Antoni Krauze, the brother of director and graphic artist Andrzej Krauze, studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. Between 1958-1961, he worked as an actor with the Student Satirical Theater STS. In 1962 he moved to Łódź and joined the National Academy of Theatre and Film. In 1966 he graduated with a degree in directing from the Łódź film school. Up until 1969, he made films for the Educational Film Studio. His feature debut came in 1969, with the television production Monidło. He has won a number of major prizes, including the Grand Prix of San Remo for Prognoza pogody / The Weather Forcast in 1987.
The 1970s was a time of ups and downs, in which Krauze was frequently labeled as being an author part of the so-called "cinema of moral anxiety". Critic Czesław Dondziłło found in his film's a sense of civic mission and seriousness of tone, a deep skepticism about the existing structures of social life, sensitivity towards any inconsistencies between the official and the private sphere, being prone to believing only what is based on subjective experience, and finally, a longing for authentic values, "not simple ad-hoc compromises and conformism" in films of this trend.
Antoni Krauze began his filmmaking career under the influence of the "small realism" movement - a trend drawn from Polish literature of the 1960s, in which creators reached for topics that were previously avoided including: small towns, suburbs, confined environments, subcultures. This type of literature also had its most notable authors, such as Marek Nowakowski, craftsmen such as Jan Himilsbach or Leszek Plazewski, who were in fact able to capture an authentic glimpse of life of Poland in those times. Antoni Krauze willingly reached for these works for inspiration. It is worth noting that most of Krauze's earlier films (except Podróż do Arabii / A Trip to Arabia, 1979) have their origins in literary works, most of which, in turn, are based on the works of authors writing in the style of "small poetic realism" by such authors as Jan Himilsbach (Monidło, Party przy świecach" / "Party by candlelight, 1980), Leszek Płażewski (Piżama" / "Pajamas, 1971) and Marek Nowakowski (Meta" / "The Pad, 1971, Prognoza pogody" / "The Weather Forecast, 1982), as well as works by Zbigniew Safjan(Strach, 1975) and Tadeusz Zawirucha (Palec Boży" / "The Hand of God, 1973), which were close to the poetic style of the times.
Tadeusz Sobolewski wrote:
The reality in films directed by Krauze is at times dirty and miserable, but it is never a caricature of those times. Krauze talks about issues that are usually perceived as disgusting and are ridiculed in movies in a beautiful manner. People and places appear in his films, full of their ugliness, and without the negative features contained in the image itself, without the satire. (Film 26/1975)
This is due to the fact the director, unlike the critics, understands the term "social margin" in a different way and brings them to the screen using his own particular language. Antoni Krauze looks for goodness in seemingly everyday people and impossible values in their gray and ordinary lives - which are in fact full of drama. Hanna Samsonowska, writing about Meta, Antoni Krauze's second film, a story of ordinary people living modestly in an old house in a district in which comfort nor convenience have not been achieved, notes that this film has a special beauty:
That which would seem a paradox, given that there are no great heroes or attractive interiors and landscapes, nor a great idea that animates the form of drama. It holds the peculiar charm and dreariness of daily life sorrow and harmony (yes!) the days that monotonously go by. (Kino 2/81)
Solid observations, an eye for detail, the language and the ability to draw a narrative background are the realistic sides of Krauze's films, which characterize all his works. His films, however, are not warm, full of sympathy and affection plotted pictures. The director himself, following his first television film, stated:
I was able to include some partial truth about these people in my films their behaviour and manners. These are micro-observations, closed within the so-called small realism. I would want to break these boundaries in the future, to reach a deeper truth about human life. (Film 40/71)
And he accomplished that with his earlier films of the 1970s, such as The Hand of God and Na wylot / Through and Through written and directed by Bogdan Krolikiewicz - and later in A Trip to Arabia or Dziewczynka z hotelu Excelsior / Little Girl from the Hotel Excelsior (1988).
Bolesław Michałek perceived the link between this film and earlier ones, also noting that:
The surface of the film shows [...] a layer of 'marginal culture', including descriptions of environments such as the social landscape – people wandering between train station bars and terrible housing, blowsy, unaware of what to expect from life, equipped with only a sense of bitter defeat. But in this outer layer of reality, there are situations and entire sequences that [...] grab you by the throat. [...] We pass by imperceptibly from the ordinary, trivial, everyday situations - to events based on logic, seen through different eyes. Like blood dripping into a glass of red wine from the ceiling this is madness. (Kino 8 /1973)
The second source of incompatibility between the hero is in the hero himself, the greed for life, work and towards people. Antoni Krauze himself said that people like the hero in The Hand of God only cause trouble.
They do not agree with the opinions of others, are dissatisfied with their fate, bring ferment. [...] The unsuitability of my film character may be described due to his enormous strength, passion, with which he is trying to break into life, and in turn participate in with his entire self. While our cool, typical, practical life-sense, usually does not require such people. (Polska, 12/1971)
It must be associated with Krauze's views on the human condition in general. In the same text, he explained that the concept of human fate formulated by Joseph Conrad gained increasing significance for him through his career and led the director to recognise some existential truths:
A person is born in suffering, lives in suffering and dies suffering [...] but despair, complaints, and sobbing are no way out for us. It is important to preserve dignity, and fight to the end [...] to treat it as an opportunity. Great pessimism - consciously - is also optimistic.
He called The Hand of God a film about searching, not fulfillment, about a hero who appeared good for nothing, but who is a hero nonetheless.
Films based on these types of individual characters created by Antoni Krauze accounted for in his greatest achievements during the Gierek period of prosperity and the Carnival of "Solidarity" (though we cannot forget that during the period of martial law, one of his best films was produced - The Weather Forecast, 1982.) This is the moment when people seem to think that luck is on your doorstep. But it is only an illusion. Krauze talks about this illusion in one of his works, which is the only one of his films, which is not an adaptation from literature, yet, certainly a very personal work, A Trip to Arabia.
Bożena Janicka wrote that A Trip to Arabia talks about the real destructive power which man carries in himself, which may even be values spinning against him: "Demons from Krauze's film have very innocent names, capable of deceiving anyone: the need for love, the gift of compassion, sensitivity, kindness, altruism" (Film 21/80). Jolanta Sarnecka noted that Anna from A Trip to Arabia and Tadeusz, the hero in The Hand of God, undergo a similar change "from rebellion to resignation and reconciliation" ("FSP" 14/80).
One cannot assign the theme of "resigning from all your dreams" to Krauze's work as a whole. The film (The Weather Forecast), based on the wave of Solidarity protests, defies this notion. It is about fleeing residents of a nursing home. A breath of freedom, which the residents feel, for some the one and only - can be compared to the breath of freedom experienced by Polish society during the 16 months of freedom between 1980 and 1981. This film, with a collective hero, is an exception in Krauze's works. However his next movie, A Little Girl from the Hotel Excelsior (1988), like in all of his films with an individual hero, tells of a dream, a dream which materialises while the main character remains at the seaside.
While watching this film, one can't help but draw attention to what makes Antoni Krauze's filmmaking different as compared to other productions. It's about the ability to connect meticulously treated realities with what is fiction - whether the product of a sick imagination as in The Hand of God or the result of dreams as in A Little Girl.... Krauze is also able to tell a story where we never quite know whether what is happening on screen is in the world we are in, or a different world, even in such a feeble story as the A Little Girl from the Hotel Excelsior written by Eustachy Rylski which begins to shine a different light on screen.
As Jan Słodowski wrote,
The realism of events intertwines in the film with a phantasmagoria of Arcadia to the extent that it is difficult to separate them from one other. Transitions between reality and dreams are very smooth - pull in the hero and the spectator, like a gulf, into an extraordinary world of fantasy and originality and the detailed description of the resort-world becomes a universal reflection on life.
FSP 15/88
Another feature typical of Krauze's pictures is the artistic dimension. Critics have pointed it out - Bożena Janicka in Kino 2 /84 and Bogdan Zagroba in Film 1/84 when discussing The Weather Forecast and singling it out as a film of great cinematographic beauty.
Still, Krauze does not let himself get pigeonholed - he has made several documentary films, along with the spy flick Akwarium / The Aquarium in 1995) and a thriller titled Strach / Fear. It seems that what links these seemingly different movies, is the ability to penetrate the human psyche, to get into the mental state of his characters, whether it be a driver from Strach, an unfulfilled actor in The Hand of God, a frustrated heroine in the film A Trip to Arabia, maybe an officer of the Soviet secret police in Aquarium, or finally the heroes prevailing in his biographical documentaries. Krauze has the ability to tell stories about human fate and the psychological portrait, with a deep respect for the hero. He is curious about the person's uniqueness, even if the given character is one of many.
When reviewing the film Jan Zachwatowicz and Tadeusz Szyma wrote that
An opportunity for the creator of a documentary always comes the biographical approach, which allows you to give justice to the hero of the film, objectify his achievements, yet emphasise the uniqueness of this particular person. (Kino 12/2000)
In 2011 the director realised one of his most popular films: Black Thursday. It tells the story of the massacre which happened in December 1970 in Tricity. In Gdańsk and Gdynia the soldiers and the milicia started an open fire that killed a number of defenceless people.
