After 84 years an original masterpiece of the silent film era returns to the screen, restored and remastered
Ryszard Ordyński's 1928 production of Pan Tadeusz, the epic novel by Adam Mickiewicz was the biggest production of the interwar period in Poland, with a budget exceeding half-a-million zlotys. During World War II, copies of the film were taken out of the country and a full version discovered as recently as 2006. The film was a blockbuster for the times, with an illustrious cast, painstaking detail to the costumes and scenery and a set that included the Mickiewicz's family's own estate in the Novogródek province (today Lithuania).
The director was among the most talented filmmakers of his time, honing his craft in Berlin, where he met cinema and theatre pioneer Max Reinhardt. He became involved in the theatre and was the chief director of one of the most important German theatres. He is credited with discovering Pola Negri, the Polish silent film actress who managed to make an international splash. In Hollywood Ordyński worked with Enriko Caruso, Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin and Isadora Duncan. Between 1917-1920 he was the chief director of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Pan Tadeusz (Lord Thaddeus) was his greatest work. It originally premiered on the 9th of November 1928. Its re-release - in a remastered version that took four years to complete - ushers in the new face of the renovated Iluzjon cinema in Warsaw on the 9th of November 2012. After the gala premiere, the film will go on to be screened at various film festivals across Poland and, possibly, Europe.
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Press release