, like in theater.

Often we would rehearse in the evening, because we lived in that studio.

It was a hotel and studio rolled into one.

So we would basically spend all day on the movie.

For example, 1! remember à scene in à church.

There was à scene with Zbyszek and Ewa Krzyzewska,

the scene where this Christ was hanging with his head down.

Everyone remembered that.

It's just one image in the film, but it signifies.

The meaning is not contained in words,

but in the image, and that's what people remember.

Or, in a hotel courtyard, suddenty

àa white horse enters the frame, as à symbol.

There are many such symbols in Wajda's films.

Some people don't like this,

saying it's disassociation and excessive embellishment,

but it's characteristic of Wajda's style.

And it can, through various shots and images devoid of dialogue,

contain certain profound messages.

But our inspiration was an American film

with very expressive images.

There is a beautiful scene in Asphalt Jungle where he's dying,

and those horses bend over him.

lt's an unforgettable scene that leaves a lump in your throat.

But in other movies too, this intense expressiveness of American film —

that was what we liked.

Of course, prior to that we had seen a masterpiece of American cinema,

Citizen Kane, by Orson Welles.

I call it our gospel.

So we followed in the direction of that intensity.

And those hyper-expressive scenes appeared in Ashes and Diamonds:

the scene with the burning glasses, created by Janusz Morgenstern.

And the scene when Maciek Chelmicki fires at Szczuka, the communist.

Normally, when someone gels hit here, he falls on his back.

And that's what we're used to.

But here, the thing was to create a certain metaphor.

tn my view, it's one of the most important scenes in the movie.

He not only falls into Zbyszek's arms, which is very meaningful,

but he's also helpless, and there's the whole drama of that generation,

the drama of the uprising, precisely in that one scene.

And in addition, we added the flares. 1t was the end of the war.

1t was the moment when everything in fact ended.

That's one of the most beautiful scenes thought up by Zbyszek Cybulski.

The one carrying out this death sentence,

who seems so close to leading a normal life,

is attacked by soldiers.

There's a beautiful scene, when he's caught under fire and is hit

against the backdrop of a clothesline, like in some Italian films.

He hides behind à sheet, holding the sheet against him,

and the blood flowing out of him appears on this sheet.

Andrei Tarkovsky, the famous Soviet director,

who said he owed a lot to Wajda,

discerns a symbolism in the colors here,

even though the film is black and white.

The blood is, of course, red, and the sheet is white,

and these are the national colors of Poland.

For me, collaborating with Andrzej Wajda on these three consecutive films —

first Kanal, then Ashes and Diamonds and Lotna —

was extremely significant, impossible to overestimate.

For me it had an impact on:

how à scene was constructed,

the dramatic structure Within a single scene,

so that we wouldn't be thinking only in terms of the entire film.

But to create à certain tension,

certain emotions, a certain expression,

even in à single composition or within à single scene.

So that this would become not just some dialogue,

not a drama for TV, but cinema. Above all, cinema!

So we made the film.

And of course, at the end there was the problem

of what would happen with the film.

But everything turned out all right,

because the political thaw that began in October of 1956

still had momentum.

There was no indication of what would happen in a few years.

Of course, it wasn t insignificant

that Jerzy Andrzejewski carried a communist party 1D card.

It was also important that his friends had party ID's as well.

As a result, what happened then never happened again.

Namely, the first screening was held for Andrzejewski, as the author,

and for his writer friends.

Nobody had expected,

given this novel by Jerzy Andrzejewski,

seen as having been made to order

for the government, the party,

that a different character would become the main character in the movie.

And I have to admit that all those writers who came

and accompanied Andrzejewski, who had the same IIID's as him,

unanimously accepted the film.

So it was difficult for the party to judge it and stop that process.

So later, it never happened like this again.

As soon as a film was made, one had to turn it over.

Who was watching it, where, who was judging it, we did not know.

When the decision was made to release the film,

1! knew then that that decision could not be taken back,

because it was the authorities' decision. They had signed off on it.

1! remember à phone call 1 received from à censor,

the same day before noon,

telling me to cut the last scene out,

the one where he dies on the garbage heap.

He told me to go to the theater and cut it out of the print copy.

But I was already so confident and insolent

that I knew one thing:

If we survive this evening, the film will be fine.

If the movie is released with this scene,

it means the scene will be left in, whether the authorities like it or not,

because they've already signed off on it.

So I didn't go to the theater and didn't cut out the scene,

and that's how the film got to its premiere —

by the way, ironically, in a theater called "The Moscow.”

From then on, there was only one problem left:

whether this film could represent us anywhere.

Of course, people in party circles and political circles

spoke up and said that the film was deeply troublesome,

that it was politically suspect

that someone else had become the main character,

that it should have been Szczuka,

that he had been pushed aside to play a secondary role,

and that the main character was a resistance fighter.

And on top of that, he dies on a garbage heap.

Interestingly, we were often asked,

“How come your films were released

if they were looked upon unfavorably by the authorities?”

Polish cinema, the Polish School, always won out

whenever it created images instead of dialogue.

Because it's easy to censor words.

Certain words, certain phrases, were forbidden.

The most important thing was not to say anything against the Soviet Union.

So any allusions to that effect were cut right away.

One couldn't say anything against Marxist ideology

because it would be cut right away.

But the last scene in Ashes and Diamonds is ambiguous,

because a young man

who had raised his fist at the people's government

and killed the party secretary, dies.

So where is his place?

On the garbage heap of history.

But the audience who came (fo see it looked at it in a different way.

The audience who came to the theater said,

“What kind of authority is this who murders our boy,

who kills him on a garbage heap?”

And those involved with Ashes and Diamonds

knew they had made a mistake,

that this film shouldn't have been made,

that this ambiguity was benefiting not those who had ordered the film

but those watching it.

Zbyszek Cybulski's performance was so captivating.

He was the embodiment of the youth who had died,

thousands of them, maybe even tens of thousands, or more.

He became their symbol.

Everybody was rooting for him, not for the communist he killed.

So what did the authorities decide to do?

Well, the film has been released. They can't retreat.

The public is seeing it in theaters.

But it mustn't be shown abroad.

After the success of Kanal at Cannes,

the management at Cannes, knowing that this film was being made,

said they were very eager to see it.

But the Communist authorities wouldn't allow it

and didn't send the film to Cannes,

where it could have had a great chance of winning.

However, there was a rather independent-thinking

film commission manager.

He wasn't very influential — because by then,

artists had more power than a manager appointed by the party.

But still, Mr. Lewinski took a chance,

saying that the next most important festival was the one in Venice,

the oldest of all, and he took the film to Venice.

It couldn't be shown in competition,

since it wasn t officially entered,

but it was shown out of competition.

Everybody loved it, and it received the only award it could,

from FIPRESCHYI, the award of the International Federation of Film Critics,

because the federation wasn't concerned

with whether the film was shown in or out of competition

and granted it an award.

And thanks to that, the film became known around the world.

But Mr. Lewinski paid for this by losing his job.

He was seen as disobedient to the party

and as having exceeded his authority.

The famous Polish pianist Artur Rubinstein,

who spent most of his life in the United States,

was not in Venice by accident.

He had learned that a Polish film was being shown

that nobody knew anything about,

because it had only just been released in Poland.

He went to see this film — it was Ashes and Diamonds —

shown in some small theater with other out-of-competition films.

When he saw it, he recognized that it was an important event.

And because Artur Rubinstein knew everybody,

and was friends with everybody, and everybody loved him,

including myself,

he asked René Clair to see the film with him.

So René Clair went with him,

and Artur Rubinstein watched it a second time.

And after seeing it, René Clair told everybody,

“Listen, this is a fantastic film.

It's being shown out of competition, but it's a big deal. You have to see it.”

So René Clair, through his recommendation,

opened the door for Ashes and Diamonds.

So my film was not only shown in Venice

but also recognized with David Selznik's award,

which I still have in my collection to this day.

So that's how the history of Ashes and Diamonds began.

And I have to mention something important.

Back then, the situation for European films

was totally different.

1t wasn't like movies were shown —

American film distribution hadn't yet imposed itself on the whole world.

It hadn't even dominated its own theaters yet.

Therefore, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds

could be shown in theaters in New York.

Not only in New York, but also in Los Angeles.

At the time when I was making Ashes and Diamonds,

this film still had a chance to be shown to an audience.

So European cinema existed back then,

and anything thought to be interesting was shown in movie theaters

and was accessible to à wide audience.

And then it was gradually released elsewhere,

fast of of all in the Soviet Union.

Ten years after its premiere,

it was shown in a few theaters in the Soviet Union.

However, it was never shown in Cuba.

1 don't recall the premiere.

But I do remember what happened later,

how the myth around Zbyszek Cybulski grew,

how he became a universal hero for all times,

an idol, and that there was no one like him ever again.

He was admired by everyone, by multitudes.

Maciek Chelmicki, the main character played by Zbyszek Cybulski,

became not only a key role for Cybulski —

a great actor who, sadily, died before his time —

but also made him an idol for his generation,

similar to James Dean in America.

Zbyszek posed, to some extent,

as a young man who had seen some action during the war,

which was absolutely not true.

He hadn't, and that's why his performance was so captivating.

And 1! think Cybulski acted so beautifully in this film

because he imagined those young men in his mind.

He wasn't copying them or imitating them.

Instead, he created the character of à young man,

and the audience felt he brought something more to il.

The secret of our war films

was that with those films, we augmented our biographies.

I didn't participate in the Warsaw Uprising,

but Tt made Kanal.

1 didn't find myself in situations like Cybulski

or Maciek Chelmicki in 1945.

But l made Ashes and Diamonds.

1 didn't participate in the kind of operations

depicted in A Generation,

or in the kind of bravado portrayed in the film Lotna.

So these films became a substitute for parts of my life.