On 20th April 1957, the film Kanał (Sewer) premiered in Polish cinemas, directed by the then 31-year-old Andrzej Wajda. It was the very first feature film depicting the Warsaw Uprising, which had taken place less than 13 years earlier. The film's action is played out on the 56th day of the uprising, 25th September 1944. Kanał depicts the fate of a group of members from a fragmented troop who are forced to evacuate through the sewer system, under the ruins of a destroyed city.
Piotr Jagielski: What turn of events made you come across Jerzy Stefan Stawiński's script of 'Kanał'?
Andrzej Wajda: At first, the film based on Stawiński's script was supposed to be shot by Andrzej Munk. But he was a director who started out as a documentary maker. He had a specific way of looking at things – he pondered if it would be the truth on the screen or not. He asked his team to choose a place, the sewer workers opened the entrance for them, Munk went down, then he came back up, and said 'This film can't be made. It's completely dark there.'
I didn't think about the fact that it was dark in this canal, but rather about what I could tell with the film. Especially as the circumstances were that the Warsaw Uprising was still very recent history – many of its survivors were still alive. I knew that for the purpose of the film, the canals had to be built as a piece of the set. As luck would have it, the Łódź production studio authorities refused the building of the sewers in the studio – which would have been much more convenient for us. They feared, rightly, that if we let water inside these sewers, the actual floor of the studio would be damaged – and this was the only film studio in Poland!
