Despite being halted by Polish censorship, Ford’s film was distributed abroad. Luis Buñuel himself watched it in Paris, and the film, classified as political material, only made the European screenings of Children Must Laugh more popular. The Bundists used it as a tool to win over ‘people’s hearts and minds’ and saw it as having a chance of promoting the Jewish cause. The film remained unknown to Polish audiences for a long time. Only several decades later, in 2017, a digitally restored copy hit the screens as part of a review of Aleksander Ford’s work.
The creation and presentation of Children Must Laugh gave him one of his most significant film experiences. Even though after the war he would go on to make two of the biggest box offices successes Poland has ever seen (Border Street and Knights of the Teutonic Order had 32 million viewers), Ford still considered his modest report from Miedzeszyn as his top achievement.
Ford’s Zionist films from the 1930s became his showpiece after the war. Still, they were not the last ones dealing with Jewish topics – it was Ford who in 1944 made the documentary Majdanek: The Cemetery of Europe using materials shot by his crew immediately after the liberation of the Nazi German camp, and his last film, The Martyr, was dedicated to doctor and teacher Janusz Korczak.
All these films bind with one of the most unusual and tragic biographies in the history of Polish cinema. They make up the story of a man who tried to escape his Jewish identity, which he was taming in subsequent films, using it cynically when the political situation allowed him to take advantage of it, but who paid the highest price for it – in 1969, after Mieczysław Moczar’s antisemitic campaign, Ford had to leave the country. He longed so much to return to Poland until he could no longer stand it – he committed suicide in 1980.
Originally written in Polish, Aug 2020, translated by Agnes Dudek, Nov 2020
Sources: Michał Danielewicz, “Ford. Reżyser”, Krytyka Polityczna, Warszawa 2019; Natan Gross, “Film żydowski w Polsce”, Rabid, Kraków 2002; Władysław Banaszkiewicz, Witold Witczak, “Historia filmu polskiego. Tom 1. 1895-1929”, red. naukowy Jerzy Toeplitz, Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauko. Zakład Historii i Teorii Filmu. Wydaw. Artystyczne i Filmowe, 1966; Anna Szczepańska, “W słońcu i radości – podróż do bundowskiego raju”, tłum. Piotr Kubkowski, [w:] “Pleograf. Kwartalnik Akademii Polskiego Filmu”, nr 1/2019; Dwutygodnik.com