'The Great Way’: Unveiling Michał Waszyński’s Lost Polish War Epic Film

‘Wielka droga’, directed by Michał Waszyński, made in Italy in 1946, is the first post-war Polish feature film. However, the first copy of this movie did not come to Poland until 1962, and due to the anti-Soviet nature of Waszyński’s picture, it remained on the shelf for more than a quarter of a century.

The uniqueness of this ‘forgotten pearl of Polish cinematography’ is due not only to the honourable title of the first post-war Polish feature film but also to the place and circumstances of its production, the fictional-documentary nature of the story and the artists involved in working on the film – the legendary director Michał Waszyński being one of them.

The film begins during the Battle of Monte Cassino, during which cadet Adam Krajewski (Albin Ossowski) is wounded. He ends up in a field hospital, blindfolded, having lost his sight during the battle. The wounded man is cared for by a nurse, Jadzia (Jadwiga Andrzejewska), whom the blind Adam takes for his fiancée, Irena (Renata Bogdańska, aka Irena Anders). Jadzia, at the urging of the doctor (Józef Winawer), does not tell him the truth – perhaps the thought that his beloved is with him will speed up Adam’s healing. To make sure that this foray works out, Jadzia secretly reads Adam’s diary, found in his backpack, in order to get to know the patient more thoroughly and to play the role of his fiancée better. The nurse, who reads the diary, becomes the narrator of flashbacks that are interspersed with hospital scenes. Adam’s writing goes back to 1939, to life in Lviv (Lwów at the time, ed) and the outbreak of war, and includes the story of exile, enlistment in Anders’s Army (aka Polish Armed Forces in the East, ed) and the path of the 2nd Corps to Italy. The cadet’s notes end in May 1944, before the start of the Battle of Monte Cassino. Jadzia falls in love with Adam, full of concern about his reaction, but when the cadet regains his sight, Irena is already by his side. The fiancée confesses to her beloved that it was not she but Jadzia who took care of him during his illness. Although grateful to the nurse, Adam leaves with Irena, marries her, and together they start a new life after the war.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Wielka droga’, directed by Michał Waszyński, 1946, photo: Maliniak F. / Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

wielka_droga_1-f-3371-69-1500x.jpg

The film uses a number of authentic photographs, shot by the advance guard of the 2nd Corps, which make the film partially documentary. The plot of Wielka droga (The Great Way) is completely fictional, but it was a pretext for showing the real history of the Polish army commanded by General Anders – its formation, actions and successes. The army involved tens of thousands of Poles: in 1941, thanks to the Sikorski–Mayski Agreement, not only were soldiers unlawfully imprisoned by the Soviets taken out of Soviet captivity but so also were civilians, children and women. Thanks to the military agreement, a Polish Army was able to be formed on the territory of the USSR, with General Władysław Anders as its commander. Anyone could enlist in the unit formed by him, thanks to which a whole new society was created, composed of people with different professions, including artists: actors, filmmakers, musicians, painters. Theatre troupes, revue troupes, so-called ‘headliners’ operating within the 2nd Corps performed for soldiers, for civilians, as well as for local residents of areas where the army had just been stationed. Irena Anders spoke about the importance of these artistic activities:

Text

This was the only moment when they [the civilian population, ed] could forget everything, could go back to their Borderlands, home, and forget about hunger, about death. This was the only thing these people had: the show, there was a show!

Wielka droga was produced by the Culture and Press Branch of the Polish Army’s 2nd Corps in the East in 1946, after the war. The film – with the exception of footage recorded by army members themselves – was shot in Cinecittà, the largest film studio in Italy. Most of the filmmakers involved in working on Wielka droga had the experience of having traveled the combat trail with Anders’s Army, so the fictional story was partly everyone’s story.

The main female character in Wielka droga was played by Jadwiga Andrzejewska – an actress known before the war from the Nowy Momus (New Momus) cabaret, from the Teatr Kameralny (Chamber Theatre) or the Teatr Wielki (Grand Theatre), among others. In 1942 she marched with Anders’s Army to the East and played in the Theatre of the 2nd Corps. ‘Jadzia was an ideal for us novice actors! To play with her, to be near her, was itself an honour. After all, everyone knew her from movies before the war’, said Albin Ossowski about working with Andrzejewska.

He, who played the leading male role, joined the army of the 2nd Corps much later. He came from Pomerania, where at the beginning of the war all residents were given German citizenship. To avoid being drafted into the Wehrmacht, he fled to Warsaw and joined the Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Union of Armed Struggle), later transformed into the Armia Krajowa (Home Army). He was arrested in one of the operations and sent to Pawiak prison for interrogation and then to Auschwitz concentration camp. His knowledge of the German language helped him survive Auschwitz. After the war, due to the persecution of Home Army soldiers by the communist authorities, Ossowski emigrated to Italy, where he joined the 2nd Corps and became involved in theatre activities. In a conversation with Irena Anders, he recalled: ‘After all, I didn’t know much at the time. When I came to you, to the 2nd Corps in Italy, I enrolled – I really don’t know why – in theatre studies’.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Wielka droga’, directed by Michał Waszyński, 1946, photo: Maliniak F. / Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

wielka_droga_1-f-3371-73-1500x.jpg

In the 2nd Corps, Irena Anders, at the time still married to Gwidon Borucki and performing under the artistic pseudonym Renata Bogdańska, was known primarily as a singer. Before the war, she was a soloist in the jazz band Jabcio-Jazz and also worked in the Lviv Teatr Wielki and in Feliks Konarski’s musical theatre (Konarski, under the pseudonym Ref-Ren, was the author of the lyrics of many songs, including those from Wielka droga) and in Henryk Wars’s band Tea Jazz (the creator of the film’s music). Two days after the end of the battle of Monte Cassino, among the ruins of the monastery, Irena Anders and Borucki were the first to publicly sing the famous song Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino (Red Poppies on Monte Cassino). In an interview with Maria Dłużewska, Anders recalled the assault on the hillside and the creation of the song later made famous by Waszyński’s film:

Text

We arrived in Campobasso. The first thing Schütz did was sit down at the piano and start playing. I’m listening and thinking he must be crazy. What, playing at night? And on such a night?! And this was the music for what later became ‘Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino’. While Schutz was playing the piano, Ref-Ren was strumming the guitar, and so the first stanza was written: ‘Do you see those ruins on the hill-top’.

During the filming of Wielka droga, Irena Anders was already engaged to General Wladyslaw Anders. The actress recalled visiting the general on the set:

Text

Everyone had tremendous stage fright; they were very nervous, trying to look their best. And we just happened to be in a scene, [...] well, we nonetheless had to play this couple in love somehow. And it somehow wasn’t really working for us, so we kept having to repeat it and repeat it. [...] And we were just terribly embarrassed by the general. Well, an understandable story, because how was I to play out a scene with another man and pretend to love him in front of my real sweetheart!

General Anders also appeared in the film – he played himself, although he was not mentioned by name. His appearance was one of the reasons why Wielka droga was not shown in the People’s Republic of Poland, as the figure of General Anders was inconvenient for the authorities of the time – it was not without reason that he was stripped of his Polish citizenship and general’s stripes. Making a hero out of Anders was contrary to the prevailing political narrative in Poland after the war.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

‘Wielka droga’, directed by Michał Waszyński, 1946, photo: Maliniak F. / Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny / fototeka.fn.org.pl

Picture image

wielka_droga_1-f-3371-81-1500x.jpg

Behind a work as great as Wielka droga was an equally great director. Michał Waszyński was an extremely prolific creator of interwar cinema. Before the outbreak of the 2nd World War, he became famous for such films as Znachor (The Healer, 1937), Professor Wilczur (1938) and, above all, Dybbuk (1937). The war caught up with him in Lviv, and the Soviet authorities exiled him from there to Siberia. After his release from exile in 1941, he enlisted in General Anders’s nascent army. ‘A charming, delightful, incredibly intelligent man. Actually, the only professional director in the 2nd Corps’, Waszyński was remembered years later by Irena Anders.

The idea to make Wielka droga was born several years before the Battle of Monte Cassino. It was to be primarily a feature film depicting the history of Anders’s Army, its formation and journey. The screenplay was written by Konrad Tom, who had already worked with Waszyński as a screenwriter on such films as Jego ekscelencja subiekt (His Excellency, the Shop Assistant, 1933), Jaśnie pan szofer (His Lordship, the Chauffeur, 1935) and Antek policmajster (Police Chief Antek, 1935). Wielka droga was to be a major undertaking, on the scale of an epic about the fate of Poland in exile. Several language versions of the film were planned, but only Polish and Italian have survived, although documentation in the archives confirms that an English version was also available. The film, which was intended to make the history of the 2nd Corps famous abroad, remained completely unknown for many years, however, and existing copies of the film languished on shelves for ideological and political reasons.

Its theme and message were controversial, moreover, not only in Poland but also in the West – particularly troublesome here was the film’s final scene, in which the film’s Irena hangs a gun on the wall and her beloved Adam utters the words: ‘You see, we have come a great way, but we have not yet reached a free Poland. And to get there, that too may still be needed’. When peace was finally achieved after a long and difficult war, the suggestion that this is not yet the end and armed struggle may soon be necessary again was not welcome. It is worth mentioning that the extant Italian version of Wielka droga is greatly altered – Polish patriotic themes were removed from it. An example of this censorship is, for instance, that the main characters come not from Lviv but from Lublin, and during the roundup, those apprehending them shout to them in German, not in Russian.

Completed in 1946, the film didn’t come to Poland until 1962, but the first screenings took place between 1988 and 1989 and were only available to the student community. Wider audiences in Poland were not able to watch the film until 1991, when Wielka Droga was aired by Polish Television. The film was digitally restored 76 years after its creation, in 2022, by Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny (Nation Film Archives – Audiovisual Institute), based on two counter-negatives made in the 1960s from a nitro copy acquired from the USA. The formal repremière of Wielka droga took place that same year during the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, thanks to which the ‘forgotten pearl of Polish cinema’ is being rediscovered decades after its creation.

Translated from Polish by Michał Abel Pelczar

Bibliography: Dłużewska, M. Trzy dni zdjęciowe. Rozmowa z Ireną Anders i Albinem Ossowskim. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Trio, 2012.

Cheap Is Beautiful: Microbudget Films From Poland