Cringe Movies of the 1990s

mlode_wilki_1037367.1.jpg, default, 'Young Wolves', dir. Jarosław Żamojda, 1996, photo: DaVinci Film, center, #000000

Trees taking revenge on humanity and Vistula hackers paralyzing the country using a floppy disk. A peasant man dressed as a woman, an erotic fanfaronade disguised as a psychological drama, an advertisement pretending to be a movie and Polish dudes pretending to be American gangsters. Here’s a short tour of 1990s cringe cinema.

Although it might seem that cringe comedy is a fresh phenomenon in Polish pop culture, decreed with the birth of The Office PL or the 1670 Netflix series, its ancestors can also be found in the deep past of Polish cinema. Not only in the 1980s with Wilczyca (She-Wolf) and the famous Klątwa doliny węży (Curse of the Valley of the Serpents) by Marek Piestrak but above all in the last decade of the 20th century, the times of cinematic shamelessness, embarrassing jokes, easy erotica, silly plots and film flops made by the most important masters of cinema. We thus invite you on a tour of the cringe gems of the 1990s.

‘Młode Wilki’ – fast, furious & graduating

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Let’s start with a classic from Szczecin. Młode wilki (Young Wolves), made in 1995 by Jarosław Żamojda, is an exemplary specimen of the 1990s cringe. It contains everything that characterized bad Polish cinema of that decade: unnecessary scenes of nudity, senseless violence, copying American C-class cinema tropes and a story of aspirations to social upward mobility pushed to a grotesque limit.

For Żamojda, their symbols were a ride, a leather jacket and a mobile phone [Polish slang: fura, skóra and komóra, trans.]. Fast motorcycles, sexy women, eye-catching cars (adjectives can be replaced freely) – this is the universe of the characters in Żamojda’s film, young people embarking on a criminal path to earn great fortunes as quickly as possible.

In 1995, when collective dreams of a new post-communist idyll had already collided with the reality of wild capitalism and the audience was tired of poverty, unemployment and inflation, Młode wilki was supposed to be an escape from reality. Here, the protagonists Biedrona, Cichy and Cobra quickly earned a lot of money, showing viewers that social advancement is possible. Suffice it to say that the setting of this story was, on the one hand, the most famous and spectacular monuments of Szczecin (with the castle courtyard at the forefront) and the new palaces of the 1990s – i.e. the great villas of the millionaires of that time (e.g. Villa Riccona in the Warsaw suburbs).

Watched years later, Młode Wilki turns out to be an almost exemplary comedy of embarrassment. Almost – because an element of embarrassment appears here contrary to the creators’ expectations. There’s just not much that makes sense in Młode wilki, and its nonsensical plot, wooden acting and staging aged worse than the neoliberal clichés about shoeshine boys turned millionaires and masters of their own fate, widely repeated in that very period.

‘Chłopaki nie płaczą’ – cringe in the service of comedy

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‘Chłopaki nie płaczą’, directed by Olaf Lubaszenko, depicted here Cezary Pazura, Bohdan Łazuka, Andrzej Zieliński, 2000, photo: Best Film

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In the 1990s, when Polish films tried to imitate entertaining American cinema, many filmmakers from the Vistula River looked for their own place by imitating Hollywood celebrities. And so Maciej Ślesicki became a star, creating Polish versions of American hits (Sara was a tribute to VHS action movies, and Tato [Dad] was the Polish equivalent of Kramer vs. Kramer), Łukasz Wylężałek tried to imitate David Lynch in Bilboard (unsuccessfully), and Olaf Lubaszenko decided to follow in Quentin Tarantino’s footsteps and create an action comedy like Pulp Fiction.

All to no avail. That, however, doesn’t mean that his Chłopaki nie płaczą (Boys Don’t Cry) wasn’t a huge success. Half of Poland quoted Lubaszenko’s lines, and no high school party CE 2000 could have taken place without at least a short mention of the weed-smoking Laska (protagonist) or the sweater worn by Grucha, a character played by Mirosław Zbrojewicz. Lubaszenko created a cult cringe comedy, but unlike most of his colleagues from the 1990s, he perfectly calculated the embarrassment of his audience. All you have to do is listen to the dialogues about ‘Jarek, who is a shark and is also clever’, ‘has a f…ing tough psyche’, look at the exaggerated characters created by Michał Milowicz, Paweł Deląg and Cezary Pazura to see that the comedic embarrassment of Chłopaki was no coincidence.

Lubaszenko toyed with the stereotype of a gangster comedy, being aware that it was only a made-up world, not the Polish reality. He interspersed his cringe jokes with successful ones, and Chłopaki quickly gained cult status. Does this mean it’s a good movie? Probably not, but among the mainstream productions of the last decade of the 20th century, it stands out for its self-awareness and honesty towards the viewer.

‘Operacja Samum’ – a beer in the desert

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‘Operacja Samum’, directed by Władysław Pasikowski, 1999, photo: APF / HBO

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There is no other director in Polish cinema who would soar so high in the 1990s only to steep to the level of practical self-parody in his subsequent films just a few years later. Władysław Pasikowski, because we are talking about him, first delighted Polish critics and audiences with Kroll, a brutal story about the army and the institutional violence prevailing in it, and in 1992 he made one of the most important films in Polish cinema after 1989, Psy (Pigs). Yes, even then he was accused of misogyny, vulgarity and objectifying women, and the scene with a drunk security guard and a parody of a song about Janek Wiśniewski outraged Andrzej Wajda himself, but Pasikowski’s film mastery outweighed these accusations. The young director perfectly captured the spirit of the times, led the actors in such a way that they created unforgettable roles for him, and introduced a breath of truly American film craftsmanship onto Polish screens.

The triumph of Pigs meant that the doors of all producers opened to Pasikowski. In the most difficult time of Polish cinema (state financing had just been liquidated, and the Polish Film Institute was yet to be born), a famous director guaranteed income. The quality was oft below par. Especially the last years of the 20th century brought films by Pasikowski that time and again tested the depths of his fans’ devotion (a pain I know from personal experience).

In Demony wojny według Goi (Demons of War) from 1998, the desire to shock the viewer combined with the simultaneous shallow take on the characters’ psychology was strikingly off-putting, and the rubber heads lifted by Artur Żmijewski became an Internet meme years later. In Reich (2001), Pasikowski unintentionally made the audience laugh with a twisted love story, and the characters were nothing like the complicated characters of Pigs. But the film that became the object of particular ridicule was Operacja Samum (Operation Simoon) from 1999. Not because the film lacked quality, because for this decade it was more than decent, but because of the intrusive product placement. In pursuit of income or meeting the budget, the filmmakers signed sponsorship agreements forcing the creators to incorporate several not-so-subtle advertisements. And so, in the scene of the meeting of the protagonists in the desert, instead of two idiots greeting each other, the viewers had to look at Warka Strong beers left on the back seat of the SUV, and alcohol and tobacco advertisements filled the film frames again and again. All this made Operation Simoom a symbol of the intrusive advertising of the cinema of the 1990s, perhaps the most famous one, next to Kazimierz Kutz’s Straszny sen Dzidziusia Górkiewicza (The Terrible Dream of Babyface Gorkiewicz) with Coca-Cola as one of its main protagonists.

‘Wirus’ – the hackers we could afford

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‘Wirus’, directed by Jan Kidawa-Błoński, 1996, photo: Gambit Productions

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The real gem of film cringe of the 1990s was Wirus (Virus) by Jan Kidawa-Błoński, an action and erotic story made in 1996 about a hacker terrorizing Poland with a computer floppy disk.

The biggest stars of the decade, led by Cezary Pazura, Jan Englert and Olaf Lubaszenko, an already experienced and still promising director and the cinematographic eye of Andrzej J. Jaroszewicz, famous for his cooperation with A. Żuławski, did not save Wirus from self-destruction. It is difficult to find another motion picture that would contain nearly all the sins of 1990s cringe cinema, and then some.

In Kidawa-Błoński’s film, Cezary Pazura had caricatured lush, red sideburns, and Tomasz Sapryk had long black hair (he had to wait until Święty ogień [Holy Fire] for a worse wig). Women served as props and sexual decoys, in bed the lovers were accompanied by a several-meter long boa snake (which – perhaps of some importance – did not appreciate Chopin’s music), and in one of the erotic scenes Tomasz Sapryk’s rhythmically moving butt created a peculiar... staging and cinematographic figure. There were explosions (and everything exploded here – from a computer to a train), misogynistic violence, senseless shootings and juicy, masculine dialogues (‘Police, you’re under arrest! – And you, you’re dead!’).

All this in the spirit of American popular cinema: Paulina Młynarska crossed her legs like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, a snowplow, as in Spielberg’s Duel, rammed a Polonez car being driven by the director of one of the banks, and Cezary Pazura and Jan Englert formed a duet worthy of a C-class imitation of The Fugitive. Nonsense followed nonsense, the staging cried out for vengeance to the gods of the 10th muse, and the only funny element was the animation made by the film’s hacker, in which an animated Lech Wałęsa warned that if we delete the virus, the communists will return.

What proves how strange and bad the Wirus project was can be testified to by the words of Cezary Pazura, who, when recently asked about the moment when he really felt that his career might be in danger, mentioned precisely this film by Kidawa-Błoński. And it is worth returning to this surprisingly pleasant cinematic nightmare for this reason alone.

‘Operacja koza’ – or gender swap

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‘Operacja koza’, directed by Konrad Szołajski, photo: Canal+ / ITI Cinema

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One of the main reasons why Polish cinema at the end of the 20th century descended into embarrassing entertainment was money – or rather, its lack. The liquidation of the financing system for public production meant that creators had to reach for stories that gave at least a faint chance of winning a mass audience. And since Poland was still fascinated by American pop culture, local filmmakers tried to imitate it. Jan Kidawa-Błoński with his hacker thriller and Pasikowski with his powerful action movie were not the only ones. Konrad Szołajski also employed well-tested American patterns in another cringe gem – Operacja koza (Operation Goat).

The beginning was very simple and tried many times in cinematographic history. Here, a young scientist researching the possibility of swapping human personalities one day switches roles with a KGB agent sent by the Russians to take over his technology. After spending the night together (we are in the cinema of the 1990s, so the number of unnecessary sex scenes must be accounted for), Olaf Lubaszenko’s and Ewa Gawryluk’s protagonists wake up with their consciousness ‘borrowed’ from the other, respectively. This could be the beginning of a series of witty – even if derivative – gags, but in Operacja none of it seems to work. Although the creators use sexist jokes, they are not even afraid of a slapstick genre classic bucket falling on the protagonist’s head and Olaf Lubaszenko, who tries to dance ‘Swan Lake’ in a Turkish sweater... The intrusively humorous music of Piotr Rubik and the grotesque American instructor who looks like a parody of Michael Dudikoff are still of no use. Operacja never ceases to be a cringe comedy. Too bad that it does so unwittingly.

‘Szamanka’ – a brain eaten with a spoon

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Frame from ‘Szamanka’, directed by Andrzej Żuławski, photo: YBCA

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Unsuccessful variations on American genre cinema by no means exhaust the list of embarrassing productions of the 1990s. Cringe, especially that practiced unconsciously, has also become popular among many artists from the festival and salon circuit. Its leading example was Szamanka (She-Shaman) by Andrzej Żuławski, made in 1996 and based on a script by Manuela Gretkowska, who would soon be a scandalous writer of intellectual prose.

Żuławski, one of the greatest erudites of Polish cinema, a refined artist who did not bow to plebeian tastes, created a film that fits perfectly into the unleavened landscape of the Polish cinema of that era. He included misogyny (not new to his oeuvre) and vulgar objectification of the female protagonist in a story about the romance of an anthropologist (Bogusław Linda) and a young student (Iwona Petry). He mixed an erotic thriller with a psychological film, and here he combined self-aware camp cinema with completely unconscious kitsch and buffoonery. Żuławski threw into the pot a story about the corpse of a shaman from three thousand years ago, a story about magical rituals, sexual abuse, a story about radioactive uranium, the Russian mafia and… cannibalism. The only thing missing was any sense whatsoever and respect for the audience. And although Żuławski said years later that the film was imperfect due to budget shortcomings caused by the high salary required for Bogusław Linda’s ample drinking (it allegedly consumed 2/3 of the production budget), and when talking about the film’s message, he made reference to St. Augustine, Shestov, Berdyaev, Dostoyevsky, Bertolucci and Passolini – a kingdom to whoever can actually detect a philosophical depth in the embarrassing, self-referential spectacle that is the gibberish of the She-Shaman, born of intellectual buffoonery.

‘Drzewa’ – plant revenge cinema

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‘Drzewa’, directed by Grzegorz Królikiewicz, 1996, photo: TVP

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Another of the great artists of Polish cinema also made a spectacular directorial mistake in the 1990s. Grzegorz Królikiewicz, the rebellious author of such masterpieces as Tańczący jastrząb (The Dancing Hawk), Na wylot (Through and Through) or Przypadek Pekosińskiego (The Case of Bronek Pekosiński) created one of the most bizarre films in his oeuvre in 1995.

Drzewa (Trees) combined the story of an outstanding biologist (one of the fetishes of the cinema of the 1990s was science and high technology – our window to the West) conducting research on the sensations of plants with the story of a town where falling trees kill random victims and of a strange war declared on nature by humankind.

What was not in Królikiewicz’s film? The film contains such silliness as Ewa Kasprzyk screaming as she bit into a piece of watermelon to monitor its neurological reactions, Paweł Wawrzecki ‘mystically’ hugging an oak seedling, trees took up arms against people, and protagonists fought with flower bouquets over a grave. Great emphases took place on screen but not very deep discussions about life and its meaning, and the place of classic shots, American sets or close-ups were taken by images filmed from a frog’s point of view and a cameraman’s quirks intended to enliven this story that was lifeless from beginning to end.

Królikiewicz wrote an eco-horror completely devoid of suspense. Made for little money, Drzewa is one of the most bizarre Polish films of the 1990s, a film that we could forgive an exalted film school student for making but not one of the masters and most profound analysts of cinema.

Written in Polish by Bartosz Staszczyszyn, 5 April 2024

Translated by Michał Abel Pelczar

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