Shot during the martial law, the film is the most visceral portrayal of communist terror. The Interrogation was censored for seven years. It could be viewed for the first time in 1989. It's the story of an artist arrested by the Security Bureau who is forced to testify against her friend. It was hailed the most "anti-communist film in the history of the People's Republic of Poland".
It changed the course of history. It was the reason for the disbanding of Andrzej Wajda's brainchild - the Polish film production studio Zespół Filmowy X in 1982 and for Ryszard Bugajski's decision to emigrate from Poland.
The Most Powerful Films about Communism
Poland: Maciej J. Drygas - Hear My Cry
Still from Maciej Drygas' "Hear my Cry", Photo: archival material The documentary is a harrowing accusation against a totalitarian regime. Hear My Cry (Usłyszcie mój krzyk), shot in 1991 writes out the story of Ryszard Siwiec, a civil servant, who committed self-immolation of the 8th of September 1968 during a harvest festival at the National Stadium in Warsaw (then still called the 10th-Anniversary Stadium). His act was a protest against "the tyranny of lies taking over the world".
The tragic event was recorded on a seven second long fragment of tape. For the director, tiny fragment was enough to work with. He created a film about human honour and the battle for humanist values. Drygas' film is a masterpiece amongst Polish documentaries - perhaps the most powerful one.
Poland: Andrzej Wajda - Man of Marble
Still from Andrzej Wajda's "Man of Marble", 1976. Photo: Renata Pajchel / Studio Filmowe "Zebra" / Filmoteka Narodowa / www.fototeka.fn.org.pl Man of Marble is one of Wajda's best films. It translated into film the way many people felt about communism: disillusioned. The picture is painted through the story of a young journalist who is trying to gather material for a documentary about the Stakhanov of the People's Republic of Poland - Mateusz Birkut. His rise and fall tears the promises of the communist system to shreds. Although the film has an open-ended conclusion so as not to arouse the doubts of the censors, it was clear that Mateusz Birkut probably died during a strike in the Gdańsk shipyard in 1970 when the militia and army started shooting at the protesters.
Russia: Nikita Mikhalkov - Burnt by the Sun
Still from Nikita Mikhalkov's "Burnt by the Sun", photo: SIPA Press / East News The year is 1936 and Stalin is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Soviet army. Among its victims are the revolutionary Kotow (Nikita Mikhalkov), his wife Marusia (Ingeborga Dapkunaite) and daughter (Nadezhda Michałkowa). This Oscar-winning film is a nostalgic tale about the rolling wheel of history which crushes lives and claims victims. Mikhalkov's film illustrates the darkest period of 20th century Russian history. Years later, Mikhalkov destroyed the beautiful legend of his film by shooting two sequels which fell into the nationalist propaganda genre.
Burnt by the Sun, filmed three years after perestroika, was an attempt to face Russia's difficult past. Before, such attempts were infeasible. Russian films that would hit the censors were works featuring nonconformist representations of Soviet history. Examples include Aleksey German's Trial on the Road and Elem Klimov's Agony.
Laughing at totalitarianism
Czechoslovakia: Jaromil Jireš - The Joke
One of the director's prominent works is The Joke, adapted from a novel by Milan Kundera. The film, shot in 1968 tells the story of Josef Somr, a man expelled from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party for an idle joke to his girlfriend, and the revenge he later seeks through adultery. Kunder based the novel on something that happened to him in the past. As a young man, in the 50s, he was a communist and had to leave university because of "something he said that he should not have said". In the film and the book, the protagonist takes revenge on the man who ratted him out. But revenge is a monster and the urge can keep one trapped in the past.
The Joke was one of the masterpieces of Czech New Wave from the 60s.
Poland: Jerzy Gruza - Party for Ten People Plus Three
Fighting the system by ridicule was a dangerous tool, and directors knew it. Jerzy Gruza was the author of the most popular comedy series of the People's Republic of Poland: War at Home (Wojna domowa) and The Forty Year Old (Czterdziestolatka). He explored and mocked the absurdities of the system. One of his best films was Party for Ten People Plus Three (Przyjęcie na dziesięć osób plus trzy).
The script, written by Jan Himilsbach, illustrates a degenerated system with confused values. Workers are not getting their salaries because, as they are told, there is no money, but at the same time, lavish dinners are organised for the managers. The censors recognised the uncomfortable truth and kept the made-for-TV film from public sight for seven years.
Poland: Stanisław Bareja - Teddy Bear
Still from Bareja's "Teddy Bear", photo: Studio Filmowe Zebra /Filmoteka Narodowa/www.fototeka.fn.org.pl Whatever adjective you give it: best, greatest, among the best, or top of the top, Bareja's Teddy Bear (Miś) is the Monty Python and the Holy Grail of Polish comedies. Before he created his triumphant work, he had been mocking Polish socialism for years with comedies like Brunet Will Call (Brunet wieczorową porą, 1976), What Will You Do When You Catch Me? (Co mi zrobisz, jak mnie złapiesz?, 1978).
Teddy Bear was shot and screened during a period of thawing censorship (1980). So Bareja went as far as he wanted. He drew caricatures of civil servants and caught the paranoia on tape: the cutlery in state-owned restaurants (urban canteens with cheap traditional Polish food) was chained to table and could not be unchained for eating. Anne Applebaum talks about these restaurants on Culture.pl.
Everyday life from behind the (Iron) Curtain
Czech Republic: Forman and others
Czechoslovakia endured 41 years of communism and thousands of victims (267 thousand imprisoned, 248 executed for political reasons), but Czechoslovak cinema didn't use a harsh tone towards the perversions of the system. In 1967, Vojtech Jasny directed All My Good Countrymen, a story about the fates of rural Czechs as they struggle to adapt and survive under collectivisation and expropriation; a film later banned in Czechoslovakia after 1968. But most filmmakers used satire to paint a picture of reality. Ivana Passer, Jaroslav Papoušek, and Miloš Forman, they were all interested in - as Forman put it - "life, problems, the joys and sorrows of those who didn't get the chance to become Gagarin, Čáslavska or Karel Gott".
Cinema of Moral Anxiety
Still from Feliks Falk's "Top Dog", photo: Studio Filmowe Zebra /Filmoteka Narodowa/www.fototeka.fn.org.pl Polish filmmakers from the 70s and 80s shared that perspective. Krzysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof Zanussi and Feliks Falk created the cinema of moral anxiety with the aim of publicly shaming the dishonesty and lies spread by the communist propaganda machine. The current was sparked by Krzysztof Kieślowski's Personnel in 1975. The following year he put the moral anxieties of the generation into the language of film again with The Calm, about people who want to lead normal lives. Censors weren't pleased - the film's premiere was postponed by 5 years.
