On the 20th of April, 1957, the film Kanał (Sewer) premiered in Polish cinemas, directed by the then 31-year-old Andrzej Wajda. It was the very first feature film depicting the Warsaw Uprising, which had taken place 13 years earlier. The film's action is played out on the 56th day of the Uprising, September 25th, 1944. Kanał depicts the fates of a group of members from a fragmented troop who were forced to evacuate through the sewer system, under the ruins of a destroyed city.
Piotr Jagielski, PAP: What turn of events made you come across Jerzy Stefan Stawiński's script of Kanał?
Andrzej Wajda: At first, the film based on Stawiński's script was supposed to be shot by Andrzej Munk. But he was a director who started out as a documentary maker. He had a specific way of looking at things – he pondered if it would be the truth on the screen or not. He asked his team to choose a place, the sewer workers opened the entrance for them, Munk went down, then he came back up, and said "This film can't be made. It's completely dark there".
I didn't think about the fact that it was dark in this canal, but rather about what I could tell with the film. Especially as the circumstances were that the Warsaw Uprising was still very recent history – many of its survivors were still alive. I knew that for the purpose of the film, the canals had to be built as a piece of the set. As luck would have it, the Łódź production studio authorities refused the building of the sewers in the studio – which would have been much more convenient for us. They feared - rightly - that if we let water inside these sewers, the actual floor of the studio would be damaged – and this was the only film studio in Poland!
Thanks to this we ended up building the set near the studio, and this in fact gave us much greater possibilities, we had more space. There was one effect which could not have been attained had the set been built within the studio – when the sewer entrance was opened, we could see the sky, and unimaginable light fell inside, adding some truth to our set.
I followed the fate of these people. The strength of Stawiński's script was the fact this it was pretty much his own diary. As a lieutenant of the AK [National Army], he had walked through the sewers with his troops, and apart from describing the young enthusiasts, he also depicted the officers who felt responsible for their troops getting lost in the sewer.
The script was based on real-life events. All of the figures portrayed by Stawiński were known and seen by him in real life. It was a chronicle. No one else had depicted such an image of the war, with the marches through the sewers, in fact, there was no occasion to speak about how far people were prepared to go in the name of the ideals that they so deeply believed in.
What was the public's reaction to what was the first feature film about the Warsaw Uprising?
There was the expectation that the first film about the Uprising would be created on the barricades, depicting a tough, albeit uneven, battle. But this was not what the Uprising looked like, and this was not the Uprising that Stawiński followed – and I was following him. I believed that what he had written was true, that these officers who saw that they were condemned to failure understood what it was that they were a part of. I realised this film fully convinced them that I was not participating in any kind of manipulation. This was ensured by a script based on real life experiences.
The film enjoyed two kinds reception – the first was a somewhat chilly one when it was first screened. And a totally different one when it turned out that it was appreciated in Cannes, that it won an award. The award in itself was not so important, Polish audiences simply wanted the world to see what had really happened and what a huge price had been paid by those who took part in the Uprising, the price that they were ready to pay. Kanał depicted this, and after the Cannes Festival it was clear that this was a film "for the world". The festival opened up a door for the film, and audiences saw something that looked more like Dante's hell, rather than an image of contemporary war, thanks to which it was perceived from an existential point of view.
I imagine that the discussion of the Film and Screenplay Evaluation Committee was a rather heated one?
It was really difficult. Tadeusz Konwick played a beautiful and significant role here. I was part of Jerzy Kawalerowicz's team, he was the literary director of the group, and he was part of the committee which approved the screenplays. The newly appointed head of cinematography, Leonard Borkowicz really fought for the film to be made. He decided to show it across the world and to screen it at an international festival. He went to Cannes, together with us and the actors Tadeusz Janczar and Teresa Iżewska. He saw the reactions of the foreign audience and he understood that this pointed the way for the picture to return to Polish viewers.
Did you come across any intervention from the censors?
They didn't have a great impact on this film. The dilemma was more whether to show it at all, and if so, then in its entirety. There wasn't even anything to cut from it. I think that once the verdict was stated as "yes", the head of cinematography had to defend the film that he approved and sent off to be produced. The success in Cannes was of course also his success.
I thought about the final scene, in which the exhausted protagonists come up to the exist from the canal, to the crate beyond which they see the view onto the Vistula river and the other side of the city. This scene is marked by a certain indirect message.
This is exactly as much as we were able to show. The audience knew very well that the beyond the Vistula is the Praga district, where the Soviet troops stand waiting. Today, I would probably have to lay it out more clearly – show some kind of tanks, maybe even the hammer and sickle. It was not necessary then, this game of the imagination, what people already knew was enough. Everybody knew that Stalin was waiting on the other side for as long as the Uprising lasted and until the National Army was destroyed. When I was making Kanał, in 1956, Warsaw was still filled with ruins. Especially in the Old Town, which reached down to the Vistula, and this was where the last scene was shot. This was what Warsaw looked like back then. It was still rebuilding itself.
If you were to make a film like Kanał today, would its message be different?
My way of looking at the Warsaw Uprising has changed. Towards the end of Jan Nowak-Jeziorański's life, the Courier of Warsaw, together with Andrzej Kotnkowski I made a film in which he speaks about his meeting with the National Army officers in July, 1944. He tried to explain to them how complicated the international political situation was, and how small the chances were of getting any help from the outside. But Nowak-Jeziorańska also clearly emphasised the big role played by Soviet propaganda, which encouraged the National Army to step up and fight the Germans. And on the other hand, the National Army officers knew that the Polish army fighting arm in arm with the allies was in fact the fourth largest one. In these circumstances it seemed impossible for it not to come to the rescue of the Uprising.
I was one of those people who surrounded Lech Wałęsa in the August of 1980, and I know how many people tried to push him down into a stance of conflict – they encouraged him to "grab the Communist by the throat". But Lech, in his simple man's mind, knew that first of all "we have no weapons". I tried to portray this in my film Wałęsa, the way he was so consistent in his way of seeing things. And it was thanks to this integrity that we achieved a bloodless victory and didn't suffer these terrible losses – thousands of young people, hundreds of thousands of Warsaw inhabitants and the destruction of the city. The 4th of June, 1989 is an exceptional date in our history.
70 years have now passed since the outbreak of the Uprising, and yet it is still a topic that stirs fierce controversy and emotion. Where do they come from?
Today the Uprising is used for political purposes. It has become a point of reference for various political orientations. For me that is clear. History, and especially the Warsaw Uprising has recently become the subject of political speculation. I have the impression, however, that this is not what is so pertinent for today's youth and a majority of the society. Speculation will remain speculation. One can always imagine all kinds of things, and ponder about "what would have happened if only…" If I came across Stawiński's script today, I would make the same film.
Source: PAP, a talk conducted by Piotr Jagielski. edited by Bartosz Staszczyszyn, translated by Paulina Schlosser, 30/07/2014