Forbidden Songs isn’t just a soundtrack of hope and despair. It includes Michael Zieliński’s romantic Serce w Plecaku (Heart in a Backpack), which was written in 1933 when Zieliński was a musician in the Polish Army. During the German occupation in World War II, Poles sang this love song from the perspective of a soldier at war away from his beloved, reassuring her that everything will be okay and that he will never forget her. Their love is so strong, he sings, that he carries an extra heart in his backpack. When he dies in war, he will just replace his heart with the one from his backpack, full of love for her.
While both movies feature different music, they deal with the same theme. They both sing the songs of freedom. In Forbidden Songs’s Warszawianka 1831, the Warsaw Orchestra uses Poland’s symbol of the white eagle to symbolize rising above oppression: ‘Leć nasz orle, w górnym pędzie, / Sławie, Polsce, światu służ!’ (Fly our eagle, rush to the top, / Glory of Poland, serve the world!, trans. DM). In The Sound of Music, the Von Trapp family sings Edelweiss, about the flower that grows high in the Alps. This flower traditionally represents the beauty of Austria, and it thrives at the heights of natural beauty.
Both films refute Nazism with patriotic symbolism and the metaphor of heights. They also envision movement: the Polish Home Army Soldiers play the national anthem, with its lyrics to ‘march, march, Dąbrowski’, while Maria Von Trapp implores her family to ‘climb every mountain’. At the end of Forbidden Songs, we hear the sound of the Soviet soldiers' boots as they come in to trample Poles' rights. The Soviets, however, despite having the upper hand, could not defeat the Polish spirit, for Poland possessed – as Maria Von Trapp sang – ‘confidence in confidence alone’.
Written by Darek Makowski, 29 Dec 2021