Isles of Independence: Polish Filmmakers in Great Britain

ida_pawlikowski_oskar_2015_forum.jpg, default, Paweł Pawlikowski z Oscarem za film "Ida", Los Angeles, 2015, fot. Lucy Nicholson / REUTERS / Forum

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Many Polish filmmakers have done some of their best work outside of Poland. It was in the British Isles that Roman Polański became an icon of horror films and Paweł Pawlikowski began the career that would lead to internationally acclaimed ‘Ida’. Alongside these smashing success stories are some lesser-known treasures and a few interesting failures.

The Themersons: experiment in the service of propaganda

While the history of international propaganda film is full of great names (you could form a whole film crew from notable Brits alone), it was Poles who created the most unusual propaganda film made in the British Isles.

The film in question is Calling Mr Smith, an anti-Nazi short film commissioned by the Polish Ministry of Information and Documentation in London from Franciszka and Stefan Themerson.

The couple, known before the war as masters of cinematographic and literary experiments, left Poland in 1937 to settle in France. When World War II broke out, the Themersons first volunteered to join the Polish Army in France, then moved to Great Britain. It was there that they used their artistic skills to fight Hitler through propaganda films with an anti-Nazi message. Their 1943 work Calling Mr Smith is a story of the destructive force of Nazism, which the Themersons contrasted with the history of European culture, represented, for instance, by great masters of antiquity and the Renaissance, as well as the music of Bach, Chopin, and Szymanowski.

Polański conquers the Isles

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A still from 'Repulsion', dir. Roman Polański, 1965; pictured: Cathérine Deneuve, photo: Rue des Archives / DILTZ / Forum

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Although Roman Polański’s international career is mainly tied to Hollywood and French cinematography, its beginnings are tied to 1960s Great Britain. Knife in the Water, released in 1962, opened the doors to global cinema for the young Polish director. While Władysław Gomułka, the communist leader of Poland at the time, looked at Polański’s ‘discontent and gloom-mongering’ with an unfavourable eye, the West considered him one of the most attention-worthy talents from behind the Iron Curtain.

‘Repulsion’ – a bit like prostitution

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Repulsion (1965) Original Trailer [FHD]

That, however, didn’t mean that the West awaited Polański with open arms. Though Polański realised one of the segments comprising The World’s Most Beautiful Swindlers in 1964, no one in France or Great Britain was prepared to offer him easy support. It was the London-based Compton Films, a studio specialising in B-horror films, that took a chance on him. Compton Films accepted the script for Repulsion, authored by Gerard Brach (who would later become Polański’s permanent collaborator), which revolved around a woman plunging into schizophrenia. Polański himself wasn’t the text’s biggest fan. Years later, in the film Roman Polański: A Film Memoir, he said: ‘I only made it to move forward. It was a bit like prostitution’.

But in 1956, the horror film, starring very young Catherine Deneuve was awarded the FIPRESCI prize and the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. People quickly started comparing Polański to Hitchcock himself, and Repulsion was considered a masterpiece equal to Psycho and one of the most brilliant cinematic studies in madness.

‘Cul-de-sac’ – the birth of a director

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Cul-de-sac (1966) - Official trailer

For the Polish director, Repulsion turned out to be a great investment – it showed his versatility and unprecedented artistic intuition. It was also a springboard for making more films, the first of which was Cul-de-sac, written in collaboration with Gerard Brach. The story of a couple inhabiting a solitary castle on an island, which is one day visited by a pair of gangsters, was inspired by Beckettian and Ionescian theatre of absurd (the first draft title was a reference to Waiting for Godot). Cul-de-sac foreshadowed key motifs in the director’s oeuvre and is one of his greatest accomplishments. Polański himself described Cul-de-sac as the first film he was proud of. Following the success of the film, Polański left for Hollywood in 1967.

However, he returned to the British Isles multiple times. It was in Great Britain that he created some of his most personal works, such as The Tragedy of Macbeth, in which he deals with the tragic death of his wife, Sharon Tate, who was murdered by members of the Manson Family.

British adventures of Jerzy Skolimowski

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Jerzy Skolimowski, fot. Maksymilian Rigamonti / Reporter / East News

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Polański wasn’t the only Polish director who, having settled in the British Isles, developed as a creator of genre films. Jerzy Skolimowski undertook a similar challenge. However, he followed a slightly different path.

‘Deep End’ – the plight of puberty

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Deep End (1970) Trailer - Out Now on BFI DVD & Blu-ray

Skolimowski, who decided to leave Poland after shooting Hands Up!, created one of his masterpieces in Great Britain in 1970. Deep End, a story of puberty and the erotic fascinations of a young boy, is sometimes compared to Mike Nichols’ The Graduate. And although the European pedigree of the film prevented it from attaining a Hollywood-style financial success, the work brought Skolimowski substantial recognition in the British Isles. It’s no wonder, then, that the director quickly received more opportunities. In 1972, he made a screen adaptation of Nabokov’s novel King, Queen, Knave, casting none other than Gina Lollobrigida in one of the main roles, and 6 years later he shot the horror film The Shout.

‘The Shout’ – Skolimowski, a horror master

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The Shout [1978] Official Trailer

The story of a man able to kill with his shout was originally meant to be directed by the British filmmaker Nicholas Roeg, but he was already working on a different film. Thanks to that, Skolimowski got his chance. And he made the most of it – his The Shout turned the pulp horror story into a real horror drama with excellent performances from John Hurt and Alan Bates. Despite its genre provenance, the film was entered into the competition at the Cannes Festival, where Skolimowski was awarded the Technical Prize for his skilful use of the newest surround sound technologies.

‘Moonlighting’ – Martian law in Kensington

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Moonlighting (1982)

Four years later, in 1982, Skolimowski visited Cannes once again, all thanks to another British film – Moonlighting, one of the most brilliant works in his entire career.

The film tells a story of four Polish builders who come to London in 1981 to renovate a luxury mansion in Kensington ‘off the books’. From among the four workers, only one of them, Nowak (played by Jeremy Irons), can speak English, and he’s also the only one who learns that martial law was introduced in Poland. The young man needs to decide whether to inform his colleagues about it or to conceal the truth to be able to continue his titular moonlighting in peace.

For this film, Skolimowski was awarded the Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, and years later Moonlighting became one of the most important cinematic stories about the political events of December 1981.

‘Success is the Best Revenge’ – from the son’s diary

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Success is the Best Revenge (1984)

Poles living in the British Isles are also the topic of Skolimowski’s next film. Success is the Best Revenge was shot in 1984, and it was meant to be a personal way of grappling with Polishness and emigration as a choice and as a necessity.

The protagonist of this story is Alex Rodak (Michael York), a Pole living in Britain and attempting to become a part of his new homeland at any cost. Fascinated with theatre, he wants to perform an homage to Poland, captive behind the Iron Curtain but striving towards freedom and self-determination. However, Alex’s family members struggle to find themselves in the new reality – his rebellious son, Adam (Michał Skolimowski) is currently planning to flee to Poland.

While inventing the story, Skolimowski derived his ideas from his own experiences, and his most direct inspiration were the diaries of one of his sons, Michał Skolimowski. It was there that the director found his springboard for telling the story of identity and assimilation, the pain of puberty and familial misunderstanding. Although Success… was one of the most-awaited films of Cannes 1984, it didn’t achieve the same success as Moonlighting. One of the reasons was difficulties with realisation and finances, which Skolimowski struggled with while working on his next British production.

‘30 Door Key’ – Gombrowicz resists

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Kadr z filmu "Ferdydurke", reż. Jerzy Skolimowski, 1991, fot. Polfilm/East News

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None of Skolimowski’s British works managed to repeat the artistic success of Moonlighting. While The Lightship, realised in the USA, was awarded the Special Jury Prize in Venice in 1985, his British Torrents of Spring turned out to be merely average, whereas the screen adaptation of Witold Gombrowicz’s novel Ferdydurke, made in 1991, ended up being an artistic failure and contributed to Skolimowski’s long lack of activity as a director.

Explaining the title of his adaptation of Ferdydurke, 30 Door Key, Skolimowski noted:

Gombrowicz gave his book a title that means nothing, save for a vague association with a character from a book by Sinclair Lewis. Unfortunately, for a western viewer, the word 'Ferdydurke' sounds like a polonised version of the name Ferdinand. Wishing to avoid inviting such interpretations, I came up with the idea that the phonetic transcription of FERDY-DUR-KE is really close to THIRTY-DOOR-KEY, whereas ‘thirty’ written numerically as 30 allows one to easily memorise this absurd combination of three words which make no grammatical sense, just as Gombrowicz wanted. The associations that arise are quite good, considering that the protagonist is 30 years old, attempting to go through the DOOR between immaturity and maturity, and the most well-wishing viewers might also find the KEY.

Sadly, neither viewers nor critics could find the key to understanding Skolimowski’s film. Tired of commercial commissions, Skolimowski decided to make a film to match his ambitions, but grappling with Gombrowicz, he lost.

With the financial means of a British producer at his disposal, the director attempted to liberate Gombrowicz from the stifling context of Polishness – he gave up on the scenes about Słowacki’s greatness, simplified some others, and placed Józio’s story within the wider socio-political context of the 1930s. Unable to find a proper language to express Gombrowicz’s ideas, Skolimowski focussed on the plot of Ferdydurke, meticulously following the novel’s events. Those, however, turned out not to be a viable basis for a convincing story.

After 30 Door Key, he licked his wound for 17 years. He only returned to the world of cinema in 2008, with Four Nights with Anna.

‘Alice’ – Bromski and Gruza are dancing

The search for freedom and the need for experimentation with genre film drew other Polish filmmakers to the British Isles as well. In 1980, Jacek Bromski and Jerzy Gruza, in collaboration with English filmmakers, attempted to make a musical version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Adapting Carroll’s story to the big screen, Polish creators opted for a large European co-production – the actress Sophie Barjac was cast in the main role, the camerawork was the responsibility of Witold Sobociński and Alex Mills, and the film also included an appearance by the then popular Scottish singer Lulu.

None of that helped. Alice turned out to be a cinematic failure.

Moved to a realistic setting, the story of Alice, the White Rabbit, and the Queen of Hearts lost its symbolic layer and its charm. The choreography was disappointingly simple, and the songs sung by Lulu didn’t create a coherent whole together with the film’s plot. The creators’ great ambitions remained unfulfilled, and Alice made history as one of the strangest Polish-British productions of all times.

Paweł Pawlikowski – a Brit with a Polish soul

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Kadr z filmu "Lato miłości", reż. Paweł Pawlikowski, fot. Best Film

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Although he now is mainly associated with his aesthetically tasteful dramas and the international successes that were Ida and Cold War, Paweł Pawlikowski’s cinematic path had its beginning in British documentary films.

Pawlikowski has always beexxn drawn to the East. In 1990, he shot From Moscow to Pietushki with Venedikt Erofeev for the BBC, a documentary story of a journey on an underground train. Pawlikowski made the film for his deceased father, a great enthusiast of the Russian master Venedikt Yerofeyev’s works. From Moscow… earned Pawliskowski a Prix Italia prize and an Emmy.

He returned to Russia again with his next film, the phenomenal Dostoyevsky’s Travels. The film tells a story of the great writer’s grandson Dmitri, a tram driver who is invited to West Germany to participate in a symposium devoted to his famous grandfather. However, Dmitri isn’t interest in intellectual discussions, but in buying a used Mercedes.

Distinguished by the European Film Academy, Pawlikowski’s work enabled him to undertake additional bold projects. Those particularly deserving of attention include Serbian Epics, a terrifying story of national myths, nationalism and populism feeding upon the basest social instincts, as well as Tripping with Zhirinovski, for which the director was awarded the prestigious Grierson Award.

Years later, already as an accomplished documentalist, Pawlikowski made his debut feature film in the British Isles. This 2004 film, My Summer of Love, is a story of erotic fascination between two girls coming from different class backgrounds and foreshadowed a great talent. Pawlikowski’s cinematic promise was realised in Ida, the 2013 film that won him an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

‘Butterfly Kisses’ – Rafał Kapeliński’s brilliant debut

Rafał Kapeliński followed Pawlikowski’s trail. An exceptional artist himself, Kapeliński made himself known to the Polish audience many years ago through his short films, including the self-funded production Emily Cries.

He couldn’t obtain funds for a full-length film in Poland, and he tied his professional life to film education, for years working as a valued lecturer at London Film School. In 2017, at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, he presented his full-length debut, Butterfly Kisses, which won the Crystal Bear.

'Butterfly Kisses' directed by Rafał Kapeliński [Image Gallery]

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The film, realised using microscopically scarce funds, delighted viewers and critics. That was mostly due to Kapeliński’s courageous look at the taboo subject of paedophilia. He utilised the form of social drama to depict the loneliness of a man confronted with his own illness and acknowledging his own dangerous fascination. Kapeliński’s story of a teenager discovering his own paedophilia is told without sensational tones and easy emotions.

The director’s fascinating debut has now become his ticket to realising further works, and his next project is supposed to be produced in Poland. Let’s hope it’s as successful as his British debut.

Originally written in Polish, translated by AP, Dec 2021

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