A Century of Andrzej Wajda: The Director Who Brought Poland’s Story to Screen

by Robert Mixa

Every morning, I walk by the wave-like Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology along the Vistula River, across from Wawel Hill in Krakow. I have always known that director Andrzej Wajda, a giant of Polish cinema and admirer of Japanese art, donated the sum of his Kyoto Prize that funded the building of the museum. There is a special exhibition in celebration of the centenary of Poland's great director’s birth. 

Perhaps not a household name outside of Poland, Wajda was highly regarded in artistic circles, receiving an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2000. Martin Scorsese has said that Wajda's 1958 film Ashes and Diamonds was one of the most influential films in his youth. Steven Spielberg wrote directly to the Academy's Board of Governors, saying that so many of Wajda's films deserved recognition in their own right. Roman Polanski, a fellow Łodz Film School graduate and frequent collaborator with Wajda, was an admirer, as was Francis Ford Coppola, who both used one of Wajda's favorite film score composers, Wojciech Kilar, in their films. Wajda was supposed to direct Terrence Malick's stage play "Sansho the Bailiff", but the two could not see eye to eye. 

Originally trained as a painter in Krakow's Academy of the Arts before transferring to the famous Łodz Film School, Wajda had an artistic sensibility characteristic of many Polish artists, deeply shaped by national identity and historical struggle. Yet he expressed these themes in a way that resonated even with non-Poles like me. 

Wajda brought classic Polish literature, history, and culture to the screen. The first Wajda film that I saw was The Promised Land, based on the novel by Nobel laureate Władysław Reymont. I have used it (partially edited) in teaching students about the Industrial Revolution. The film features many outstanding Polish actors of the 1960s and '70s, such as Daniel Olbrychski and Wojciech Pszoniak. Nonetheless,, the film did not receive widespread acclaim in the United States and the West after Le Monde condemned it as anti-Semitic, even though Wajda was never given a thorough explanation as to why. 

My second Wajda film was Ashes and Diamonds, a truly remarkable work. If you watch Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio discuss the film (their conversation of the film starts around the five-minute mark), you will quickly see why it is considered a classic—thanks in large part to the performance of the "Polish James Dean", Zbigniew Cybulski, who tragically died after being struck by a moving train. Additionally, Jerzy Wojcik's cinematography exemplifies why the Lodz film school is known for producing some of the finest cinematographers in film history. 

Most famous for his war trilogy (A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds), Wajda also created films such as Man of Marble and Man of Iron, which critiqued the hypocrisies, propaganda, and human costs of the communist system. Difficulties with the communist censors led him to work abroad, resulting in films such as Danton, starring Gérard Depardieu as Danton and Pszoniak as Robespierre. Although Wajda collaborated on many international projects, he never lost sight of his Polish identity. 

Wajda greatly admired Stanislaw Wyspiański, a versatile artist who gave powerful expression to his hope of a reconstituted Poland, rising from Wawel Hill. The Wyspiański Pavilion, located in the middle of All Saints' Square in Krakow and designed by a grandson of philosopher Roman Ingarden, was Wajda's idea. It now houses three of Wyspiański's stained-glass windows originally intended for Wawel Cathedral but never installed; and it also features a temporary exhibition on Wajda's film adaptation of Wypsiański's play The Wedding. Wajda believed that Polish art had much to contribute to the wider world. 

Reflecting on the work of playwright Tadeus Kantor and Wyspiański's stained glass, he said: 

"Their power and originality confirm our belief that Polish art is not merely an imitation of European art - just as Kantor's Theatre of Death became a phenomenon of worldwide note, without giving up either our language or our Polish subjects. This mean that we need not become diluted in imitation as we have our own vision of the world to offer to Europe. To affirm this even further, we need to ceaselessly cherish and augment the treasury of our past, being mindful that a society ignorant of its past is nothing but a random gathering. Krakow is aware of this more than anyone."

Although Wajda spent most of his life in Warsaw, his heart was in Krakow, Poland's cultural center. He is buried in the Salwator Cemetery in Krakow, next to his mother, who lost her husband in World War II in the Katyn Forest massacre—a tragedy Wajda depicted in his 2007 film Katyn. 

As I pass the Manggha Museum each day and walk along the Vistula, admiring Wawel Hill just as Wyspiański did more than a century ago, I pay my respects to the visionary director who has played a large part in my appreciation for Poland. What once felt foreign has become, through his films, something intelligible and even familiar. In helping me see Poland more clearly, Wajda has done what the greatest artists do: he has made another people's history feel like my own. This is a testament to the enduring value of his art.